Posts by ReNo

Nah; people seem to misinterpret what cubemaps are actually for a whole lot and lighting is one area people seem to think they influence. Cubemaps are effectively a bunch of screenshots of your level, taken from the location of the env_cubemap, that when put together form a cube (just like a sky map in HL2). These screenshots are then used to help provide more realistic reflections, refractions, and other effects on the materials that use them.

The reason the lighting looks bad (particularly so in the second two shots) is because of a lack of shadows and contrast. It's actually almost like there are no shadows at all, though that is probably because the angle of the shots and the angle of the light_environment aren't too complimentary. Maybe get some alternate light sources in there to help provide contrast, play with the light_environment angle to get nicer shadow placement, and tweak its brightness/colour to make things more interesting

You done any programming before? I doubt it is a prerequisite (it wasn't for my course) but you should be aware of what you are getting into if you go for it. I'm now stuck in a course (well, might as well finish since I'm in my final year) teaching me stuff I'm not good at, don't care about, and don't ever plan on following up as a career. Only reason I picked it was because it seemed the most relevant thing to choose at the time. If only I'd been a better artist and coulda got onto the Computer Arts course

Best of luck whatever you choose to do man. I don't really know the difference between your vocational schools and high schools, but it sounds like a shitty situation regardless.

The actual architecture looks ok, but the lighting is really rather horrible and bland. Work on that and it will be looking good. First shot is the best - the building in it looks far more believable than the others. For me the blue walls of the warehouse look awkward against the tall concrete base structure in the other shots.

Great to see some new work from you CJ. I'm lovin' the little spotlights on the sides of the centre desk - they really set the scene off for me for some reason

Looks a whole lot better than Aeon Flux to me, which I really wasn't impressed by at all. This appears to have far more stylised action. I don't think Milla quite scores the same as Charlize on the hotness scale however

Totally - they don't suck, some people just don't seem to have figured out how to play them yet.

Screenshots look awesome, but I learnt a long time ago not to place too much faith in screenshots and "gameplay" trailers.I'm witholding judgement, but it's certainly now on my radar

Nice one mate, best of luck with it all

I'm not impressed, which is a shame as I was hoping for good things from this. I find it so hard to get excited about such generic looking combat - it does nothing to match the beautiful and action packed gunfights found in FEAR, or crazy over the top acrobatic fighting of Unreal Championship 2. It just looks like HL2, in a different universe, with most of the good stuff stripped out. And for the love of god let the SINGLE ENEMY VOICE be just placeholder, I couldn't take that shit from every bad guy I come across. I don't think they used much HL2 content but the stuff they did use stuck out like a sore thumb - most notably the item crate on the right hand side of a sewer type tunnel about half way through Some nice looking levels but some crap stuff in there too - the car looked utter balls to be honest, even with it's "openable bits", and what is with the weapon smacking animations looking so utterly poor?

Fair enough, the game isn't out yet and improvements can be made, but I didn't think it was too long before the first chapter hit?

Yeah yeah, Chuck the Fuck fo' sho

I think the lightmap grids have to line up between the faces in a smoothing group, and even then I don't think they always work. I used them a fair bit when I was working on Echo and they worked very nicely at times, but as has been said they are far from 100% reliable.

Happy new year guys, hope you all have a good one

First shot reminds me of a certain room in Resident Evil 4, in a good way (is there any OTHER way to be reminded of that game though?!). In general though, while the map certainly looks solid enough, it just doesn't jump out or appeal to me much due to being so generic in theme. The theme would have been fine for HL1 or most other engines, but in HL2 I'm just so well accustomed to prison levels that it looses some of its appeal. The fact you use custom textures is almost all but negated due to the similarity of the custom textures to the standard ones. I also think some of your brushwork could use a little more subtelty to it - the metal frame inside the arch in the last screenshot for example looks too bulky and "HL1" style for example.

All in all it looks like a good map, but I'd suggest going for a less cliched theme for the engine next time around. Prisons maps in HL2 are like warehouse/military camp maps in HL1 - very hard to make stand out from the crowd.

Haha, you are the fucking MAN insta I love it!

BTW, as a newbie modeller, I curious if it is ok to have so many unlinked pieces in the model? You have a lot of vertices that are just sitting on other polys - is that generally accepted practice? I thought it might fudge up some lighting and during animation it might cause some vertices slightly moving off the face they sit on, causing visual glitches.

Very lovely to look at and a nice piece of design, but after reading that article that was linked to here on making practical portfolio sites, this breaks just about every rule in the book Really needs larger content areas and a much larger font - I do use an overly large resolution for my monitor, but I've never really had any trouble reading anything on it until now. Cool work though man

Not a chance for that deadline - I've a piece of uni coursework to do, my honours project to be working on, and I'm away on holiday for a week on January 7th. I'm unlikely to be entering anyway but I think others would benefit from a later deadline. End of February or something seems more reasonable. I think it's a cool idea though

Rendering two different 50 poly props is, I'd wager, more expensive than a single 100 poly prop, as chances are you'll be switching materials and that has an overhead. I'm not saying you should spend more polys on your bin or anything, just thought I'd throw in my opinion Your cardboard boxes make me moist btw ferret

I was totally spoilt this year, probably due to the fact my sister is away from home and so wasn't really in the usual present recieving bracket. Anyhow, I got a complete surprise in the form of a lovely new snowboard; a 156 Plamer Factor for those in the know...

[Blocked Image: http://www.boardshop.ru/2005/grafika/palmer/factor.jpg]

A season or two old I think but it must be said, I love it. I used to ride a 151 Forum DS which had a similarly playful flex to it and was also distinctively orange and black, so this is something both new and nostalgic which works wonders for me Also got a pair of new Electric snowboarding goggles - first DECENT pair of goggles I've ever had which is a nice change - lovely new Logitech PC peripherals in the form of the G15 keyboard and MX1000 mouse, NFS: Most Wanted on the Xbox, the Infernal Affairs trilogy on DVD, and a few other bits and bobs. Very generous relatives this year, and I couldn't afford to return the favour in anywhere near as sizeable style. Still, had a nice day chilling with both family and friends, and couldn't ask for anything more

Oh and that Vivi doll is awesome - wonderful gift that

Scotland looking rocks I didn't even realise that Scotland had rocks worth boasting about

Very nice pictures anyway, and as has been said, you have a beautiful house. I like the way the water just fades into white in that uber bright Scottish rocks photo

Half of the benefit of steam is that they can roll out small updates frequently and therefore not make people have to sit and wait for big 100mb downloads like for certain other games. I don't care if there is a 10mb update I have to download every week or whatever, I just throw steam open whenever I'm on my computer to let it do its shit when I don't need my bandwidth for other things.

I agree that it is ridiculous the amount of times they screw over the SDK with updates however. Every single one seems to destroy something about it. The beta version didn't bother me whatsoever as fact is, it is a beta, but mandatory updates coming along and screwing things up is just annoying. Not that I have opened hammer in months or anything, but I can appreciate why others are annoyed

Totally reminds me of a curvy version of an old Paroxysm map I was making due to the somewhat modular sections you are building and the rather grid-esque interlocking corridors. Very cool, I like it a lot The floor texture should be shrunk down though - the bumps in that metal are far larger than they should be.