Posts by KungFuSquirrel

  • low poly Bank of China building

    Remember, this is all practice. I'm starting off low poly so I can get a solid base set of skills and build from there while making sure I'm doing it right. Next up is Empire State and Chrysler, and then another set with the Sears Tower, TransAmerica Pyramid, and Library Tower (which, even at low poly, will probably be the most difficult to construct).

    OL: there is a slight indent on the bottom. Had to kinda guess, though, didn't find any good pictures of the base of the tower.

  • Know your role

    They're states, not continents.

    96%, 5 mi average error, 278 secs.

    I put delaware about 31 miles south and one of the other states my mouse jerked right when I clicked - I kid you not. Sad.

    Edit: ooh, gotta try advanced. That one stays difficult by only showing 1 state at a time.

    Europe Intermediate:

    34/44, 183 mi. average error (damned little ones killed me ), 77%, 370 sec

  • low poly Bank of China building

    So I'm working my way up the lines of modeling, with eventual goals to do some high poly work. In the meantime, I'm starting a series of low-poly skyscraper models as a chance to practice my basic techniques. Eventually I'll bump these up to high poly as well, but for now it's very simple stuff.

    First was the Bank of China tower in Hong Kong. It's a really simple shape and should be excellent exercise for both modeling and UV work. Model is 68 polygons, 135 tris. Built in Lightwave 7.5.

    The building:

    [Blocked Image: http://www.hong-kong-hotels-network.com/hong-kong-photographs/pictures-image-pages/central_bank_of_china.jpg]

    The model:

    [Blocked Image: http://www.kungfusquirrel.net/pics/bankofchina_1.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://www.kungfusquirrel.net/pics/bankofchina_3.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://www.kungfusquirrel.net/pics/bankofchina_4.jpg]

  • My first tablet stuff

    Quote from st0lve

    don't forget that you get an kickass mouse with it.no batteries, no optic crap and no ball. Just some kinda "fiber" stuff D:

    But it's weird to use because the motion is always registered relative to the tablet, not the mouse direction

    That still throws me off. But then, I haven't had much time to practice with it yet.

  • ashlee simpson needs to stop singing, appearing in pub etc

    Quote from DUFFY

    omg that was fucking hilarious, they had kelly clarkson, some country singer and ashlee simpson and they fucked up the sound SO badly. it couldnt be any more obvious.

    College football halftimes shouldn't be this lame choreographed shit. College bands are about as much a part of a gameday experience as the games themselves. And OU and USC have two of the top-tier programs in the country, no less. No wonder the crowd was pissed.

  • Doom3 can produce larger environments than Source?

    Quote from RD

    both shots look like something u could almost make in hl1.

    Yes, but it's also a knee-jerk reaction map, and for that it's quite good. All it would take, though, is a normal map on that rock texture, a second light (which would bring the grand total to 3, it looks like, perfectly reasonable), and the smoothing tweaks I mentioned earlier and it'd be some top-notch stuff.

    I really wish people would stop these knee-jerk maps. Yeah, people are sorely underestimating D3 (same thing happened with Quake, really, it'll take the licensees down the road to show what's really possible), but making a quick map in a big empty box doesn't solve anything. This is closer than most to making a point, but as mentioned in the above paragraph, still falls short of what it needs to really sell it.

    Quote

    Oh and KFS i still havent seen any happy maps for d3 yet, like a tropical island or a jungle or a nature map, and i dont wanna search so can you post some

    Of course you haven't - there aren't any yet. The content creation time and complexity has gone through the roof on this stuff, and on top of that there's enough people disappointed with Doom3 itself that what people are doing work for it are still trying to get their heads around it. Is it possible to make one? Hell yes! But the content work required is well beyond what most people in the amateur community have time and/or ability for. Give it time.

  • Doom3 can produce larger environments than Source?

    Quote from RD

    Doesnt look very good. I can tell its doom3, which isnt a compliment. I hate the darkness D:

    Oh, god forbid he maybe wanted to make it an evening-ish scene. It could be blindingly bright if he wanted it to be.

    That first shot looks really bad, but the second looks really good. If you were getting up close to that, you'd want to add some more poly detail and texture blending, but for background scenery or something it'd be gorgeous. UV coverage looks pretty good, even just a higher-res texture and scaling up the UVs themselves would help a lot.

    Doesn't even look like it's a normal mapped texture. I imagine this would be absolutely beautiful with a normal map and some improved smoothing.

  • Some Open Source Maps

    Hmm. I wonder if this might be the result of some of the files being created from a different version of Hammer? (i.e. 3.3 vs. 3.5 or something?)

    That's odd, though, if they all do that. I've had some problems with some of my maps not loading in 4, but some load fine. If you have a leftover copy of 3.5 or another older version, maybe try loading them there, saving out, and loading again in 4.0?

    I'm at a loss otherwise.

  • Some Open Source Maps

    Ok, so I guess this isn't really "finished" per se... heh... but over Christmas I packaged up some of my older unfinished works and released them for the greater good of the community, either for HL or Source. Someone might as well get use of them.

    Pack includes:

    co_sepulcher

    dm_flatshade

    dm_horizon

    dm_lemmings

    dmc_fac16

    ns_aelin

    op4ctf_lastword

    op4ctf_rep6

    op4pow_terminal

    rc_glare

    tfc_tortuosity

    Sample shots:

    http://www.kungfusquirrel.net/images/sc ... e1_big.jpg

    http://www.kungfusquirrel.net/images/sc ... e2_big.jpg

    http://www.kungfusquirrel.net/images/sc ... e3_big.jpg

    There's a lot of missing textures, but I did put in what I could... some are more finished than others, and some are just little doodles, but you never know what might be of use to someone.

    You can grab the pack here: http://www.kungfusquirrel.net/projects.php?i=28

  • killzone

    My wife gave it to me for christmas along with a brand new PS2 (finally!), Katamari Damacy, and Ratchet 2.

    I haven't played it yet, sadly, but I get the impression it's mostly killed by hype - half-decent game trying to live up to the mark of "Halo-Killer" bestowed upon it pre-release. Wasn't one that I was super eager to buy, but I definitely wanted to check it out to at least take some notes on it

    Hopefully will have a chance to play it tomorrow, maybe. Will weigh in again then

  • The role of the level-designer

    Quote from DD

    You can do this in hammer, unreal and many other games. I was doing this with hl1 mapping in the past, but after repeated experience I learned I was just producing lower quality/less optimized models by doing so. I still did/would export bsp from the editor just to get scale correct, but I learned to never use the bsp as a base for a model.

    That's why I comment on how nice it is in Doom3. Exporting retains texturing information and you can merge all the tris to the original quad faces with a single key press. And if you're just doing a straight conversion to a model prop, you don't even need to turn it back to quads anyway. With patch meshes exported out, there are no back faces, and if you build with a base texture or caulk before texturing it, you can select and delete all faces with that material, giving you a nice clean model in seconds. And once you save it, it's ready to go in the editor/game - no compiling, exporting, or anything else. You can go back and forth between LW (or any package that supports .lwo or .ase) and the editor, typing 'reloadmodels' in the editor console to have instant tweaks and adjustments.

    This isn't something used for general modeling - that's still up to the art team to concept, do the high/low poly, paint job, etc. etc. But if I need a room that's blown to hell, pillars bent out of shape, or whatever else, I can export any geometry I need (entire rooms if need be), models included, and start cutting, bending, twisting, and doing whatever is needed. It's no revolutionary system, but in efficiency and usefulness it's a step ahead of the rest, and definitely bridging the gap between traditional level construction and all model construction. Combined with the strength of patch meshes, this gives a ton of power to a designer with even a slight functional knowledge of LW.

    I guess to half re-iterate and half re-explain what I'm trying to say, general gameplay design is no walk in the park - layouts, combat/gameplay, events, etc. all do take time to get right, but with art content taking longer and longer in next-gen engines, levels included, the more a designer can do and the more flexibility is found in the editor, the quicker content can get out the door.

    By being able to quickly and efficiently build pipes, wires, railings, curved geometry, torn up panels, and whatever other details are needed quickly and efficiently in an editor, I'm saving an artist time that would have to be spent on a very tedious task that is taking precious time away from other more important tasks.

    (edit: and if you're not using any patch meshes to make an in-editor water tower in D3, you are a fool, no ifs ands or buts about it. )