The Dundee waterfront is currently undergoing a major redevelopment. The new developments within Dundee waterfront cover 8km along the River Tay. We’ve recently updated Landmarks in this area and would like to share them with you.
A Landmark can be an object or a feature that is easily recognisable from a distance. It can also be used for navigation. We add landmarks to make an area look more recognisable to that of the real world, in real cities.

Firstly we create the Landmarks themselves. This is done by us, the Art team. It’s best to start by studying photographic references, being based in Dundee, we can just go outside and get reference photo’s that way.

We then create the basic shape of the model and texture it using our quirky and colourful toon like art style.

The Victoria and Albert Museum of Design is soon-to-be built and will be open to the public in 2018. It’s currently a finished Landmark in our map which you can view now. The reason for creating Landmarks before they are being currently built in the real world is to see a glimpse into the future, and help people visualise what the developments are going to be like once they’re built. Our initial focus was Dundee waterfront and its new buildings, however we also felt updating the city centre was just as important.

In order to represent Dundee’s vibrant city centre, we decided to add landmarks for St. Mary’s Church and the Overgate shopping centre.

To get the Landmarks into our maps we gather an area from our WRLD tech using Latitude and Longitude parameters. This creates computer generated procedural buildings to populate the area .

We replace some of the procedural buildings with our custom built ones to enhance the building’s characteristics to make the area more recognisable.

This is a representation of what the waterfront looks like in our map. Doesn’t it look stunning?

By adding landmarks we create depth and character to our locations. Not only does this make them instantly recognisable, but allows us to visualise future developments years before they physically take shape. With further developments on the horizon, keep an eye out when browsing through our map.