Posts by Hourences

You dont need those small lights, they are useless

They are not the way to go

I think most people in this thread arent really understanding vertex light. Theres nothing weird with the lighting in UT, its just vtx light and not lightmapped like you are used to. Building your meshes with vtx light in mind, which would mean tesselating it more, can fix most lighting probs.

Itll never be as awesome as per pixel realtime or even lightmapping but hey, itll look decent.

my tutorial

http://www.planetunreal.com/phalanx/tut ... vertex.htm

You also have a couple of smoothing group probs I think. Aware of that or intentional or still unfixed ?

The map itself looks nice and the custom content is good, if you manage to fix all probs up and keep on working on it you might get a very nice result.

You are going to place more lights/lamps than just the sunlight right ?

More blue backlighting btw.

Missing alpha layers or heightmaps, you saved them outside MyLevel

Or

Missing terraintextures

Didnt you got a warning when you opened it ? Check the log

Check all other settings

Try to paint parts again

Bringhs me to the questions, why do you want to unwrap it in the first place ?

Planar map it if its for clouds

If you want horizon stuff on use another mesh ring in front of it and cylinder map it

Or simply use a cube

Or use multiple seperate placed sheets in front of all that

Theres little point in trying to stick the entire skybox in 1 sphere, I think youre trying that

I used mental ray a lot too and I also made a room with a chair and table in once. Took MR 36 hours or so to render it. Max default scanline can barely even render a high res room in 10-20 mins.

From the moment its high res and has lots of special stuff it just takes dozens of hours, no matter what render you use

Maxwell is real good and really simple to use, unlike MR which workflow often is quite slow or complex, if you look at the maxwell site you can see what awesome results the thing can give

Mental Ray was a 3rd party renderer too btw

I dont really care for production, its pure for fun and time can be bought in a production. Buy some renderfarms and there you go, 10 times faster. My skill is a bigger prob. It takes me far more time to get the right settings for everything than someone experience, cant buy that

Id rather see all the render stuff go faster too and have more preview options, because things like how your material will really look often isnt previewable but I learned to live with it for now

The 64 hours didnt bother me any more at the end, it was just my pc at work anyway so didnt had to care how long it was working on it, just the initial setting up the settings is time consuming

I did a lot of 400 res noisy test renders but even those take 2-3 hours

and even then, some details and things like materials/shaders, noise level and things like that you just cant see on such a low res render. You just got to do some high res ones every now and then to be able to see those things too

Thanks for the comments

The 64 hour was self configured, maxwell is a special render that renders everything at once and then sharpens it with every new render pass. you can set the maximum ammount of render time yourself.

I had to take 64 hours because I let my pc at work render it and a weekend only takes 64 hours so...

I needed so much time because i got 2 huge windows and the glass material generates lots of noise in Maxwell, so I had to increase render time to try and get rid of the noise

Dark : Where do you see a weird swirl ?

And if you forgot something youre screwed

I did junk renders worth 100 hours I think, test ones and several full weekend "should-be-final-render-but-ended-up-as-crap" renders

It took me 3 months or so, also because I could only render in the weekends I always had to wait a week before I could do the next camera angle

Not really game stuff but what the hell

click teh pic link :

http://users.pandora.be/Hourences/kitchencollage.jpg

Rendering a kitchen. Pure for fun, took me quite a while.

Im practicing rendering techniques and realistic scenarios. Huge difference with level design. Much harder too but Im trying..

I wanted it to be semi real. Had to be possible to create in real life yet feel artistic

Still looks a bit fake tho, Id rather have it more photorealistic but just couldnt get it that far. Damn hard.

Mostly own textures altho there are some modified 3dtotal textures in it too

Own style and concept

Own models

3DSMax

Maxwell Rendering

64 hour rendering per pic

No about page or resume or so ?

Dont know what youre planning on doing with the pics but you should do something with them

When you open them they simply open in a new white IE window, doesnt present nice + pics are rather small + a lot of pics are dark, a dark cave/building/etc, whatever. Dark things dont work out well on white backgrounds, cant see anything anymore

Also wanted to say a blog forum, developers blogs

I agree with klein that you want to attract people from not just HL, reviews prolly wont help for that

I run a review site, most reviewers give up after 2-3 weeks because its so much work

You could hold a couple of those forum discussions about whatever topic you want, like the modding scene topic a while ago, and after a week turn it in to a nice article and post it. Presents nicer, and not much work because the discussion was there anyway

Or interviews...

Articles itself are always great too

Whatever you do, you should do some marketing. If you place a new article/whatever email some big sites and tell them so you can get a newsost -> get peoples attention, now no one knows this place..

What you basically want if you add a feature is that it is self growing. A forum is an example of that, newspost is not. For news you need a lot of effort, for reviews too, etc..and there will always be a point where you dont have the time for that anymore so its a dead end, you wont keep it up forever. If it grows itself by user content you dont have to worry. It does the work for you.

Users give other users a reason to come by. And not admin content/work gives other users a reason to come by, a small site cant keep that up.

I never went on site. I always refused because of a personal situation back then + it wasnt permanent anyway due to visa problems so I didnt bother. Although it would have surely been a nice experience if I would have went tho.

I now work for a smaller company and its the best place I worked for so far. Much more freedom and relaxing atmosphere

It all pretty much depends on your personal skill and experience and where you work.

If you go work for some big coorporation you will often experience a less family like atmosphere where as smaller companies often have a lot of that atmosphere

I personally dont like big coorperate companies for that reason and because its too strict. Too many rules and restrictions.

In bigger companies you are also quicker restricted to just your job. Like drawing tex all day long where as in smaller companies you will likely need to freelance a lot more. Doing thing A today and B tomorow. I also like that. Id like to be in control of a lot, not just 1 element.

So depends where you end up mainly but it also has a lot to do with your position. If you get better and gain more experience you can have a better position and thus more to say and thus also more artistic freedom. Not someone whos telling you what to do all the time but more freedom of deciding that for your own.

When you just start with work you prolly wont have that and it might be more boring work but later on itll be a lot more fun, due to more creative freedom

I do a lot of stuff on my own with my own ideas

crunch sucks and might be tough, you almost nnever have enough time so its always battling time

Sky is a little simple + both sky and fog are so boring gray

The fences appear to stay black and its rather strange to see it burn like that

sand texture looks a bit weird from the pics

add a moon and live up the skybox, blue, moon will make you have a direct sky lightsource so not everything looks ambient lit

add blue from the sky, some color and more light

Add more typical things to create the horror feel, dont rely too much on the fog or darkness

extra horror ambience could come from birds circling around for example

UE2 is, 3 is alot more already afaik, certainly if you want some goodies

What was the story behind gunman chronicles ?

The mod team of alien swarm and thievery in UT are making a commercial version of their mod now without any help of epic, will be on the HL2 engine even

Several mods got picked up...Tactical Ops is one of the mods I think of then, Infiltration or that other similar mod, forgot name is another one.

Valve is the only company that picks up mods and buys them over, its not the regular way of happening, look outside your community

Lots of money can be made by contests and selling but if it becomes someones main focus...

Going out and do stuff is fun too, but not everything there is. Making your own stuff is fun too altho that might be different for you since youre a tex artist. But its much funner to make stuff if youre not bound to some design document or specific style. Artistic freedom..

And most of the time its the community where you learned a lot, where you met the right people, where you gained experience and skill, etc..leaving doesnt help the community, could give something back like help or advice or whatever you want.

And I got a bussy real life too, so ? I just got to make stuff sometimes, else I get frustrated and nuts.

And it helps myself too anyway, the more work I got and the more publicity it brings the more chance I have on meeting some of the right people or work contracts. Its not useless.

heh, Im aware of the fact there are a number of people that have exclusivity contracts but not all of them..If I personally were given such contract I would really have to think about it and try to discuss it but I can understand that a lot of people cant do that and are happy they can get hired at that company. So thats cool.

Its just those other people...

Spend years in the community doing stuff for it, they learned you alot and without them you might not have had the job and then they just forget them..Kinda awkward to me.

And its not just about not making levels or mods anymore but they could just as well stick around, like youre doing. And discuss stuff or help some people with questions out but pretty much all of them often completely disappear, ignoring the community that helped them got so far.

For me its a hobby, when I get home from work I already mapped the whole day but I still go on, or do other community stuff or whatever. But gotto do something. I enjoy arranging and adminning things and making my own maps and projects where not 40 people command me what to do or where I dont have to follow some design document..funner.

Just to clarify I got nothing against those few really serious mods as long as they stay reasonable but I do against all those "first time" noob mods who think its the way to go to give out NDA's, contracts, job postings, etc....

They ruin the atmosphere imo

And also the people who are only in it to get a job and who then abandon their product and disappear when they're hired..you cant say they did it (partially) for fun in such case..

And Im not from the community ?

If they dont care about that then how do you explain they still all pretend more pro in the last few years ? And then Im not talking about Half life community only. Only valve buys up that much, in other communties it doesnt happen then how come they start to act more wannabe pro too.

THey think they got to be pro, they think it helps their mod, and helps them look better. And if it looks better companies might hire people of it.

Last week a good looking mod announced they quit because 11 or so members of their team were recently hired by companies. It happens regulary apperantly that companies actually mail the mod team or members of it themself.

Also last week I was emailed by a mod leader wgo wanted to check my avaiability as a contractor because he was neogotiating with a publisher to go commercial with his mod.

They all want to follow that, what they forgot is that the quality is more important than their marketing, and that the fun should stay. When people start a mod nowadays they first frigging design their site and then make their mod. Get real.

Another point I dont get, why they quit their mod. They almost were out of beta, they worked months on it and then they just frigging quit because they got a job. You dont quit your project like that damnit. Finish it.

It really comes across as "we only did this to get a job" and not for fun.

Half life community has that the hardest of all i think but other communities do experience the same last few years. Unreal does anyway. Also its not just about being bought by the creator of the game but a lot of those modders think a 3rd party publisher might buy them or even more common, they try to do as pro as possible because then some company will take notice and hire some of their members..

Modding became a stepping stone to a carreer rather than fun hobby projects......