The below image is a procedurally generated map using hexes that are 115x by 100y. The map will be used for a turn based strategy game similar to Civilization 5.
My question is, what would be the ideal hex dimensions to achieve similar graphical quality to Civ 5? I feel like 115x100y may be a bit excessive to clearly represent cities, units, resources, and terrain, but I am not sure how much I should scale them down.
Anyone know how far I could scale down the tiles to decently represent animated units? Right now tiles are ~100(1M) across. Would it work with tiles ~10(.1M) or less across?
of what i see, 1m would be better because having huge tiles would be not that ideal to look at and animating huge tiles would look kinda bad, its just an opinion, 1m you can do alot of animation and add more detail
Also, I would recommend that you model to scale whenever possible. Being off more than 3-4 times (from a real world scale) can produce very strange artifacts in lighting, physics and such.
Sorry, I am pretty new at this so I am not sure what an LOD set is. LOD1 would be at X zoom level, LOD2 zoomed out, and so on? Or is it based on screen resolution?
Here is an example of what my end goal for the hex sizes and their relation to unit models/animations:
Basically I want to know how big I should make my hexagons so that I can represent a similar level of detail as above. What would be a good minimum hex size, in Unreal Units, that I would want to use in order to have room for decent animations and save as much on performance as possible?
You can provide a selection of LOD meshes for a model. For example one for a closeup. A simplified version for a medium distance and a very simple model (or even just a decal or something) when even further away. I think the LOD system is based on distance from the camera, so you should be able to tweak it to get what you need (be it fixed zoom levels or a continuous zoom).
On the hex size:I would go with the 100cm (=100uu) diameter per hex, and do a quick test with a few typical models (i.e. a city, a vehicle, a soldier), etc to see if it works. Giving this a quick shot will show you what problems could arise with lighting, physics and other systems that are set up for real-world scale. I would also recommend to read up on the LOD system and give this a shot too - to see if it works for what you want.
That makes sense. I guess it only needs to render based on how close the camera is to it. So if I were zoomed up on a 1cm wide hex, then it shouldn’t make a difference if the models and textures look the same as the 100cm version.
Thanks, I will follow your advice when I begin adding art assets to the game.
Let me know how you’re doing…