I would like to model a fantasy world that I made and I am wondering about the technical limits. The planet is about 3 times bigger than earth and has four continents, each the size of half the USA. I am not talking about making a sphere and texturing it, I mean like Google 3D where you can zoom all the way into a single house except more detailed. Would there be any technical problems? Would the program lag from having that many vertices? Should I just model each continent separately or even each region within the continent separately?
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Is this for an animation or game?
For an animation you can use compositing to transition between several different versions of your model, each with different scales of detail.
For a game you'll probably need to fetch higher resolution blocks of game data as needed, similarly to how Google Earth fetches higher res textures as you zoom in.
Either way it probably won't be easy, but the result could be impressive if executed well.
Mentalist
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This is actually a world I helped create with some fantasy writers for the writers to use as the setting of their novels. I want to make a comic series though and thought 3D modeling would be easier because I don't have to draw every scene. After that I thought it would be cool to have the whole fantasy world as a model. – bioa10 Jul 05 '15 at 07:04
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I see, so it sounds like many still renders from various angles is what you want to create, for now. You'll need to get clever about hiding any unneeded geometry from being rendered to keep render times reasonable. The Mask Modifier is one way to show just one Vertex Group of a given object. So you could have a continent and break it down into states/prefectures of countries (or grid blocks every 100 square kilometers) by Vertex Group, and use Mask Modifiers to reveal just one at a time when possible. Also consider how many zoom levels you will need to tell your story - reference some maps. – Mentalist Jul 05 '15 at 12:50
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Another possibility is multires sculpting, but I think that would probably not be ideal for massive bodies of land that you may later want to make changes to in the topology of their lowest res mesh. On the other hand, hi-res displacement maps could work well with a SubSurf Modifier for giving you up to 6 levels of subdivision per modifier instance. Here's a helpful short tutorial for convincing displacement-based terrain:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZxyN7esQkY – Mentalist Jul 05 '15 at 13:08
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You'll need to do some planning of how to UV map those displacement textures. If your planet is a giant UV sphere you will get pinching at the north and south poles. An icosphere will give you regular faces, but triangles are not ideal. Instead, add a rhombic triacontahedron (using the Add Mesh: Extra Objects add-on) then drop a SubSurf Modifier on it set to "Simple", followed by a Cast Modifier of type "Sphere" with a Factor of 1. This will give you an all-quads globe with each section being the same size rhombi. – Mentalist Jul 05 '15 at 13:21
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A lot of what you said I don't understand because I've never actually used blender or any 3D modeling program :P but thanks, I'll look this all up when I get home to my computer. – bioa10 Jul 05 '15 at 13:29
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(Gotcha... I'll continue what I started writing anyway) So say you then have one massive displacement texture per rhombic grid tile. I've found Blender struggles with textures above 10240x10240 (results may vary with hardware) so you'll probably want to do some tests and calculations to figure out what level of subdiv to apply that first SubSurf Mod at to give you the ideal size of rhombi for a 10240x10240 texture. Then make your UV maps based on that. You can have up to 8 UV maps per object, after that you'll need to separate your planet into smaller chunks...unless you map some other way. – Mentalist Jul 05 '15 at 13:46
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What I mean by map some other way, is for example using Empties or some other means to texture your terrain. Or at least this may be useful for blending textures across different objects. If you're not sure what I mean, the answer I posted to this other question may make it clear: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/33342/how-to-mix-face-textures-across-uv-edges/ – Mentalist Jul 05 '15 at 13:54
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A few more thoughts: You'll need to calculate what your real-world scale is in advance so that when you start adding terrain detail, structures, particle system foliage, etc it actually ends up looking like it's the right size. Also since an Ocean Modifier is out of the question at that scale you'll probably need to bake an Ocean Modifier's result into a bump map for your ocean - animated if you intend for these waves to move - and tiling at some point since there's a practical limit to how big of an Ocean Modifier you can make, and also there's that texture size limit. – Mentalist Jul 05 '15 at 14:05
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So, would you like to join in on my project? Like I said I am a complete noob to 3D modeling and having someone smart like you would be good :D I won't be upset if you say no though. Also if there a system similar to github bit for multiple people to work on one model? Oh, and thanks for the detailed help, I'll have to look it up as I go. – bioa10 Jul 05 '15 at 14:17
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Final thoughts for now: Displacement maps don't allow for things like overhanging cliffs or caves, so be ready to adjust for this by using other types of modifiers or separate terrain objects that are cleverly blended in with the rest of the terrain. Give some thought to your planet's sun - how big, how bright, and how far is it from your planet? If you will have shots from space you may need to model and texture this sun, but if not you can probably get away with creating a sky texture of it. Either way it will determine the lighting for your whole planet. Also you should have a plan for fog. – Mentalist Jul 05 '15 at 14:17
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Thanks for the invite, however I hesitate to jump on board a project this ambitious when I'm already pretty tied up with multiple existing projects. Also I can't guarantee that this will work since I've never created a whole planet before! :-) Your question fascinated me because it seems like an impossibly lofty project, but the more I considered it the more I thought it might actually be possible with enough planning and time. Sorry for writing a novel in comments btw - in retrospect I should have posted as a single answer, but when I began answering I didn't realize it would get this deep! – Mentalist Jul 05 '15 at 14:27
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To address your question about "a system similar to github": I think github would work for this actually. You could have multiple people working on different sections of the planet and one master .blend file that relies on the linked data in the other .blend files. Overly simplified answer, but yes I believe it can be done this way. – Mentalist Jul 05 '15 at 14:43