How to import Antarctica into game?!

Well I was planning on generating terrain using heightmaps not use Parts.

I still have no leads on how I could make a system for generating terrain in the right location.

This is my vague idea which I don’t know how to implement.

  • Split up Antarctica into “chunks”
  • The chunks need to be accurate and merge seamlessly when placed next to the chunk next to it
  • Load in X amount of chunks around each player in a StreamingEnabled fashion

I have no idea how I would get and position “chunks” from a source (some of the websites I linked)

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You’re going to have to find some constant relationship between Roblox Stud/XYZ values and real-world latitude, longitude, and height to be able to make a coherent mapping of the real-world onto Roblox. What the numbers would look like and how you would mathematically approach this I don’t know, but fundamentally speaking this is probably how it would have to be done.

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Search up “images in real life to mesh” on youtube. Might be your best bet.

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import it to blender and then scale it down. that’s all i can think of.

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Why can’t you just colour it in paint and then import it as a map.

How can this be so hard?

If you have a map the size of 16k then you probably should have StreamingEnabled. Just be careful of water. Water gets really laggy very quick when scaled up. Just be careful of that.

Here is the steps:

  • Get an accurate map of Antarctica must have well defined lines
  • Go to paint
  • Get color of ice and glacier and fill colour inside the Antarctic and fill colour for water outside.
  • Import colour data to Roblox.

For height data you can attempt to find some height data that matches your needs on the internet or just create some yourself.

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Could you potentially use this? City Loader Plugin - Templates for Real Life Buildings/Cities in Studio

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I hate to break this to you, but this just isn’t going to be happening. Antartica to scale is larger than the entire USA. You’re not going to be able to import an entire continent onto ROBLOX to scale.

Edit: To give you an idea of just how large this will be, Antartica to scale will be the size of over half a billion baseplates (assuming each baseplate is about 512 x 512 feet).

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That’s why it might be helpful to fully read OP where they say they want to downscale it.

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Even at the 1/1000th scale that’d be over half a million base plates so does 500,000+ baseplates side by side in one game sound realistic?

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Maybe they can do 1/1000000 and scale the players down as well?

Edit: I just realized the player will be 0.000005 studs tall

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get a map reference and model over that with blender or just studio

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From my calculations it would have to be at least 1/10,000,000th but even then, it was like 57 base plates which I honestly don’t know how realistic that would even be. Any smaller and it would just be easier to take the terrain tools and scribble some ice in the shape of Antartica.

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I’m making a Railway experience based in Tokyo that is 1/20 so 1 meter = 1 stud and it’s gonna take like hundreds of baseplates

Im really surprised by your determination, I couldnt make a topic of this scale, as many previous comments have said it will be difficult for you to do this… since the sizes are huge and Roblox wouldnt hold it.

My only help for you is to visit Antarctica for a while through Google Earth, see how frequent the mountains, stones and lakes are and then do a procedural generation with all those conditions, if this is successful it would be a great achievement for Roblox .

Good luck!

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Yeah I decided it doesn’t make sense to make the entire Antarctica, because most of it will be only terrain.

What I’ll probably end up doing is making just small sections of terrain using heightmaps of various landmarks.

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You can create a low poly mesh using those heightmaps using the blender displacement modifier,

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As stated before, they want to import it, not make it. Also, it needs to be exactly Antarctica and what you suggest is just building it.

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I imported a tiny piece of the Grand Canyon heightmap as terrain, at maybe 1/5 scale (maybe smaller), and I can tell you its way too big to use. And that is a tiny fraction of what you’re talking about doing.

The Grand Canyon map is barely able to be updated at the file size of 60+MB, sometimes the upload will timeout with an error because my upload can’t finish before the timeout.

I can’t build on it, can’t script on it, due to how long it takes to publish. I just made it as a test to see how big the limit of terrain size could be.

Also the ground glitches with streaming enabled and you can’t walk in certain places you’ll fall through the terrain.

You can try it here:
https://www.roblox.com/games/6410195728/Grand-Canyon-Terrain-Test-flight

This is only maybe a 5 mile square!
image

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If they intend to create the game solely out of terrain, then they will be limited, but I have been able to import sections of the world in high detail in sizes up to 20 miles by 15 miles, with little to no lag. It depends on how you manage the import, but it is absolutely possible to do large areas, albeit requiring a bit more technical knowledge and work.

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Antarctica/Area

5.483 million mi²