3D anorganic environment design document

Graphics
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It’s been a long time since I posted on the development forum and since I contributed to Thrive in any substantial way. But that doesn’t mean that Thrive wasn’t on my mind. As the last few months have seen the addition of prototypes of all stages to the game, I asked myself how Thrive would eventually depict the 3D environment the later stages are set in. As it happens, over the last few years I have become increasingly more interested in minerals, stones and sediments in the context of my university studies. As an architecture student I’m by no means an expert of geology or natural sciences. I have however, some understanding of how different kinds of natural materials can shape our concious and unconcious perception of an environment. Based on these experiences, I tried to sketch out a blueprint of how we might go about depicting Thrives 3D environment.

I’m aware that the focus point of development is shifting back to the microbe stage right now and I´m all for that. This document is mainly for starting a conversation and thereby articulating different viewpoints of how we imagine the 3D stages to look and work like on a graphical level.
Through these conversations, I hope that a consensus will emerge (which almost certainly will and should look very different than what I have in this preliminary suggestion document) about how we will go about creating the 3D environment graphics.
It’s great to see serious discussions about a microbe stage graphic revamp going on. If I remember correctly we have tried these kinds of revamps in the past and they have always petered out somehow, mostly but not soley owing to too little time and energy available on the graphics team. I’m confident that it will work out better this time, as it feels like we have more active and motivated members in the graphics team than we had at many points in the past.
Looking back, there have also been other hurdles to past graphic revamps. As @Deus recently aptly noted in another thread:

This is something we can try to do better for future graphic revamps. Something which might aid us in these future endeavours is proper documentation of stuff which we implement. These kinds of design documents are meant to summarize information not only for ourselves in the present, but also for ourselves and other developers in the future. Where are we now? Where do we eventually want to go? Which elements of the game are meant to be placeholders and which are deliberate design choices which we want to keep as they are? I feel like this kinds of questions could be more clearly answered and recorded in Thrives graphics development.
Concept art like this one by @Uniow referenced by @Deus in the thread mentioned before go a long way in explaining what we want to reach:

However, I have come to believe that this kind of visual communication about the what needs to be accompanied by a lot of written discussion and summarization about the how, why, in what order etc.
Ultimately, I think that future graphic revamps could be made easier by documenting these things from the very start. This is what this document and the discussion which it will hopefully start aim to do.

If people find such a document to be a worthwhile investment of time and energy, I will try to update it to reflect the consensus developed in this and other discussions about the 3D environment. I will also try to expand it to include things beyond the geological environment, such as the atmosphere or water visuals. I can also imagine the possibility of compiling a parallel document for our plans for the microbe environment if people are interested.

I’m eager to hear your thoughts and inputs!

EDIT: I created the bulk of this document way before @Kertit recently became Graphics Team Lead (congratulations again) so I didn’t yet have a chance to get their input on this. Needless to say, I’m especially looking forward to getting their opinion on this as how we go about organizing graphics development will ultimately be in no small part their decision:)

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@deus @MirrorMonkey2#4721 I’ve just read both of your documents (my brain will now be disabled x) )

So first going with Deus’s non-organic design doc:
This document gives a pretty clear (maybe even too clear and scientific for artist!) idea of how the environment should look when we’ll reach a more “3D” view of Thrive, and that’s pretty cool!

Now I like the idea of getting a full 3D scene even in the microbe stage but that will need a huge amount of (re)work.
In the first line, I think we will need the convolution surface to be implemented (using it to render the membrane in 3D so it can react with light better!)

Talking about light: those are clearly not the hardest to play with.
In the first place, only one directional light will be needed, and to simulate patches of light we can use masks.
Where it requires more work will be how the environment reacts to light (hello main menu planet atmosphere that never was done!)

So overall I completely agree with your idea. now the challenge will be to find people able to create this all.
I’ll take a look at it but I’m still pretty noob at using Godot (damn I’d loved using UE5!).

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Thanks for the answer! I’m a bit unsure what you mean by Deus’s non-organic design doc. Are you referring to this thread: Graphics Tasks/Work-Flow Discussion? Or are you referring to the concept art by Uniow?
In general your answer was mainly focused on the microbe stage side of things. Just to clarify: At the moment my 3D anorganic envorinment design document doesn’t touch upon how we can make the microbe stage look more 3D. It’s mainly about how we might go about creating the environment for the 3D stages, which in my mind are all the stages except for the microbe stage. I thought about renaming it “macroscopic anorganic envorinment design document”, but I would eventually like it to include ideas for depicting the very early 3D multicellular stage, which features three-dimensional gameplay but is not macroscopic in the strict sense.
On the other hand, the microbe stage features 3D graphics and we talk all the time about making the microbe environment look more 3D all the time, but in my mind it’s still “the 2D stage” due to its gameplay.
Man, this kind of terminology can be confusing at times…

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I was talking about your googledoc anorganic thing :wink:
And yes I’ve understood it concern future stages. I was then talking about Uniow’s concept.

I know microbe stage features 3D graphics. I would just love to see it evolve to a full 3D and not a mix while keeping the 2D/topview gameplay.

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I see:) Now I can better understand your previous post! Yeah, @Uniow s concepts are definitely something of an ideal we strive to reach.

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I’ve said this on Discord before, but I wanted to note on the forums that this is a very good way of organization thought surrounding graphics and art topics. I get the impression that we have a very loosely defined “style guide” to the point that new artists have no idea where to go. If we can make similar guides for other topics, such as the Microbe background visuals, then I think we can see a more involved arts team.

As to the document itself, I think that is about as much of a jumping board as we can possibly have for discussion/efforts for 3D environments. One thing to note is that it might help to focus specifically on underwater environments since we won’t see surface areas for a very long time.

Also wanted to note that I had nothing to do with the Google document shared by MirrorMonkey; that was all him!

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Continuing from here: Handling Scale - #36 by MirrorMonkey2

The “3D anorganic environment design document” has become increasingly important for me as I have reached the point in designing the World Generator where more direction is needed in its design requirements.
Specifically, the World Generator currently has the ability to create different parameters across the terrain, such as the example temperature and rainfall maps I showed earlier. However, I do not currently know what different parameters are needed in order to select the different anorganic environment textures. I have been focused so far on the requirements necessary for differentiating different biome types for patch classification using the Holdridge life zones described in Land Biomes, but that is different to the requirements for anorganic terrain classification. Bolsa and I were discussing what has already been created on Discord, and it seems that the clay-silt-sand pyramid in the design document is the current near term target for ground texture variation. It wouldn’t be too difficult to get a simple 3 texture blending system between clay, silt, and sand textures, but I want to know what more complete method would be required for initial use in the Macroscopic stage.
What would be most helpful for anyone who is working on the planet generation system is discussing how the anorganic textures would vary across different biomes. Or defining what the correct way of determining how the anorganic environment changes across different regions if biomes are not a useful differentiation.

An accompanying “3D organic environment design document” would be helpful to know what the terrain will need to accommodate with the life that arises on it. For example, I was thinking that the foliage on land would likely need to be dynamically baked at runtime into ground textures for different patches, with different textures for a different patch composition of organisms.

To clarify, I don’t require actual textures or art assets created in order to continue designing the system, I can throw together placeholders easily enough. I do need to know what the requirements are so that I can design the terrain texturing system to accommodate it.

Also, you mentioned creating a “3D LOD system design document” which I think is a good idea. Describing it from the game or art design perspective would be very useful, as I have been focused mainly on the programming and implementation side of things.

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I’m happy to hear that someone found the document useful!
The land biomes discussion is very enlightening and will doubtlessly be a very important point of reference when we write the 3D organic environment design document, as these biomes seem to relate heavily to the type of vegetation present in a given place.

I can envision such a system. It would need to be complemented by a script which keeps track of the type(s) of mineral(s) the sand/silt/clay (mixture) is made of. The grain size (mixture of sand, silt and clay) will determine the “texture of the texture”, so to speak, but grain size doesn’t have a lot of bearing on the color that texture will have. The color is largely determined by the mineral(s), and the mineral(s) present is determined by the geological history of the place in question.

  • Is it a volcanic island/area? Then the sand/silt/clay will most likely be made of basalt, pumice etc.
  • Is it an area which recently (in a geological time scale) was a shallow sea of a coral reef? Then the substrate will likely be largely made up of limestone.
  • Is it a young metamorphic mountain range like the alps or an old metamorphic mountain range? Then the minerals present might be something like granite, gneiss or schist.

If we manage to keep track of the three basic archetypes which are volcanic, sedimentary and metamorphic, maybe with the additional subdivision of sedimentary into limestone-heavy and limestone-poor since limestone is a very special and largely biogenic mineral, we would have quiet a solid system already.
Specific minerals within these groups could be randomly assigned to areas and then kept track of. This way, a characteristically greenish granite-heavy mountain range would produce greenish granite sand flats once it erodes and so on. I know this is already quiet out there. But one can dream…

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