wip
Community Forums/Graphic Chat/wip
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    A Map I am working on ATM. Lightmapping is not definitive, as well as some other things (vertex lighting etc.). Of course this is only the very rough building / terrain structure. Furniture, stuff, trees and misc vegetation still needs to be added to break the static look. This will be a level that plays in a obscure sects temple. Armed Monks will run around and try to kill the protagonist of the game, of course. |
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| Looks very nice, I prefer the interior shots to the exterior. The grass on the first one looks to large, but other than that, it looks good. |
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| thanks. yes, I agree, got to rescale that grass. |
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| Like Purtabf... whatever his name is, the indoor shots are nice, the outdoor just a bit plain - needs some variation in the walls. I'll do the usual trick of stumbling into criticism :) maybe more details in the outside walls (loose blocks? a ledge or two?), and the skybox, maybe lots of stormy clouds? plus some trees or something to break up the building+terrain+skybox scene Good work though :) The textures look great, and the lighting / shadowmap is clean. Without a light source they look a bit out of place, but I'm sure you will add these when running in the engine. |
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| I love it. Most likely just because my artistic span is as wide as a neuron. |
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| I love it too. My artistic spans an atom! Ha! Beat that! |
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| My artistic span is as wide as an electron. |
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| Nice work,i like the textures to dave |
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| cool stuff, jfk :) reminds me a lot the good old quake3 gothic map (I think UT had several of that kind, also) (well, I mean the ambience) is it for ...em...a game? :) btw, there's probably stuff not very accurate historically ;) Walls used not to have small bricks but lareger stones, also neithe rin the floor...(also you would benefit of using a diferent one there ;) ) Also, between the arcs usually there were not brick walls....the stairs seem untextured, like the arcs and ceiling; those could be done with large stones, as they used to put, but that'd be probably a pain to map and texture: maybe a good "procedural" stone grainy texture will work. The small bricks came much later... all the era of this monuments, they used large stones, with no cement... I studied a bit romanic and gothic styles.. ;) Anyway, that's only in historical accuracy, I've seen and studied quite a lot of churchs and stuff in those times, and shocked a bit (to me it looks a little unrealistic for this) but anyway, well could be that the monks, in some moment at the beguining of the century, after one of the wars, they had to rebuild with standard bricks, hehe. ;) For what is a game level, though, is great. Most people wont notice or care(even knowing) :) One thing yet I can criticize technically is those feet in the columns..too much volume trusted to the texture. It's to much volume to fake...wether do that with geometry (take the foot and bump a bit if ur modeller let's u work with the texture on it so u can bump exactly in place) or if can't wait such load of new polies, use/change the bigger volumes, or find a photo of another type of feet... Maybe u plan to use flat normal maps, then I shut up ;) I love th floor mosaics... I know u gotta keep low poly, but in exteriors, maybe detail the top endings of brick walls, speciall the bircks near one. The rest of wall seems ok so. That and that quad-cone...I'd do some more complex geometry and texture for that...u can keep simple in the walls, but is cool if u detail a bit more on corners with their towers, imho. The exterior floor looks nice :) In general, very good treatment in textures, imho. Also like the geometry u made for interior ceiling. Try the union of floor and tiny mountain, make continues: it looks to much as u put a different object...think of UT2k3 terrains. I like the space distribution, how u designed the interior, in space, and elements. Quite good rooms for a level in that matter. hmm...about what i said bout bumps faked in texture...forget about extra geometry..I'd have to see it in realtime to know if it'd look too much as flat volume... The ceiling in gothic church used to have nerves, those where actually the supporting structure. Where the nerves system what provided of really complex and tall structures (gothic, against the previous mtimes, is all about height, and light, but exterior lighting would kill ur dark ambience fo rthe game, and there where gothic styles more dark, so...) Just a question...do u actually have imposed ur self a very low poly limit, so the game be played in low machines? if so, many of the geometry stuff to be detailed is not wanted... Don't take me wrong; if I say so much is because things can be better said of an already very good level...from a bad level..u don't know where to start... ;) And I do really love medieval times, gothic, and romanic styles (if so they're called in english) gothic Gargoyles are one of my favs in that era. The sculptures really let their imagination run wild in there, as they where meaning evil creatures, and kept seen politically correct, as was to show people how bad evil stuff is...and they got influenced by oriental art and other...perhaps one of the most creative side in those times...(you should add gargoyles (if that's the word) hehe) Sorry, too lengthy comment. Hope u liked it XD |
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| Looks very pretty, my one critism would be the location of the spiral staircase, I just don't think it would be in the middle of a corridor like that, I would expect it not to intrude onto it. Apart from that, it's a darn sight better than I could do. Are you going to be wasting it on a FPS? |
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| Fine Work JFK , looks cool, nice Textures and so on . the only point from me is also the spiral staircase i think it must ending not in the middle , give it a extra curve to ending on wall from the room. i mean picture 4 . here u can see that the staircase destroy your geometry. and whats the name from your editor is it Maplet ?? (eine runde mehr ,irgendwo an einer seite enden lassen ,bzw den gang frei halten) wenn nicht ist auch gut ;) mfg panno |
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| Thanks for your comments. You definitively have got some good points there, but please consider that I ain't got a perfect toolpark to work with. A lot of things are forcing compromises. UV Mapping of the ceil for example forced me to use a very unstructured texture, cause I couldn't fix the UV problems with some normals. Anyway, what I like mostly is when I apply the new textures and see them the first time. That turns a cold static building mesh into an ambient scene. |
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| What programs did you use to make the level? |
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| sorry , I maybe was too critic... |
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| Bob, that's ok, all of your point made sense. I just can't fix everything :) JKP it's a little program I wrote lately. It loads in a number of prefab elements that can be positioned, scaled, rotated etc. on a snap-grid. I used then Gile[s] for the lightmap and Decorator 1.8 to apply the textures. |
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| yum...Gile[s] for the lightmaps... :) Interesting project. |
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| It's not a seperate project, I just try some tools to create levels. Maplet was nice, but it also had some problems. Sometimes it refused to load levels that I just saved, probably not enough ram or something. Also, the fragmentation of everything wasn't desired (eg. the floor when you add a column). I also had some UV problems with Gile[s] btw. They simply look messed up after importing the B3D file. Maybe I got to reinstall Gile[s], I was messing around with the plugin files a lot. Anyway, I need it cause the other lightmapers I currently have do not allow sunlight or intact smoothing groups. I also tried several Architecture Apps to create buildings, but whatever I do, I end up with a huge amount of polys. Probably I should use them to save the prefabs (stairs, windows etc.) Well for those who wonder how I made the textures - I just ripped them from the holy inquisition - there is something good with those churches, surprisingly. So surfing webpages that contain heavy medieval architecture and art pics can be very interesting. Of course, whenever possible I try to make my own pictures with my digital camera. But some buildings are just to far away. |
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| he jfk this is a www froum ;) say what u need we send some pics from ! your wish list towers, stones and buildings are not so far for any people here !  |
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| with photos on the net, beware the copyrights...though many of the vaults have free photos... Uv messed...My plans over Giles are use it only for lightmap generation, while do the uvs in Ultimate, the two channels...apply there the lightmap, and export. Yep, it does not support well smoothing groups... Anyway, I'm too used to just model so that things look ok with an autosmooth value, and most engines...well, usually i can tell the coder to set the exact value I modelled it for. The holy inquisition...eeek.... ;) I guess I'm allways doing some projects that does not let me use and test all my tools..hehe. Yep, maybe doing prefabs would be faster. Anyway, I tend to truly dislike typical editors for levels...I just rather prefer standard modellers. It's looking very good :) |
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| What I hate in Max is there is no flytrough mode as I want it. |
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| I think GameLevel Builder 2.2 script has it, and Max7 has added it... :) |
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| Uh, my Max is a very old version. Most times incompatible with todays MAX scripts. |
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| Blender has a fly mode, and xsi. But yep, it's out of question... ;) if you're Max is at least 3(is for max3,4,5,6), the script is valid: http://www.scriptspot.com/download.asp?ID=2102 Also, remember it works also in Gmax. You only need to know the mouse trick to grab fast all content(what mod people do is grab chunk per chunk, is tedious..seems not many know the trick) in listener, and have the OBJ export script. Of course, that'd only export geometry. Anyway, render is ripped out of gmax: you can't do lightmaps. Only externally with your giles or whatever. Nor collissions, nor portals/occlussion. I am not a coder, so I suppose you handle those in your engine or b3d. getic3d freeware Bsp editor+compiler has got a fly mode, quite good, and a realtime bsp viewer, simply perfect and you check all inmediately. A pitty I hate these editors...tried quark, tried getic3d...I don't like them...I'd like to find some exporter of *.map from XSI or Blender, but seems there isn't any. You know, as *.map is the format these editors can load, so to just use as a converter, the editor. Imho the geometry editing in those is much worse. And some projects need quake3 BSP or halflife BSP importing. Some engines even just open directly *.map files. Well, for max/gmax, that game level builder do acts as an exporter, and ensures you only make the allowed geometry in a bsp...BSPs...too limited thing. Only advantage (can't speak about coding) is those do pack collisions, visibility, portals... |
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| Any more screens? This looks interesting. |
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| if ur max is really old.... for max2...another script...(this one just for the fly) http://www.scriptspot.com/download.asp?ID=345 hey, another one...I'm afraid this is for Max5, and 6. http://www.scriptspot.com/download.asp?ID=2100 |
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| DigiFor - not at the moment. I really need to make some chars now. the evil monks and so on. Basicly it's just a WIP moment in a long process of creating a dozen or so levels for a FPS game. Darn, if I only think about how many people are working for a single commercial release... Bob - thanks a lot! yes, reeaally old :/ BTW since there is an open source Q3 BSP compiler around now, it's likely that I'll implement BSP import in my engine - this is going to take me 5 minutes, just checking the extension and then use LoadBSP instead. As far as I see Blitz really utilizes the VIS Info, if you load a BSP Map and turn wireframe mode on, you can see how it occludes dynamicly - well I thought so last time. |
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| You can do your texturing in gile[s] as easily as Decorator. You can also do your UVs in gile[s] with one of my plugins. |
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| hmm... "reaaally" with 3 'a's , instead of one...I'd say Max2 to be really old with one 'a'...no, it couldn't be Max -1 , that wasn't made...XD I liked more 3ds msod more than max1, anyway...Butdue to my lack of knowledge, then. Even you'r old max, probably has already both multiple -at least 2- uv channel, as well as render to lightmap. Or you could just export the mesh with two UVs and apply the tga lightmap generated in giles... Both free available BSP compilers, are no way near to completion...Not openbsp, neither map3bspc at sourceforge.net... The second one only generates the geometry bsp tree... the first one is also very uncomplete, for what I read in readme.... but probably more ended than the other. Getic3d has a more featured bsp, and quite a lot of code to help make your loader, and full source coder of the viewer...yet though, the editor you're probably forced to use...eeeeeks...I tried it... I am sorry to say so, but can't say other thing... Anyway, I don't have a much better opinion of Quark(fully opne source, that one) , or the like... Yet though, getic3d bsp custom format seems have rised up a bit graphical specs, which is good...yet though, bsp type of geometry imho is quite limited, but probably a good compromise of things get solved in one shot, after all, and the level can end up looking well, though certains things will never be possible... Solid, convex geometry, no holes, no single sided double renderable faces (leaves, grass, two side wals of wires,etc) I'd go for your own map format. Quite mor ewith the times, really.. is more that for those engines already limited, or for people avoiding the extra bucks of a lightmaper, and game specific editor for collisions, spawns, visibility portals, etc...is a all in one thing..and for the lazy modellers ;) So, just my interest is for maybe some day outputting stuff for bsp based engines...quite a vague thing... |
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| I did't know that, thanks. Yes, it was discussed here and people used to ask why Mark introduced the Q3 BSP and not eg. HL BSP. Anyway, that's a long time ago and todays engines went away from BSP anyway. |
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