A Burnaby teenager has spent the last decade developing his computer rendering skills in the popular computer game Roblox. Those abilities have lead to his latest work: a recreation of East Vancouver, accurate down to the telephone wires.
Khalil, 18, is a Burnaby resident and student at Capilano University. In fact, he used his Roblox rendering skills to garner a spot in the university’s visual effects diploma program. Khalil is not your average Roblox player either, he is actually a Roblox developer, someone who creates models and objects for others in the game to interact with.
“Roblox Studio is the program you use to create games,” Khalil explained in a recent Q&A with Vancouver Is Awesome. “I’ve been using this program almost daily since I was 8 years old as I always had a passion in creating things.
One of the things Khalil enjoys the most is replicating real-life objects and locations and he has done so on some massive scales. Using resources like Google Maps, Khalil’s largest 1:1 recreation was that of a famous U.S. city.
“Queens, New York is my most detailed project is around 6 blocks and that took me 2 months,” Khalil said. “I spent around 8 hours a day on that project.”
In terms of his best project though Khalil says that honour goes to a fully detailed Atlanta metro train.
As for B.C. infrastructure though, Khalil has also recreated a Mark I SkyTrain car.
As for why he decided to tackle East Vancouver, it was all down to the neighbourhood’s unique architecture.
“I really liked the architecture of the area. East Vancouver is very working class and there are a ton of different houses from many different eras,” Khalil explained, adding he believes East Vancouver is an under-appreciated part of the city.
Aside from painstaking, a single house can take several hours, the process of creating such massive renderings can take a toll on Roblox Studio’s computing abilities. This strain on the studio’s computing power can cause it to crash with catastrophic results. Khalil says he’s lost count of how many projects he has sunk months of work into only for them to become corrupted.
Khalil is far from the only Roblox fan in Metro Vancouver. There is a large Vancouver Police Department roleplaying group on the platform but Khalil says their Vancouver city map isn’t very detailed. He is thinking though of selling them a map of his own when it is completed.
To keep up to date with Khalil’s progress, you can check out his Twitter account @vancity1011.
