Posts by Minos

Quote from Sentura

where? unless you wanna crash standing up or like halfway out the window...

the bed looks big enough for kokoz and me.

Kickass apartment Kokoz. I'd crash in there any time!

Quote from Steppenwolf

I always mitter my stuff when i work in bsp. Probably not as important anymore today since most PC's are powerfull enough to run even a messy map in source in highest details and fluid framerates. But it used to be very important in the past. Without mittering 2 triangles more get rendered per corner and if the wall is a static brush it creates a new tiny vis leaf. Now if you have a couple more such tiny vis leafs they will cut each other overproportianaly the more you have and you have very easily a mess of hundrets or thousands of vis leafs where only a couple dozen would be appropiate. This mess has a very negative effect on the vis compile time (what should take 2-3 minutes takes hours) and it also has a bad effect on the performance ingame.edit:

Found this old pic in my archive:

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Pretty much shows what i mean with tiny vis leafs cutting each other and creating a mess. On the button my map after proper mitering, func_detailing and vis optimizing.

Not sure if that's a good example to show what you mean since it's a very old version of Abdallah with almost no brushes converted to func_detail and no hint brushes at all.

I personally never cared about mitering corners. The small performance gain (if it even exists) is not really worth the extra time put on it.

Fun fact: Steppenwolf was actually the guy who taught me how to properly use hint brushes back in the good ol' INS days

Quote from Satyre

Hey minotauro, well done on the last one! You probably know it, but if you don't, here is a great site about all kind of art and digital stuff (lots of them are quite similar to your style). So I think the site is worth a look .

Yeah I know that forum, I just can't be arsed to browse it in a regular basis. As with CGSociety I just can't keep up with so much information.

The hottest forum for concept art though imo is: http://forums.sijun.com/index.php (hell Sparth is one of the admins there and often shares some step by steps)

Quote from Nysuatro

How do you chose your colors? I still have problems with that.

I actually started this one in black and white and then added a few HUE/SATURATION layers (with colorize mode on) to get a nice base to work from. I then flattened the painting and started to paint over it, color picking and overlaying new colors where needed. I find it a lot easier to define the shapes in black and white before adding colors, since colors always add a whole new layer of complexity to your brain. Of course that's only the way I found that works best for me, some people will tell you to start with colors but it's really up to you. Hope it helps.

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thanks wilco!

Alright, here's another pitch. I'm having a hard time filling the foreground with interesting stuff, so ideas are welcome!

[Blocked Image: http://thiagoklafke.com/misc/sketches/sp_036_UnearthlyChallenge09_02.jpg]

hmm just noticed the focus building looks like a lighter

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Extremely addicting little thing

Quote from wilco

Something in the perspective is playing with my eyes, but not sure what it is! Looks good for a quick sketch Mino, can't wait to see what final unearthly peice you come up with.

I'm much more confident with my 3d/level art skills than with concept stuff. I'll try to find a concept artist if I don't come up with some cool idea soon.

FIrst Unearthly Challenge idea. It didnt turn out as good as i hoped but this is just a quick sketch to study proportions and atmosphere. The idea behind this one is a fortress built by evil aliens to control people's mind connected by a monorail. It's pretty basic now but I'll flesh out shapes once I decide which direction to take.

[Blocked Image: http://thiagoklafke.com/misc/sketches/sp_035_UnearthlyChallenge09_01.jpg]

I'll probably do a few more different ideas before deciding which direction to take but critics are welcome.

Already begun thumbnailing some ideas =)

http://www.unearthlychallenge.com/

Cool theme this time!

HB Warby!

Just updated it with 3 awesome links everyone check it out!

I like it. I'm not so sure about the neon lights though. They make everything look so bright, colorful and alive and that's exactly the opposite of what a L4D map should convey.

Quote

You don't always need an expensive professional dSLR to capture awe-inspiring images. Sometimes, a basic Canon A470 point and shoot, a little ingenuity, and a beer cooler are all you need. That is what two M.I.T. students used to capture images of the Earth from space, well, actually the upper atmosphere; technically, it wasn't high enough to be space.Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh, M.I.T. students, had a goal of flying a camera high enough to photograph the curvature of the earth, they named it Project Icarus. With out having a NASA size budget for a rocket, they opted for the more cost effective method of filling a weather balloon with helium and suspending a Styrofoam cooler underneath that held the camera. They also placed some instant hand warmers inside the cooler to try to keep the camera and its battery from freezing.

Full story: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10354588-1.html

Time lapse: http://space.1337arts.com/

Soo cool!

Quote from 2d-chris

I'll take chill mountain any day

I was rather uninterested in this tile until I saw this gameplay footage this morning:

Looks fantastic indeed. All the time put into this paid off in the end

I got the remake on the weekend deal and I gotta say that I'm so disappointed. The voice work is kickass and adds a lot to the experience but the backgrounds are so sloppy and bad. The original game looks much better color wise imo.

Hello guys. I set up a Twitter account to post links related to Level Design and Level art. I was originally going to post in portuguese only but I'll be tweeting in english from now on.

http://twitter.com/LevelDesign

If you guys know any other twitters about level design or env art please post them in this thread!