FF8 world map - 3D model?

[Colly]

Is there a way to get a 3D model of FF8 world map?
Anyone know on which file is this model? Any idea?

PS. My last topic is empty . I hope this topic will get answer

[Locutus]

At this time it is not possible to get a ff8 map model.
Mirex is working on ff8 model exporter so you can view field and battle models, but this exporter is not yet finished. But even  when this exporter will be finished you will not be able to export ff8 model map becouse probably model map is made of smaller 3d parts and written in different format then normal ff8 models.
You can't get ff7 model map even now when we can view many ff7 models
And probably it  is also true for ff8.

But there is another way to get ff8 model map.
Playing ff8 you can see small map in the right side of your screen.
You can ripp that map from the game using various tools or make a screen shot of it. You can also find a image of ff8 map in the net (someone was creating ff8 map for civilisation3 mod)

Then you can use this image in grayscale in 3d software as a heightmap and you will get a 3d ff8 map.
Of course this map will not be ass accurate as real ff8 map and will not have buildings ,cities...

[halkun]

The final fatatasy maps are probably going to be the hardest to "rip" from the system. They seem to be saved in a devidable biniary tree and not a "mesh of plygons" in the typical sense. Biniary trees tend to break when you mess with the "roots" and you can only so high a resolution when you mess with the "branches"

[Zande]

devidable biniary tree

Elaborate?

[Almighty_gir]

its just a theory, because i know nothing about code. but it seems to me like the way they make the world map would be, for exmple, like playing a good old game of hero quest...

it renders 1 part of the map, and the rest is invisible, and as you move, it calculates the next part it needs, and what that part looks like, and renders it, but also deletes what was behind you, so it only has one portion of the map rendered at any 1 time.

in this way, they wouldnt have 1 whole map model, but really just a code saying what the model should look like....right?

[halkun]

Close, The map is set up as a binary search tree.  When a particular set of tiles are needed to be rendered, the program will "walk the tree" to get that "section" of tiles.

Here's psudo-example...



Say like we want to get the tile that's in blue, well, we have to transverse the tree, getting smaller and smaller branches in order to access that branch's information. The whole map isn't "visable" in one sitting, You have to "walk the tree" to get the data you want. This is why the FF7 map is in 4 sections (contained in 4 files). Each is a search tree for tiles for each corner of the map. What's cool was the "branches" are interchangable, however the tiles were not. When we tried to alter the "leaves" of the tree, it damaged the search system and caused the map to collapse.

I don't know enough about search trees to hack it, but that's a general rundown of the system.

::EDIT::

But you might say "but the map out of polygons, not tiles"

IN FF7's case, it's made out of tiles, each triange you see above is a polygon. Each "leaf" teminated in little tile model. When we tried to change the model, that's what broke the tree. The FF7 map was 256x256 tiles, this allowed for "repeating" tiles like water, desert and grassland.

[Almighty_gir]

thanks halkun

hay if you need any modeling type help with your study, just let me know

[Colly]

Thanks to all for answer . I understand now.
So if I want create a map, I have to play and doing screenshots on each continent with changed POV .