Posts by hessi

  • Math makes pretty pictures (Mandelbrot Set)

    Quote from e-freak

    nice stuff - what semester of math study is this? and how complex is this to render? because i think of making sprites out of this dynamically for energy explosions like in crysisthought of a photoshop plugin already? with sliders for editable values?

    i know this figure from semester 2 in my math course. fractals/complex numbers (?) are the base of all this rendering clouds stuff we use in photoshop or in a mental ray fractal shader.

    the fun thing is, that you cant calculate a volume for this structure. its like 2,5 dimensional.

    anyway: good work. maybe i will throw it over to my math professor. he always likes to show practical applications to his "boring"(it was pretty interesting due to examples like this one) math

  • HL2 Cubemap Problem

    first at all: its not a bug or issue.

    74, you can work around this textureborder effect in a really pain in the ass method:

    1. compile your level and build cubemaps as you did before

    2. use bspzip to extract the genereated cubemaps

    3. convert all cubemaps to tga files and load them into photoshop

    4. arragne them like a cubemap would do

    5. blur al textureborders/average colors

    6. save all tga files again

    7. run vtex on all tga files

    8 re-bspzip the modified cubemaps

    as i told you: it would be a pain in the ass and is not applicable for HDR cubemaps and with a big amount of cubemaps it will take lots of time.

    maybe you just want to improve certain cubemaps that really screw the all over look.

    hope this could help a bit.

  • HDR Skybox Creation

    i will look up for a skybox i made and test the tool my self. i used to crop the pfm manually (which takes a bit time but before the last sdk update there was no splittool)

    i will post asap.

    edit: yap it crashes here too. what you can do:

    0. save your sky as MySky_all.pfm and maybe make a backup!

    1. make a selection in hdr shop from PX (0,512) to PX (511,1023)

    2. go to the menu: image -> crop

    3. go to the menu: save as -> pfm -> MySky_hdrft.pfm

    4. open up the pfm you saved in step 0.

    5. select the next part of the skybox and so on.

    you have to work EXACTLY on pixels. a tipp: at the bottom of hdr shop there is a text called PIXEL #NUMBER #NUMBER that shows you the actual pixel your cursor is on. while source needs 512² textures you have to pay really attention while selecting the parts of your sky. so i recommend you to not drag the corners. better you make a rough selection and fix all 4 border edges each for its self. so you can be sure it will align correctly (watching those pixel values at the bottom)

    here are pixel ranges:

    front: upper left (0,512) lower right (511, 1023)

    left: upper left (512,512) lower right (1023, 1023)

    back: upper left (1024,512) lower right (1535, 1023)

    right: upper left (1536,512) lower right (2048, 1023)

    up: upper left (1536,0) lower right (2048, 511)

    down: upper left (1536,1024) lower right (2048, 1535)

    i know it is a crappy workflow but valve did the same way before so you have to do it like they do ;( 23 skies is a load. so make sure your skies do not need any tweaking or you have to re-crop all over again

  • Bad day for Ubi Soft

    if you read my post again: i did not say that those games are crap. they are just the same or pretty much the same. i would call monkey island on of the best game series ever made, but in the same way i have to say that monkey island did not change that much. it got actually no differences in

    1 -> 2 except the icons

    2 -> 3 "high" res, speech

    3 -> 4 3D

    the rest is monkey island story. the game itself is pretty much the same. you always had those "sword battle" fakes. you always went to monkey island.

    if you ask me "did you enjoy playing them" i'd answer "yes"

    if you ask me "would you call it innovative" i'd answer "no"

    pretty simple.

  • Bad day for Ubi Soft

    Quote from Section_Ei8ht

    While it sucks, I can't wait for most of those games to come out. They sound badass (Splinter Cell 5!!!)

    actually i dont like sequels. it doesnt bring that much innovation to a game. i prefer games like loco roco that bring up some new gameplay features.

    okay i play dod:s which is a sequel to dod, but that's an exception.

    this splinter cell is like all those command and conquer, monkey island, need for speed sequel stuff. you get better graphics, more detailed models and textures, but the game does not change.

    a lot of people give a damn about that (especially those who are not envolved in gamedev)

    my opinion to tha tubisoft leak story: is it that surprising that ubisoft keeps on producing the 10th farcry, the 20th rainbow six and the 55th splinter cell? i dont think so. games to movies like LOST often dont reach the original quality.

    i don't want to say that those games are crap, but they are not that "important" to me.

    greetings

  • Mornstar maybe

    Quote from OrnateBaboon

    Just add a cubemap to the middle of the room, though make sure it is 16 units away from all brushwork. You won't need to assign any faces to see the effects. Go to the console, type "buildcubemaps", and that should work.

    and after building the cubemaps you should change to another level like de_dust and change back to your level to make sure your game will reload the complete bsp and resources.