de_mirage
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Motivation
I have been fascinated with CNC-machines ever since I got my first 3D printer. CNC-machines such as 3D-printers, laser engravers or plotters allow you to transfer creations from the digital realm into our physical world. After a few years of experimenting with 3D-printers, I decided to design and build my own CNC-machine, a CNC-plotter. A plotter is a CNC-machine that can automatically draw on a canvas with a utensil such as a pencil.
As I finished building my plotter, I was looking for a simple project to test the machine and the software I had written to generate the G-Code to control it (a G-Code program consists of a set of instructions a CNC-machine can execute). At the time, I was playing a lot of Counter-Strike (CS). My favorite CS map has always been de_mirage (in video games, levels are often referred to as maps). So I decided to visualize the map to validate my newly built plotter.
The Artwork
The artwork is drawn on a DIN A3 canvas. It shows a top-down view of de_mirage. I drew the artwork in multiple passes, so I could use several pens with different colors. The map shows outlines of the areas accessible to players. Additionally, it includes information, on objects and places of special interest.
Technical Details
I drew the artwork as a vector graphic in Adobe Illustrator. For that, I mostly relied on the minimap of de_mirage that is provided in the game (in video games, a minimap usually shows the immediate vicinity of the player character.). The following image shows the minimap of de_mirage provided in the game. Please note that I am writing this post a few years after I made the artwork. The map and the game have received numerous updates since, so the map is nowadays slightly different from how I have a portrait it in my artwork.
I also used screenshots I took while playing the map. The following images show some top-down views of the map, some with my artwork layered on top.
