3d rendered realism in RMVXA Part I

[JayRay]

Okay, so as we know, while the tilesets allow a little bit more flexibility on maps than RMVX, in order to create really good looking and realistic maps for RPG Maker, we sometimes have to look beyond the box set, so to speak. I'm creating this tutorial to give you kind of an idea on how I plan to accomplish this, and maybe it will help you create your maps with that photo-realistic effect we look for in our 2d RPGS.

First, understand that in order to do this, unless you have a wicked art style, you're probably going to be rendering some items to place in your game. These items could be isometric items, like in say... Age of Empires II, or axiometric items like some other games. The main thing is uniformity. If you render something in perspective, try to keep that perspective throughout the entire map. If you work it right, you could wind up with something like... this.




Things you are going to need

* Photoshop, or Paint Shop Pro or even Gimp
* 3ds Max, Blender, or Milkshape
* 2d Tiling software like Tiled
(YAMI ENGINE BASE)
(YAMI PARALLAX LOCK SCRIPT)
(YAMI OVERLAY SCRIPT)

Step one
Creating the Parallax Map.

Now, by grabbing enough seamless textures of photorealistic grounds and such, and by using brushes that have a smooth transition, you effectively remove the need for autotile management, and can sort of go "off the grid" so to speak There are plenty of free websites that offer those ground tiles, but also, by taking some good photos from your smartphone at say, a nature preserve or state park, you can get all the textures you want!

Now, in order to make some of those photos seamless, you can either work in your graphics editing program like Photoshop to make each texture seemless, and then turn it into a texture brush, OR you can decide whether or not to purchase Genetica by Spiral Graphics (Basic Version $149) - you don't need Pro or Studio versions here. I DO like Genetica because it does all that random guess work for you, and takes bits and pieces of your texture and utilizes them throughout the texture to create several varied textures from the same bit, but my Photoshop allows me to do most of the same functions.

Once you've created say 40 or so different ground textures, we can start actually painting the map.

* In Photoshop, this is done by clicking on Edit -> Define Pattern and then when you are ready to paint, simply click the Pattern Stamp Tool, and it will paint not in colors, but in the textures you create, and you can go back and forth with created textures.

Now, whether this is going to be a dungeon scene, or an outdoor scene, or an interior, we want to make sure our parallax map is the same size as our actual game map. This would be the number of tiles wide x 32 and number of tiles high x 32. So, if your map is 60x60, you need a map that's 1920x1920 - Now, while this might seem like a big file, keep in mind that most games, even the 2d ones now days are pushing into the gigs, and on a 32 bit game, we have up to 2 gigs of stuff we can keep in this game without a lot of issues!

So, once you have the ground size you want, you can just paint your map with all the varied opacities on each texture you want. so if you want a forest floor, with a few bits of leaves and grit in spots, or gradually transitioning to the bare dirt of a wagon track, you can do so without the blocky tile-based setups.

* Also, if it appears like your texture still looks repetitive, you can brush over it in random spots to give it that real look. Also, remember that ground is never a uniform carpet. Even areas that you can walk on should never appear to be the same as the one you just left.


Now, using the Yami Engine scripts, you should make sure that the parallax that you add to your map has the <tile lock parallax> notation in the notes for the map, and add it in. Then you can erase the tiles on the map, and with the right passability, you can walk around freely on your map without the repetitive 8 bit or 16 bit looking graphics. Instead, you have a freeform map that looks as good as you want it to look. Later on, once you render your items you will be rendering different layers for the foreground and background graphics, but this parallax background can have all the graphics.

STEP II: COMING SOON: Rendering The Stuff.