Posts by Steppenwolf

  • Creating Curved Sloped Roads? [Help]

    The best way to create a nice road like this in Source is with an tiling overlay texture for the tarmac surface. I forgot how exactly to do it because its a couple years ago.

    But basicly what you do is to create the rough shape of the slopes with brushes/displacements. Then you place 3-4 of the overlays around a corner roughly following the shape of the slope. Then you go in the mode where you can move around the corner vertices of the overlays and weld them together (i believe you have to hold keyboard button while doing this). Then you get the effect of a nice organic road that follows the corner and even the texturing looks halfway alright.

    If Pericosolo looks in this thread he can explain it better. He made such a slope in one of his never released Insurgency maps.

    I know this is not exactly the question that you asked but if you do the road like this it automaticly gets less complicated to create some geometry for underneath because you dont have to worry about perfect texturing.

  • Post your favourite movie scenes ever!

    Saw Antichrist yesterday and it had some really great scenes:

    External Content www.youtube.com
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.

  • mitering corners - reduce visleafs? good for optimization?

    For vis its very simple to explain long compile times. The more vis leafs you have up goes the the compile time overproportional. So the difference between a quick compile time and a long compile time sometimes isnt even that big on paper. Just a question of proper optimizing.

    Also you have to stop to be so pretentious about it when your test basicly proofed my point. Bsp merging the faces? Take a very very close look at your own example picture.

  • mitering corners - reduce visleafs? good for optimization?

    In your example you have exactly 4 vis leafs more. Thats the number of extra faces non mittering causes. Now create some more of these rooms on different heights and not paralell to this one and see whats happening.

    The only surprising part is where vis cut the leafs. But not really because it always was kinda random. And it gets more random the more complex the geometry gets. Even with hints/skip its sometimes a pain in the ass to properly control it.

    edit:

    Also keep in mind that the extra time you spent with mittered walls you get easily back on the vis compile time.

    Whats true is that func_detailing plays the most important role in vis optimizing. From my experience a lot of level designers dont have the courage to do it properly but thats a different story and worth its own thread.

  • mitering corners - reduce visleafs? good for optimization?

    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:

    [Blocked Image: http://i36.tinypic.com/9k13js.jpg]

    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.

  • WIP in WIP, post your level screenshots!

    Quote from Carter

    Small Art test I've literally just finished and emailed off so I'd thought I'd post it up so ppl can tell me whats wrong with it was limited to 8 512's and 8000 tris although I only used around 4000

    If your budget was twice the polys you should have spent them. For example on the tires and the barrell. That background to the right also looks unnecessarely flat considering your poly budget.

  • Lighting System and tools of Diesel Engine

    Quote from Synthesizer

    I really miss the way you could place modular units in it. Building a level from a couple of assets took no time at all. Placing units in Unreal feels so awkward now.

    Yea i miss that a lot. Unreal is bad anyway but even in Source placing stuff feels like a chore now. Snap points are the fucking best. Even bsp brushes should have them. Such a waste of time to always have to move around and align stuff by yourself.

    Regarding the editor: If you ever took a look at Cryteks Sandbox you would find it quite similar. Infact when i got Crysis i didnt felt like getting into it because it felt too similar to what i did at work all day.

  • What have you purchased recently?

    Two architecture books:

    [Blocked Image: http://i33.tinypic.com/120mgsk.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://i33.tinypic.com/25i7qmg.jpg]

    The last one is especialy awesome. Every level designer and env artist should have one. It has almost 3.000 blueprints and architectural drawings for all kinds of buildings from all ages. It really goes into details with stuff like arches, gates, stairwells etc. Best references for more believable level design.