Modelling a map for SuperTuxKart: Stylish Skatepark 2 [process]
[Not yet uploaded to the STK servers for playing!!]
This is the remake of a map I made for an assignment at school. It's a map for SuperTuxKart, with the theme of a skatepark.
SuperTuxKart is an open-source karting game. It's not perfect, but you can mod pretty much anything in it, and the documentation is alright. See it here: https://supertuxkart.net/Main_Page
Instead of a measly two weeks, this time I took a few months whenever I had some free time. I kept the original layout, then improved on it, re-designing a lot to give the feel of a proper skatepark. It took me quite some time to get the proper feel of the layout, and to make those proper curves and the tunnel, but I'm really happy of how it turned out!
I still need to add some music, maybe fiddle some decoration, then upload it to the STK map repo.
All 3D models made by me in Blender. All (except 1) textures made by me in Krita.
End result rendered in Cycles
Top-view render
The Jump
The second turn
Here's a closer view of that super-duper-cool tunnel. Sadly doesn't look as cool in-game than rendered in Cycles.
A closer look at some textures in blender
And now for the making-of. This is my old map, for comparison, which I took as a rough base.
I started making this new version by removing everything other than the track, and adjusting the layout.
This is with some walls and the minimum amount of objects and deco. Notice how I moved the driving vertically on the ramp, but it's still there.
Here's when I decided it would be really cool to add a no-gravity tunnel. At first I wanted a sort of balcony with a view on the outside, kind of those outside skateparks but I couldnt make the layout feel nice so I scrapped it.
At one point while making it, I figured that instead of using lines that I would connect with LoopTools' Bridge feature, I could make a low poly version of the curve, then add Subdivision Surface and arrange the curves with Edge Crease.
Subdivs when applied...
These subdivs would give me some nice topology...
and how they appear in game! They're also so much smoother to drive on.
idk what that screenshot was for but I think it was when I tried adding a big ring to show the player where to jump, which I of course kept in the final version.
While making some deco, I figured I could add some plants. However they wouldnt be really part of the map, so I figured i'd make them optimized and low poly...
To make them I made three superposed icospheres of different sizes, I selected faces by random that I deleted, then added a foliage texture I made.
Here's how those bushes look from up close. They even jiggle in the game, just by ticking a property in the material!
I took a screenshot of how it looked with just the rough base...
Here's with the bushes and other deco added.
At first those ramps were just for driving vertically, but I decided to go BIG and make a BIG JUMP. what you see here is an invisible wall and some Zippers (speed boosts) to make the jump more bearable with the physics.
Have a look at these textures! All of them, except for the spectators which was a copyright-free photo that I edited, where painted in Krita. I used Krita's built-in filters to generate the normal maps.
This is just some graffiti I drew. Not an ad but hey it looks cool.
I also made various fake ads during the first version to add on billboards. This is a fake review of STK using an existing screenshot.
Now THIS one's my favorite. Imagine Red Bull but for Linux nerds, you get BLU GNU, the free and open-source energy beverage! "It's time to update your taste in drinks." 😎😎