Day 31 (oops, forgot the final update yesterday)

Well, this is a bit anticlimactic, but I didn’t do much of anything this past week. The more I try actually modeling things, the more I realize I’m not very good at doing it in a way that doesn’t take forever. This makes it not much fun to do, since the progress is pretty slow.

Also, the scale of this project is kind of huge. Every time I finish something I’m happy with my progress, but I also dread the giant pile of work still ahead. I’ve been doubting whether I want to continue or not. Maybe I should do more little projects in between, and come back to this every once in a while.

Either way, if I continue this I’m going to need more modeling skills first. I’ve been thinking of doing a bunch of low poly tutorials so I’ll actually know what I’m doing a bit more. And yes, I know I’ve gotten pretty far by just winging it, but creating these details without knowing efficient ways of going about it is just killing the fun.

So yeah, got a bit further and gained some more experience. Not entirely sure where I’ll go next. No regrets though, it’s been a (mostly) fun journey so far. Perhaps I’ll continue this in a future DK30.

Day 21 (End of Week 3)

Hyrule Castle is “done” for now. It definitely needs more work, but I’ll tackle the rest of the map first, so maybe in another year or so, haha. Check out the comparison below.

Before:

After:

On to another area for week 4. Not sure which one yet, will see tomorrow.

DAY 14 (END OF WEEK 2)

I’ve started doing detail work on Hyrule Castle. Hoping to get it finished before the end of week 3. Next update when it’s done.

I should also get to work on the cliffs, water and clouds at some point. I have a feeling that would make a major difference. Probably not going to happen this DK30 though.

Day 12 - Verticalized!

All walls are vertical now. It’s not perfect, but it’ll do for now. Some parts might need some tweaking to not block as much terrain behind it. Future me will deal with it at some point.

The old picture is in my first post. You can open them both in a new tab for a comparison.

I’m going to spend the rest of the DK30 doing more detail work. Haven’t decided which area yet.

Day 7 (End of Week 1)

Things are moving along nicely. There’s some problems with the map (as usual) where things can’t be made in 3D without altering them a bit, but I’m getting more comfortable with not making a pixel-perfect copy. No major changes of course, just nudging some walls a few blocks over in places where they don’t line up.

I expect to be done with this verticalization phase within the coming week. I don’t want to show a progress picture yet because there’s a bunch of holes in the map right now. Mostly in Death Mountain because that part really doesn’t line up. I know how I’m going to fix it but it’s a work in progress.

I think this vertical version is definitely an improvement, but it’s also blocking line of sight to more places. Will have to see if I can do some creative edits to improve that, like moving the back walls of each cliff towards the camera a bit. Not sure yet, will do some experimenting when I feel like it.

To be continued!

Day 1

Updated Blender and fired it up for the first time in 9 months. I’m rusty, but it’s coming back to me. I have to look up some button combinations here and there but mostly things are going fine.

I’ve started making all the walls and slopes vertical. Fiddled with the wall height a bit and got to a point that looks pretty reasonable as far as I can tell. This is going to take a while, but hopefully working on it for just 1 or 2 hours every day will keep it from being too monotonous. Listening to some podcasts and stuff while I’m building.

I’ll probably do an update every week or so, unless I run into unexpected things.

Phase 2

A quick recap of what already happened:

I’ve always wanted to recreate the overworld map of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (for the SNES) in Blender, then get a big print and hang it on my wall and admire it for all eternity.

I started modelling the map in the 2020 Quarantine DK30. I went in hard and spent way more time on it than I intended. I was in lockdown anyway and had to do something to pass the time. While I had lots of fun, I also burned out a bit, and haven’t touched Blender at all since that DK30.

I’ve had 9 months to think about how to continue this project, and over time I’ve thought of some things I wanted to change whenever I was ready to continue. I also kept following a couple of Blender youtube channels (because seeing people make stuff is just awesome), and those people eventually made a grass tutorial and a clouds tutorial. Whoever said people shouldn’t procrastinate obviously wasn’t working on this project, because waiting 9 months is going to save me a lot of time actively researching these things :P

New Goals

1. I guess I’ll update Blender to the newest stable version and see if things break.
2. I will probably need a bit of time to acclimate to Blender again, but I don’t expect this to be a major hurdle.
3. Last time I thought having separate floors and walls would be smart. I’m not sure it was. Repositioning things is a hassle. I’m going to convert all the land/water into actual 3D objects instead.
4. I’ve decided to go with vertical slopes. I’ve made everything slanted since that’s how the game shows it. However, the game shows it that way because it gives you the illusion of playing in a 3D world when in reality everything is flat. Doing this illusion in 3D only makes things look like they have less depth. The downside is that it messes up my vertical scale, so everything that isn’t at ground level will have to be moved.

No clue how far I’ll get in 30 days. Hopefully all of the above done with some time left for doing some additional details (lots of placeholder stuff left on the map).

For reference, here’s what I got done last DK30: