Shrine of Truth — An epic build for the Sandbox Metaverse | Dev Blog
Preface — Check out this related article from our wonderful friends with “Light Trail Adventures”. We can’t say enough good things about this team, and it has been a once in a life time experience to work with them.
Concept
At the start of this project, we were introduced to another team of artists from Light Trail Adventures. After a brief introduction with both teams, we knew we had something special to offer as a cohesive unit. We began to feel the excitement that comes with starting something new and unique. Both teams agree we need to make something EPIC. After some brainstorming, it became obvious that we should manufacture a giant shrine that could be used as a centerpiece on a LAND. Since this is a collaborative piece, one of our goals was to make sure elements from both SAND RUSH, and LIGHT TRAIL ADVENTURES were included. At this point we still had many unsolved problems, but we had enough to start pre-production.
Pre-production
Before we could build anything substantial, we needed to confirm an asset this large is viable. So we spent some time exploring the restrictions of VoxEdit. Once we discovered how far we can push the limits, we now had an understanding of what we had to do.
Our project started with some quick, simple, concepts thrown together in Magicavoxel and built to scale. After some back and forth, and suggestions from the team, we found a shape everyone was happy with.
Once we had determined the scale and size for the final build, we divided it into sections, with the agenda to assemble the result in Game Maker.
Production
We are working with a team of 8 artists. Some artists completed sections on their own, and others collaborated. All sections were built separately and imported into Magicavoxel to check for any abnormalities, and palette adjustments.
Once the base mesh models were distributed to the artists, everyone got to work. Within just a few short days, we knew we had something special in the works, but it was going to be a long road before completion.
Challenges
One obstacle we faced was to make sure our build had a consistent look and feel over the entire piece. This was carefully resolved in a few ways, for example, we first established a color palette. This was used as a starting point, and we have implemented color variations where applicable. Next up was developing a process for creating consistent stone textures that would cover the majority of the model. We were lucky enough to discover a method for procedurally generating stone textures, and ultimately determined that many elements will need to be painted by hand. So countless hours were invested by all artists into “painting”, runes, stone details and light streams voxel by voxel.
Another challenge we faced was, the Magicavoxel software, had also been pushed to its upper limits. We were not able to render out the entire structure without glitches. We were able to resolve this by making some changes minor to a config file.
This process has forced us to push the limits of VoxEdit in many ways. For example we learned that the maximum face count for The Sandbox Marketplace is around 18k faces. This wasn’t going to be sufficient for our goals, and we needed a solution. We found, the most logical solution was to split the asset into several pieces. This worked great for us. Now each part could be assigned to an individual artists.
Final construction
Once we’re happy with the final versions of each section, we will export them to Game Maker for the final assembly located on a 3x3 LAND! Before these items are minted to the blockchain, they are reviewed by a member of The Sandbox staff. Upon approval everything is minted on the Sandbox platform, and will show up opensea.io for auction.
Artist notes — The fact that this project exists is a testament to blockchain technology. This is proof that artist, creative minds, and anyone can work in collaboration without geographical borders and create something truly unique and one of a kind! It has been a humbling experience to work with such an amazing collection of artists, and I would like to invite everyone to follow our team’s work here on Medium, and on twitter #SandRush. Links to various other social media can be found below. Be sure to follow us for information on NFT based games, metaverse, digital real estate, and of course plenty of artwork with a few surprises once in a while.
Shout out to the amazing artists that put this together! Please follow them on the socials, and leave them some love. Thanks for checking us out!
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5LQD
momo22_ph
Sisapi
KradSuperSoldier
Yohan Monange
Kinotism
Necrobombicon
Pepe Hiller
