GTA Online map took 400 hours to 3D print

I played Grand Theft Auto V since its launch in 2013. So I am quite familiar with the card. But seeing it all recreated perfectly using 3D printing is insane and makes me appreciate how much detail and Rockstar’s work is integrated into this digital world. Not to mention how impressive this 3D map is with its precision and scale.

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

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

“To start, I used a custom script to analyze the land and buildings in RDR2 first, ”Riccobene explained in an email. “Then I managed to wear it for use in GTA V. It works in-game and collects ground elevations within a radius of 500-1,000 yards around the player when you press a hot key, adding up to 1,000,000+ data points per scan.

Because the decks do not appear on the whole map at the same time, 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 to merge the point clouds and turn the dataset into real world data so that I could manipulate, process and analyze it with professional mapping and mapping software,” Riccobene said.

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

“I used a proprietary workflow to transform the tiled dataset to 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 in my 3D printing settings to print the buildings, terrain, and water bodies in black, all at the same time. They also had to fit together perfectly as an assembly.

In total, it took about 125 hours to print the GTA V 3D map seen in its viral tweet. You can see more of the process behind the scenes on her Instagram. He estimates that the complete project, including printing, obtaining data, building the elevation maps and fine-tuning took over 400 hours spread over a year.

While this is 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 difficult project I have ever worked on.”

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