level/mod project

    Intro

    One crit I often get with my work is that its all fantasy based so for my next project I'm trying to do a high poly realistic section of a game level. To keep myself going off on one I've offered to contribute towards a mod that is based on war in iraq. This should help me keep focused on being realistic.

    Just playing with a floor at moment. This is more or less just the base. I will be putting extra transparent planes on top and modeled debris. Any crits? In particular can anyone suggest how to go about adding flat sheet of paper on the floor. I added it to the map but its too flat and its the same if I make a transparent plane. Would it be insane to make a piece of paper out of 3-5 planes to put a bit on bend in it?...

    [Blocked Image: http://www.caponeart.com/del50.jpg]

    The flat sheet of paper should be in a separate texture which the mapper can place as he wants as a decal or overlay. Painting stuff like that on the texture (especially a floor texture) will stand out when used in a map. Also like peri said, that's alot of variations of one texture. Make three textures, one without any side-debris, one with only side-debris and one corner-debris, then let the mapper flip around the texture to fit the actual map.

    I'm trying to avoid repetition as much as possible. But the idea of doing long strip planes for the side dirt is good. Only thing then is that the more basic layers underneith with all the 'little' debris will be the same.

    I think I've been playing too much MGS3...seriously, I would just love to know how they did those rock/ground surfaces that just don't seem to repeat at all.

    I'm actually aiming this towards the engine that is used on 'insurgency' mod which I see you are on too. I'm only a contributer who has not been assigned anything of yet. Do you know if the engine being used is ok with multiple alpha planes? If so is this how most artists are going about adding 'unique' dirt?

    thanks

    whoa that stuff is looking sweet peri

    anyway, if its hl2 then i guess decals wud be a better way to go, instead of having a shitload of textures doing it. Or having some transparent texture perhaps. Just seems like extreme overkill to manually do every piece.

    Sort of confused, you say HL2 cannot handle decals yet you then give examples of work that use them?

    Also, what do you class as a decal in terms of this mod?...is it a flat mesh plane with diffuse and opacity placed onto a model or is it the thing where you do it within a texture editor with a mix map?

    A decal is pretty much a plane with diffuse/specular/normal and an opacity map.

    You are saying Source can't handle that on models? How would you do trees if you cant have alpha transparency on modeled planes? It's the same idea.

    that would be different, because then it would be applied to the model in the modeling package. i think peris is thinking about adding decals to models inside of hammer

    what modeling package.

    its the same thing to me.

    a tree is a model just as much as a simple plane would be. if one can have alpha transparency, then the other must be able to have it as well.

    let me rephrase myself.

    you can apply decals to any model you like, but you will have to do it within the modeling program (3dsmax etc), and not inside of hammer

    The way I understand it is, trees are likley to be part of the editor. Something you just pick and place in the world. So I think its these elements that cannot have alpha/opacity. Although surely you can still place a plane decal made in say 3ds max on a engine created element.

    Aye, you can't change the models once they're inside hammer. So if you wanted decals on it, you'd have to make another model. So if you had say, a washing machinne and you wanted dirty, clean and a bit dirty, you'd have to either make three versions, or have them assubobjects or something (not sure if this works in source, but doable in hl). Any world geometry can have decals/alpha layers and all sorts done to it, so you now no longer need dirty/clean/a bit dirty versions of textures.

    Quote from Schmung

    Aye, you can't change the models once they're inside hammer. So if you wanted decals on it, you'd have to make another model. So if you had say, a washing machinne and you wanted dirty, clean and a bit dirty, you'd have to either make three versions, or have them assubobjects or something (not sure if this works in source, but doable in hl). Any world geometry can have decals/alpha layers and all sorts done to it, so you now no longer need dirty/clean/a bit dirty versions of textures.

    The model, a washing machine in this example, would have to be defined 3 potential skins in the .qc file. Then in Hammer you can just choose the skin.

    My only gripe is that you could've spent less polygons on the category shelf thingy and more on the actual environment. Thats a major problem I see is people focus more polygons on props than they do the environment that contains the props. So if you have room in your polycount ceiling I"d flesh out some of the key features to your environment.

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