don't know what to use!

i'm so confused on how to set up the pipeline to make what i need to make.

we have MAX, and we can use whatever other tools that are necessary. I'm happy to get whatever is necessary. i am just unclear on what that is!

Could someone please give me a clue what would be the workflow to create levels like you see in this concept?



it's always top down camera angle, i don't need vistas or skyboxes. Is it still a terrain? Should I be doing this:

1. MAX for objects
2. bring those into TED for terrain (and texture blending)(and object placement?)
3. take all that into [g]iles for lighting??
4. bring it into blitz from there?

any help is greatly appreciated!

anyone?

I don't think a terrain is what you're after, have you thought about having pre-rendered backgrounds?

Two layers of 2d graphics rendered using 3D. One is the background layer, one is the foreground layer. Using CameraClsmode means you can retain the drawing and draw 3D between without overwriting the images.

You can layer stuff. It looks as though that would be ideal.

hmm i actually want this to be 3d, not fake 3d using 2d layers.

this is a concept done with paint - it needs to be a 3d environment.

I'd just model it all in 3dsmax, get a top down view at a slight angle and wide angle lense. Use max or giles for lightmapping, and use masking to give transitions an nice next gen look. Since your top down alpha sorting is pretty straightforward and will allow you to get a reall nice looking game with relative ease :)

By "we have max" I assume you meant 3dsmax, and B3d pipeline. If you want that cartoony look you can do a lot with a spherical env map to give the scene and nice cartoon like sort of dynamic shading.

You could so something pretty nice and faithful to the concept art pretty easily :)