Posts by Hourences

Building levels in mind with logic first and then composition and other artistic stuff will make you fail. Green plants may not be logic but they help the graphics and thats more important than logic. At the end absolutely nothing is logic. Who the hell builds a frigging factory between 2 rockwalls in a giant canyon to start with ? Who cares, it has to look great first, ask questions later

The plants were needed because theres a lot of red in the map, and red needs a complimentary color so I needed some green. Red => green.

Pics dont really work for the map, theres a lot of stuff moving and animated and interactive. I wanted to prove that multiplay level design is more than about fragging in a 3d space, or even a building. Its about walking around and doing stuff (like shooting) in a world. A living world and not static or limitted to just the playing ground in this case

Depth. Could also do it trough extensive atmosphere or strong storytelling stuff for example.

ECE is better, cause it has more content

Tho all of the extra content is also freely downloable, only that takes you more work

A little too yellow and the buildings are too low poly and flat, more 3d detail, certainly at the ground level you cant have 2d windows anymore

And all windows are dark, I could imagine some people who live there are home, some lights shining behind windows might help. Make it dynamic and a living place. Its static atm

You arent really supposed to do that in Max or Maya, engines most of the times have specialized tools or settings for it that can help you

Scatter or some type of particle effect would be only option i see in max

For some models youre better off backing seperate lightmaps instead of baking those lightmaps on top of the (diffuse) texture. That increases memory load + more blurry textures if the mesh doesnt use a unique skin

That wont help because the rendered skin will still use the auto unwrapped lay out then

It doesnt unwrap if i select use excisting channel. Im using max 7.

Maybe try to collapse the model, or make a cube and attach it to the cube-> delete cube trough edit poly:element

Tricks max.

Try in a new scene ? If it works there..

Snow was more original

You need more than 1 wood texture and the alignment of the wood is wrong in lot of spots, rotate it and stuff

stairs fit well but they might indeed take up a lot of bsp poly, id just make a mesh stair therefor, thats where its for anyway.

your snow is as said everywhere, there should be holes in the snow where theres no snow, specially inside. you could do that by making patches of sheets/planes that fit it and are layed on top for example

the snow is also very flat and feels too oldskool for a modern game, 3d snow meshes or so might work along with other ice theme things such as ice piggles, frozen water surfaces, etc

i like the red texture, makes it more styled but not like it is used here, needs a little more definement but the red itself is ok for me. And as said the light is simple atm.

But besides that the theme is more original for HL2 so thats cool

Skybox has too much yellow and crap btw, doesnt feel cold.

lightmapping

Vertex colouring

etc

It depends on the engine youre working with, what it supports and what not

I found it most usefull for cave and rock meshes. Doesnt work for architecture imo

I messed with it before at work, its cool but not awesome. Has some probs and sometimes a bit buggy

When you export to obj you have to disable certain options like compress numbers or whatever it was in export options or else the prog will crash upon import

Also it is possible to manually set the spots where there will be seams Peri, you have to break the vertices at that spot and weld them back later on when its imported in Max again

Cant you add a waterfall or so, something special. its just some rocks with trees in between and a basic building at the moment

I could think of various work arounds. You could go for flat waves, just a sheet on top of the water with an animated texture of waves and foam sliding by all the time

Or you could make a moving ^ shaped brush that loops itself and comes sliding by all the time

The brush/mesh would fade out on both sides so you dont sees the edge where the end of the brush meets the water surface

Anything goes

You could also have a big battle raging in the distance. So you can see the outline silhoutes of ships in the distance, black smoke above them and light flashes and distant rumbling all the time. This ship would be on its way to that battlefield then

That way you create a specific atmosphere and emotion of fear of the things that are to come. From the bright happy sun shine on 1 side to the dark hell of war.

Dont make a place with a thing in. Make a situation with specific emotions and atmospheric crap, not a dead thing if possible within time constraints and stuff.

Dunno how far you are and stuff but :

Ocean looks more like the local pool than an ocean, cant you add waves and "schuim" ? A second layer on top of the water with wave movement and textures might help already

And zeemeeuwe flying over

The stuff is wet, make materials with spec shaders that feel more wet, could also add waterpuddles and other crap at some spots. Its just a flat texture at the moment.

The ship feels empty like said and feels very static, let it live. Particles on the front for the splashing water + a 3rd layer on the water with a V shape like what you get when a ship slides trough the water

Same on the back, particles and those lines in the water.

Could also have some aircraft flying over every now and then. Living world, you need moving shit all over the place, not a static thing.

Nice, then I must have seen your front door a hundred times already

Come to Hoogstraten a time man

I dont go a lot to antwerp anymore but when I used to go to school there and stuff it was always the 60 yeah

Peri, youre from brecht ? Youre right next to me man

Hoogstraten

Belgium

Great article, gonna linkt to it in my next newspost on my site

I dont find it very noob unfriendly or harsh here and standards arent -that- high either but its prolly just perception some people have and once they got that...I got the same with another site Im on

You should do something that puts the name out there so people get to know the site and have a reason to go to it. Do something that gives you newsposts somewhere else, do interviews, articles, tuts, anything that can give you that

Giving people a place to upload their map to, mirror it, always works well altho you prolly dont have the bandwidth for that

Or you could make something like http://www.mapraider.com/ where you can post maps but you have to take care of your own download location. People can comment, make a map profile etc..

And you want to cover multiple communities and not just HL or so imo

Put the focus on showing things and not on asking questions all the time.

Maya looks real simple on the surface but once you use it more itll get really complicated, too complicated for too simple things sometimes, in Max its the other way round. Complicated first but to the point afterwards.

Max 6 and specially 7 have obj support by default. Export your file as OBJ in max and import that in Maya, obj is for Maya for what 3ds is for Max

If you have an old Max google around for an OBJ plugin, theres lots of those around to download

Payment is higher than a normal salary you would get when you are really employed by them. Likely you are going to have to pay taxes yourself + other stuff, depends on country and situation tho

Make sure they pay regulary and not 1 payment after 6 months.

Ask how indepedent they expect you to be, like they might even ask you to get your own pc, that happens altho I would get afraid if they ask that