Gta 5 3d: GTA 5 Player Builds Impressive 3D Geographical Map of San Andreas

GTA 5 Player Builds Impressive 3D Geographical Map of San Andreas

By
Peter Roman Sitkowski

A Grand Theft Auto 5 fan spends over 400 hours creating a geographical map of San Andreas, using professional cartography software and a 3D printer.

Despite being released in 2013, nearly a decade ago, Grand Theft Auto 5 is still receiving regular content drops via updates for its online component, keeping the game fresh for veteran players. Between this, and Red Dead Redemption 2’s online mode, Rockstar fans are continually placated on the road to the next big release. Fan-made content is also a constant source of entertainment, with mods, role-play servers, and fanart helping the game’s longevity as well.

GTA Online is earning more than its keep for Rockstar and parent company Take-Two Interactive, earning almost a billion dollars last year in revenue; thus surpassing newer titles like Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Cyberpunk 2077 by several hundred million dollars.  With Rockstar being in no hurry to get around to GTA 6, fans have had eight long years to explore the nooks and crannies of San Andreas, including via extremely popular roleplay servers. In a particularly unique showcase of talent, one fan has shown his love for Grand Theft Auto 5 by recreating the entirety of San Andreas as a geographical map, using 3D printing and countless hours of his time.

RELATED: Rumor: Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City, and San Andreas May Be Getting Remakes

Self-described Product Designer and Creative Technologist, Dom Riccobene, knows the city better than most, having spent over 400 hours carefully gathering data and 3D printing a scale replica of GTA 5’s expansive single player map. According to an interview with Kotaku, Riccobene used «a custom script to scan the terrain and buildings,» as he had done with Red Dead Redemption 2 in the past, a process that took 100 hours alone. Using «professional mapping and cartography software,» Riccobene then went about the task of creating the map via a 3D printer, with some of the more complex portions of San Andreas taking up to 12 hours of printing time.

The printing alone took Riccobene around 125 hours, with the full project, including data collection, taking over 400 hours from beginning to end. Certainly a better way to spend one’s time than walking around in circles, something many GTA 5 players are doing recently. Despite Riccobene describing the 3D print as the most «technically challenging project» he has ever worked on, he also said it was probably the most enjoyable. Usually working on mountain sculpts, and even a Martian crater in collaboration with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Riccobene has had some interesting projects in the past, making it interesting that Grand Theft Auto’s San Andreas topped the list.

Seeing the talent of video game fans is always a pleasure, but Riccobene’s meticulous data collection and dedication to his model is particularly impressive. The ability to see Riccobene’s workflow via a series of videos posted to his Twitter and Instagram is also fascinating, giving some sense of the scope of the project. He plans to tackle Red Dead Redemption 2’s map next, and considering how long it takes to walk across the Red Dead Redemption 2 map, it could take even longer to complete. Having said that, the lack of dense blocks of buildings may make for a less time-consuming printing experience; either way, there is no doubt that it will be astonishingly impressive.

Grand Theft Auto 5 is available now for PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One with PS5 and Xbox Series X versions also in development

MORE: Grand Theft Auto 6 Needs to Bring Back San Andreas Feature That Skipped GTA 5

Source: Kotaku

 

 

GTA Online’s Map Took 400 Hours To 3D Print

By

Zack Zwiezen

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Gif: Dom Riccobene

I’ve been playing Grand Theft Auto V since it launched back in 2013. So, I’m pretty familiar with the map. But seeing the whole thing recreated perfectly using 3D printing is wild and makes me appreciate just how much detail and work Rockstar packed into this digital world. Not to mention how impressive this 3D map is in both its accuracy and scale.

The cool 3D map of GTA V going viral on Twitter was created by Dom Riccobene. He’s a product designer who often uses real-world data to recreate actual locations as exact “data sculptures.” But due to covid-19 fucking up everything, Riccobene wasn’t able to go out and do his job. So, needing something to do to occupy his time, he looked towards the virtual worlds of GTA V and Red Dead Redemption II for inspiration.

His plan was to create high-resolution datasets of both RDR2 and GTA V. He would then use that data to create huge, perfectly scaled, 3D physical maps of the game worlds. He described the process as “an immense technical challenge.”

“To start, I used a custom script to scan the terrain and buildings in RDR2 first,” explained Riccobene in an email. “Then I managed to port it for use in GTA V. It runs in-game and collects ground elevations in a 500-1000 meter radius around the player when you press a hotkey adding up to 1,000,000+ data points per scan.”

Because the games don’t spawn in the entire map at once, Riccobene had to scan the map by hand slowly using this process. He estimates that it took him around 100 hours for each game before he had enough data for his data sculptures.

“The next challenge was merging the point clouds and turning the dataset into real-world data so I could manipulate, process, and analyze it with professional mapping and cartography software,” said Riccobene.

To do this he mapped all of the 500 million coordinates he had scanned and collected to actual coordinates on the Earth. This allowed him to create an elevation grid. With that, he could use his software and tools to begin printing the map. But that was tricky too, as you might expect. Some tiles would only take an hour to print, though more complex areas featuring many buildings and elevation changes could take up to 12 hours to print.

“I used a proprietary workflow to turn the tiled dataset into polygons as 3D printable meshes,” Riccobene explained. “Each tile is an 800 mb 3D model. From there it was a matter of trial and error dialing in my 3D printing settings to print buildings, terrain, and the water features in black, all at once. They also needed to fit together seamlessly as an assembly.”

All told it took 125 hours or so to print out the GTA V 3D map seen in his viral tweet. You can see more of the behind-the-scenes process on his Instagram. He estimates that the full project, including printing, getting data, building the elevation maps, and fine-tuning took over 400 hours spread across a year.

While this was obviously a lot of work and time, Riccobene is thrilled with the results and had a blast doing it all.

“It was probably the most enjoyable and technically challenging project I’ve ever worked on.”

With this done, his next plan is to do the same process for the RDR2 map. He has already spent over 200 hours working on that and hopes to create a similarly impressive map using that Rockstar game in the near future.

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Creation of a 3D model for GTA

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