Posts by AdamBrome

  • The Weapon Shop

    Long time no post. Soooooo.. an update! I've been working on this ever since my last post but for a fraction of the time I normally would a home project. The reason being my home computer is on the fritz. I can barely have Max and PS open at the same time - and damn my doesn't stop altogether when I render. Aaargh. Rather than simply upgrade its parts I'm going to be getting a brand new beast. So, until I pick up a new machine I'll get some work done on this at work and work on some lighting tests.

    The next assets in line that I'd like to do are the weapons and armour and I'm going to use a cube map for their reflections. I'll be using these lighting tests to get a feel for the final cubemap pass and an idea as to what the reflections could look like.

    [Blocked Image: http://www.adambromell.com/crap/weaponshop_lighttest01.jpg]

    A few quick notes:

    -The dust is a (shitty) paintover and looks more muddy than dusty :\

    -Athe extension of the frame that goes out to the right is also a paint over

    -Wanted to see how it'd look with some dust being kicked up around the base and entrance of the shop

    -I will probably go with more close-up shots than far away so don't consider this angle to be the final angle or the final composition.

    What I'd change if I went with this setup:

    -tone the dust down so it doesn't hide the pot assets like it is there in the foreground

    -change it to something more like dust blowing in wind, rather than looking like soft mud which was obviously over-layed atop of the image

  • Factory Rooms

    I've worked with source now, professionally, for about a year. I'm all too aware of its FOV issues. However, I still think your scale is off. Certain objects, when compared to others, make the scale all over the place. I know you're finished with this piece so theres no sense in continuing to explain it - just keep an eye out for in in the future. Again - good work

  • Factory Rooms

    Hey, this piece damn near solid!

    I've a few comments..

    First off the texturing is nice, but very noisy. It looks as though everything shared the same detail texture. I'm sure you didn't use a detail texture, but everything looks as though there is.

    Secondly, and probably more important than texture noise, is scale. Your scene has scale levels that are larger or smaller in some areas than in others. The paint can, for example, looks to be about the size of a keg. Same with the oil/gas container - they're huge. But then you look at the stool or the shelf and they're small.. almost scaled down in height but left 1:1 in width and length (re: scaled lower along the 'up' axis). I think another major factor in the scale looking off is the size of the windows compared to the rest of the room.

    Other than that this piece is really tight. Perhaps some smaller markings on the ground - like oil drops/gum/wrappers or something.

    Keep it up,

    -Adam

  • How to Craft a Great Multiplayer Experience

    Heya...

    I wrote a white paper for Threewave about 6 months and it was just recently published @ GameDaily.com's business section. I've reposted it at my website (with permission) and figured I'd share it with you guys.

    You can check it out here.

    I wrote about 75% of the document and did the majority of its research. Threewave specializes in multi-player design & content and wanted to have our ideologies of a great experience written down. I researched the experiences for about a week and spoke with a number of people from different studios to get their thoughts on multiplayer as well. The article is a culmination of all ideas, thoughts, and theory on what makes for a great multiplayer experience.

    Enjoy!

  • The Weapon Shop

    lee: Thanks man

    seir: woo, danke

    FrieChamp: I believe it was for Gauntlet? Yah I can't wait to get down and dirty with the textures. (Get it??)

    bitmap: I'll be mudding the damage details - pieces of wall missing, cracks, shaved surfaces, etc. etc. This is the 'render mesh'.. there'll be a separate one for the sub-d version. The mudded stuff will just be done on planes.

    Dark: Thanks Bunt

  • The Weapon Shop

    Creative title, I know.

    Anyway lets get to the goods, shall we?

    It was this about 4 days ago...

    [Blocked Image: http://www.adambromell.com/crap/weaponshop_WIP01.jpg]

    And it's this as of last night...

    [Blocked Image: http://www.adambromell.com/crap/weaponshop_WIP02.jpg]

    Still on the burner:


    • more interior/roof top props
      stretch the buildings width slightly, its a bit square compared to the concept
      unwrap
      make sweet sub-d love to the buildings base
      then bend it over the couch and hump it without a rubber in Mudbox
      texture
      render
      post

    Voila!

  • Officechair.

    Quote from Spellbinder

    Rofl no i didnt just rezised it, i did it all over again. And i probably will do it more times. The wheels i didnt even noticed, but the story goes as followed, i did them first and to get them out of the way (as it said in the tut) i resize them and moved them. What i shoyuld have done was to isolate them instead like i did with other stuff later into the tut.

    Save yourself some time and just scale those mofos!

    What've you learned from the tutorial?

  • Officechair.

    Learning the tools is fine and all, but this forum being heavily games focused I critiqued it in such a way.

    It looks like you've got a good knowledge of the holy poly work flow. This type of model would be used for some beauty renders (magazine ads, etc.) or to send in to a 3d sculpting program (mudbox/zbrush). But even it seems ridiculously high for an 'end game boss' (re: klein!)

    Just sayin'. =P

    Keep it up dude, I liked the final shot. The render w/ a background helped bring a lot of the chair out. It looks like you merely scaled the size of the legs/wheel down - is that correct? By doing this you've thrown the scale of things off now with the wheels and legs being too small. The radius of the base is great, just gotta make those legs and wheels larger/thicker.

  • Officechair.

    Do you have the references for that chair available? I am asking because the bottom of the chair, the 5 legs and wheels, seems unusually large compared to the base of the chair.

    I'll also point out that you've taken too much liberty in the triangle count on this chair to even be suitable for a video game. I know you followed a tutorial, but this is still a crazy triangle count for something as insignificant as an office chair. Also, if you did this piece to learn the tools why bother posting? Right? =P

    I suggest you don't render against a black background in the future, it makes it too easy to lose information about the object(s) when their shadows blend in easily with the background. A medium grey, or a colour/image work best.

    Keep it up.

  • The Underworld, a collaboration

    Well as of yesterday I was officially finished with this scene. I spent today fixing minor bugs and putting the images together. As I wait for James (Gwot) to finish the character I'd like to move on to another project so I'll show the beauty render as it shows the final scene.

    Beauty shot:

    [Blocked Image: http://brome.toogeek.com/stuff/models/theunderworld_1b.jpg]

    LARGER VERSION!

    Overall scene (no lights w/ minimal bump info):

    [Blocked Image: http://brome.toogeek.com/stuff/models/theunderworld_2.jpg]

    Wires:

    [Blocked Image: http://brome.toogeek.com/stuff/models/theunderworld_3.jpg]

    There's more to the scene than whats in these shots but I'll save that for when the character is done and do one big final update. (For lack of a better term these shots show the 'gist' of the scene.)

    I had a ton of fun working on this - its been my favourite thing to texture in a long time. I learned a lot while working on this and will bring that knowledge onto everything I do in the future.

    Thanks everyone!

  • Map Prop_static Problem

    Make sure the origins for the pieces are in the MIDDLE of the model. If the origin is at the bottom of the model and intersects through brush work the origin won't be getting any light information and thus appear to be full-bright (re: glowing).

    How large is the railing model? If its taking up a lot of reaestate in the map I suggest dividing it up into smaller modular pieces. Check the models bounding box in hammer. And make sure the models have a collision mesh - do NOT use a clipping brush for that sort of thing as it will weild incorrect collision data when objcets are toss towards the railing, etc.

  • de_wanda by warby ... final release !

    Warby, sorry for the late response but I finally had a few minutes at work to load this up.

    Threewave's been working with the Source engine for the past year so I figured I'd show it to the team and get their thought.

    Overall, its really pretty. And very very impressive for just 1 dude to have worked on - even if it did take you awhile. Here are some thoughts I collected from about 6 different people here (artists and level designers).

    -The scale is mish mashed throughout. Your windows on the buildings are huge. The ladders are huge and in some spots your bricks are the size of a car - even if they are on the outside of the playing area.

    -Your lighting is overbright and not using the HDR wisely. There should be some nice contrast areas of light/dark throughout. You've got some dark spots but some more areas with this treatment would be ideal.

    -Valve lights assets with environment map masks weird when in the dark. Your envmap saturation and contrast should be turned down (in the .VMT) on certain objects to correct thing. The view finders specifically come to mind.

    -The textures used for your skyportal meshes look really cartoony when compared to the rest of your texture work. It's a contrast thats all too obvious, and ruins the effectiveness of the setup.

    -Water is a multiplayer killer for CS: S. Did you know this? There's things you can do to water to make it efficient for multiplayer gaming with Source. One of the things I know to help is making the water non-clear.

    -You're using a single model for a huge vertical aesthetic of a building and this causes major lighting issues. In one spot it works well, but in others it looks horrible as the model is lit lightly but the wall its against is dark. There's ways to work around this. Firstly, the engine vertex lights from the assets origin so having a large asset like that is extra prone to lighting failure. You could break the model up and piece it back together in Hammer - thus giving you multiple original and more accurate lighting.

    The other fix is to use 2 new vrad parameters that you'd add to hammers compile window in export mode. -staticproppolys and -staticproplighting. This will tell vrad to create lightmaps for all static props and essentially create self lighting assets.

    -Again, great job for one person.

    With all of this said - do you work somewhere?

  • A WIP.. and a hello

    Meotwister: Thanks!

    Sa74n: Great idea. I followed the integrity of the scene from the movie Underworld. From what I could see all the walls were intact and no holes were there revealling the outside of the warehouse. I've taken librities in adding new stuff and removing stuff from the scene already so adding a hole isn't out of the question. I'll think about it more once I'm render to start lighting and do renders. Thanks for the idea!

    I too like the sense of scale but the big doors on the right should be scaled down as to not confuse people :\

  • A WIP.. and a hello

    The door on the right would be a giant warehouse door. Generally large enough to fit an electronic pallet jack through holding a skid's worth of merchandise. Don't use it for scale, use the door at the back.

    The railing is broken off at the end.

    The walls on either side have 4 sets of remaining bumpers used when.. hmm, I just thought of something! Why would the bumpers be on the INSIDE? D'oh!!! I'll have to retexture those to something else now. ha!