Posts by shawnolson

Last month I shared the winners of Wall Worm's Old School Level Design contest. The winners of that and future contests will forever be memorialized on a new website called the Angry Teapot Level Design Awards. Yesterday I shared a new post on WW about current Wall Worm Dev, Angry Teapot and some of the work going on at Black Mesa to bring Xen to life. It includes some talk by Chetan Jaggi who was one of the principal programmers to bring CSM to Black Mesa.

I also wanted to share with you all that the next contest is out with an even greater prize pool. First place will win $2K in commercial licenses of these software:

• Power Nurbs Pro
• GrowFX
• RichScene/RichDirt
• Lucid or Zookeeper
• Boomer Labs Voucher
• ATK from JokerMartini
• VFB+
• Miauu's Script Packs 1 & 2
• Black Mesa Steam Key
• Aperture Tag Steam Key
• All Commercial Wall Worm Plugins

Second and Third place also get several software licenses!

[Blocked Image: http://dev.wallworm.com/media/1/image/jpeg/original/171_angryteapot_smash_dealaunay_world.jpg]

Go to http://www.angryteapot.com for more info. Hope to see some of you join in on the fun!

Quote from FMPONE

On ‎5‎/‎11‎/‎2016 at 5:11 AM, FMPONE said: Been getting some great use out of Wall Worm already, can't wait to dive into this fully.

Are you able to talk about any of the work you're doing on Black Mesa? Would be interesting.

Thanks @FMPONE

In terms of the Black Mesa work, I'm not really allowed to talk about the details of my work for a while. But I can say that the majority of the updates that have gone into WW the last several months are largely Black Mesa-related updates that make WW work more seamlessly on broad teams or simply more efficiently (including a sizable update to WW/WW Pro just today). In fact, some of the new tools were commissioned specifically by BM needs and were graciously permitted to be released into the general distributions of WW for the benefit of the public. And I am sure that will continue.

Great comment @JorisCeoen ! As I've watched you progress over the years, I have always enjoyed your enthusiasm

I updated the OP with a new video for using the latest Hull Helper tools. Hopefully the video shows some of the ways to quickly build complex hulls with minimal fuss. If your Hull Helper UI doesn't match the video, just update WW.

Thanks guys. I hope it helps some people get started. There is a really exciting new feature coming to WW soon, too... but I'll not spill the beans quite yet.

Greetings Earthlings! FMPONE suggested I do an A-Z intro on Wall Worm for MapCore, and I thought it was an excellent idea. I never shy away from an opportunity to spread the joys of 3ds Max and Wall Worm.

Introduction

For those who do not know, Wall Worm has been a Source Engine pipeline toolset that I started back in 2010. I started it because I had just built my first level for Source with some custom models, and I had concluded that the process for getting props into Source was essentially a nightmare, especially for simple static props. Having more interest in level design than the technical aspects of models, I was frustrated with how much time went into getting models into Source. So I dove head first into MAXScript, and the Wall Worm Model Tools were soon born.

Fast-forward to 2016. Wall Worm has morphed from a model exporter into an entire pipeline for almost every aspect of building levels and games in Source. In the right hands, you can create entire worlds for Source directly inside 3ds Max without opening text editors and other applications. Using Wall Worm and Max, you can create materials, models and levels all in one place.

The driving principle behind Wall Worm is to make the process of creating assets for Source easier and more fun--I've always felt that my time should be focused on being creative rather than doing repetitive and mind-numbing tasks. Now that Source is getting older and newer engines are coming out with more user-friendly pipelines, it's going to be more and more of a shock for new designers who get sucked into Source because they want to make something for the great games still maintained on Source--and Wall Worm is your best friend when it comes to taking away the pain of making assets for Source.

Some quotes of people you probably know:

Quote

Quote "I used WW extensively when I worked on maps for Tactical Intervention. In fact, when I was making our highway driving map, WW saved me countless hours." Minh Le, Co-Creator of Counter-Strike

Quote

Quote "Just want to say thanks again for your work on the source tools, it's been so incredibly helpful I can't even begin to describe the hours you've saved me." Rick Underhill, Technical Art Director, DICE

Quote

Quote "Man how I wish I'd had these 5 years ago!" Robert Briscoe, Environmental Artist, Valve

Getting Started

Before you do anything else, you should set Max up to use the correct system scale, units and grid spacing.

1. Click Customize > Units Setup
2. Set the Display Unit Scale to Generic Units
3. Click the System Unit Setup and make sure that 1 Unit = 1 Inch
4. Click OK
5. Click OK
6. Right-Click the Snap Icon in the main toolbar
7. In the Home Grid tab, change the grid spacing to a multiple of 2 (like 32, 64, 128 units, etc)

Now Max is setup to the same scale as Source.

Models

For the majority of people using Wall Worm, the goal is to export a prop into Source. This one function is the reason 99% of people download Wall Worm. So this is the topic I'll cover first.

The main important thing to understand is that the more you know about 3ds Max itself, the better. Lacking familiarity with Max can lead to frustration. So I always suggest that you start from scratch and with a simple project before diving into complex projects. If you have never compiled a model for Source, then you should start with your first custom crate rather than a fully animated character. This is important even if you are just porting assets, because it will help you understand what is going on.

For models, Wall Worm stores information in an object called a WWMT Helper. Technically this is just a Text shape object that has extra data attached to it. You can think of the WWMT Helper as a UI for storing information about the model that you'd traditionally always write into a text file called a QC. In fact, when WW exports the model, it generates a QC file for you based on the settings in the WWMT Helper, which WW then sends to the model compiler.

Your First Model

To export your first model, you need an object in the scene. You can start with a Teapot Primitive. If you do not know how to create a teapot inside 3ds Max, then you should stop what you are doing and go here: Make a Teapot.

1. Click Wall Worm > Wall Worm Model Tools > Wall Worm Model Tools
2. Click the Pick Model button in the WWMT UI
3. Pick the new teapot model in the scene

Immediately, Wall Worm creates a WWMT Helper. That helper will have some default settings (some of which can be controlled in global settings, including the default output paths, staticprop, etc). Take note of a field labeled Model Name. That name defaults to the node name you just picked (probably Teapot001). Also notice that the model immediately turned orange, as WW likely generated a default material for this object (this is the default behavior when picking a model that has no material).

Exporting your model into Source has two steps: Exporting the Materials/Textures (steps 1-3 below) and Exporting the Model (step 4 below).

1. Click the Export VTFs button in the WWMT UI
2. Check all materials and textures you want to export in the popup
3. Click the Export Selected Textures button
4. Now that the textures have exported, export the model by clicking the Export QC+Model button.

At the basic level, that's all there is to it.

1. Select All WWMT Helpers you want to export
2. Click Wall Worm > Wall Worm Exporters > Export Selected Model Textures (to export all the materials and textures)
3. Click Wall Worm > Wall Worm Exporters > Export WWMT to Source Models (to export all models)

That method allows you to export any number of models with a couple clicks.

There are more functions and settings to explore in WW, including tools to create collision hulls, animation sequences, Level of Detail (LOD) models, custom gibs and a lot more. But we'll leave it at that for now.

Level Design

Building levels with Wall Worm isn't all too different than building them inside Hammer at the basic level. The primary difference is that you must be aware of the fact that its up to you to keep your brush geometry valid. Wall Worm offers several tools to make the process simple with brush-specific geometry types and modifiers to force geometry to remain valid. The main hurdle for Hammer users coming to Max is changing your design philosophy from atomic to systemic--in other words, don't build things brush-by-brush but instead build systems (see CorVex, which is a brush-geometry tool built for BSP design). If you stay in the Hammer-methodology, then you are missing the point of using Max and might as well stay in Hammer.

[Blocked Image: http://dev.wallworm.com/media/1/image/png/page/111_corvex2.png]

You may want to go learn about Grids, Snaps and other Drawing Aids before delving into your first test of level design in Max. Those functions are similar to Hammer, but have more features and settings to understand. Some of the functions like Increase/Decrease grid spacing can be bound to keyboard shortcuts via the Customize > Customize User Interface and looking in the wallworm.com category (there are many hidden gems in there to help make your design process easier).

Your First Brush

1) Turn on 3D Snaps 2) Turn on Snap To Grid 3) Maximize the Perspective viewport 4) Make four Box Primitives as four walls around you teapot 5) Make a Box primitive for the floor 6) Select all five boxes (but not the teapot) 7) Click Wall Worm > Wall Worm Level Design > Set Selection as Brush Geometry

Now these objects are tagged as brushes. The VMF Exporter will export them as brushes. Note that this method of brush-work is similar to the Hammer method of brush-by-brush (which I just said is not ideal), but this demonstrates the similarity of Max/Hammer in a basic level.

Your First Brush Material

Now your brushes need some materials.

1. Open the Slate Material Editor (M on the keyboard)
2. Right Click an empty part of the Slate View
3. Click Maps > Bitmap
4. Browse for a TGA Bitmap on your computer that has a power of 2 dimension (512x512, 1024x1024, etc)
5. When the bitmap node appears in slate, double-click it and change the name of the map to a relative path (so change "Map #1" in the material editor to "testing/textures/"
6. Click and Drag the little circle at the right side of the texture to an empty part of Slate (notice the red line)
7. Let go of the mouse and choose Materials > Standard from the menu
8. Drop the bitmap into the Diffuse slot of this material
9. Double click the new material
10. Change the name of the material from "Standard #25" to "testing/textures/brush1"
11. Select your five brushes
12. At the top of the Slate Material Editor, click the Assign Material to Selection button
13. At the top of the Slate Material Editor, click the Show Shaded Material in Viewport button (be default, textures don't appear in the viewport)
14. Click Wall Worm > Wall Worm Exporters > Export Brush Textures
15. Click Export Selected Textures

After this is finished, WW will have created "testing/textures/brush1.vmt" with a base texture of "testing/textures/bitmapyouchose.vtf" (where the vtf file name will match the TGA bitmap you selected.

For Wall Worm pro users, any texture type is valid (even non-bitmap textures). For the standard WW, the bitmaps must be TGA files. See Advanced Texture Controls available in WW Pro. With WW Pro tools, you can work efficiently with Substance maps right inside Max.

Controlling the texture transformations (offsets, rotations and scales) are topics for another day.

Exporting the Scene

To export this simple scene, just click Wall Worm > Wall Worm Exporters > Export Scene as VMF. With the dialog that pops open, you can choose to pack the assets, various compile parameters and to compile. Go ahead and turn on the Compile Map on Export option and click the Export Scene as Game Level.

Now WW generates the VMF and sends it to the compiler. Because we did not seal the level, there will be a leak generated (which you'll see in the resulting log). Once the compile is done, you can view the leak as you would in Hammer by clicking Wall Worm > Wall Worm Level Design > Wall Worm Map Compile Tools > Load Leak File. Now you'll see a big red line that is the leak.

From here you can take the standard principles of fixing the level. You'll want to add entities, which are loaded with the Wall Worm > Wall Worm Level Design > (Point Entities | Brush Entities) menus.

You can continue to fix the level to a compilable state, or you can open the scene in Hammer to see your brushes and model.

Conclusion

What I've covered here is just the tip of the iceberg. Here are just a few of the other utilities you can utilize in Wall Worm:

• Blended Mapping Material Generator
• Sky Writer to render 2D skies
• Displacement Sculpting
• RAD File Generator
• Res File Generator
• Soundscape Generator
• Animated Sprite Exporter
• Animated Texture Exporter
• Wrinklemap Exporter
• Map / VMF Importer
• VMT Importer
• A lot more...

I know that the majority of Source level designers are not interested in the level design-side of WW. But for those who have similar interests as I've always had, I think you'll get a lot of satisfaction in building worlds in Max once you get your mind wrapped around it. Because of the long history of Source designers believing it's impossible to make world geometry inside Max, Wall Worm recently hosted a brush-only level design contest to help dispel the myth. Check out some of the screen shots of the levels (remember, the contestants were not allowed to use models, displacements or Hammer).

Brush-Only Maps from WW Contest

gg_futurelobby

[Blocked Image: http://www.wallworm.net/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=1578.0;attach=502;image]

fy_delaunay_world

[Blocked Image: http://www.wallworm.net/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=1588.0;attach=510;image]

That contest was sponsored by some super-sexy plugin developers: Exlevel, Ephere and enRichPro. All three have agreed to sponsor the next contest, which will not be limited to just brushes. The first place winner received $1k in commercial software licenses. Rules for the next contest will be announced soon.

Other mappers, too, have been experimenting with doing Source level design inside Max. Joris Ceoen is an avid creator with levels that have won Game Banana contests. His level Space Marble Unlimited won a contest recently and is the level featured on the book below.

If you are interested in learning more about experimenting with level design in Max, you can download your free copy of Hammered to the Max: A Hammer User's Guide to 3ds Max.

[Blocked Image: http://dev.wallworm.com/media/1/image/png/page/140_hammerdtothemaxcover1.png]

Common Resources for WW:

• Wall Worm Documentation
• Wall Worm Forums
• Wall Worm YouTube Channel
• Wall Worm Twitter Feed
• Wall Worm on Facebook
• Wall Worm on G+

Some other Fun Tools and Features in Wall Worm

Max 2017 came out this week. Except for the VTF Importer to load VTF files in Max, WW/WWPro work in 2017. I'll hopefully get the VTF import support added this week.

I'm doing some updates to the documentation (embarrassingly, many docs are a few years out-of-date). But better late than never. So I've updated the info on the Model & Basic QC Rollout to reflect the latest version of WW.

Here is a new video on the basics of WWMT usage. It covers the core basics of exporting a prop and its textures, along with a few topics I've not covered before like the relationship of the QC/QCI that WW creates. Note the video was recorded in Max 2017.

An update to WW this week added a new utility to create blended mapping textures that don't rely on UV modifiers. This new tool also hooks into Bitmap2Material if you have it on your system. Here is a demonstration.

Thanks to @will2k and @Rick_D for attaching their names to the judging panel.

Turnout wasn't as high as I wanted, but it produced some cool things. The main thing to note was that this contest was BRUSH-ONLY (no displacements or props allowed). Here were the winners: 1st: gg_futurelobby and 2nd: fy_delaunay_world . I think that the myth about not being able to do brushwork in Max is now busted.

Already Ephere and Exlevel have signed up again to sponsor the next contest. Exlevel is gifting GrowFX again and Ephere is giving the winner the choice of either Zookeeper or Lucid. I am working on some other sponsors as well.

gg_futurelobby

[Blocked Image: http://ocdevelopment.net/downloads/sourcemaps/css/dm_lobby.jpg]

And runner up: fy_delaunay_world

[Blocked Image: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4233663/Levels/fy_delaunay_world/almost_finished/fy_delaunay_world_pic_01_720p.jpg]

Quote from JustFredrik

This might be usefull information for you to read. @MagnarJ

Yeah, the VRAD issue is actually trivial because it's just adding a single line to level compiles. That is already set to happen automatically in my own projects/work (and both WW and Hammer let you set your own defaults easily).

But the bugs mentioned above are problematic for me because in order for my tools to work, the FGD must be well formed (have no TYPOS). The FGD bug is straightforward a typo in the FGD. Valve can spend 10 seconds and : Add a bracket and it's fixed... or I can spend a whole day trying to write a parser that detects/patches typos... then another day testing... then another week responding to emails from people who's projects break because I didn't test my changes on their specific FGD.... etc etc.

My advice right now is for WW users to edit their FGD files. But guess how exciting it is to deal with people who are frustrated with me because something they have suddenly stopped working... and all because of a typo in a file controlled by a third party?

And the Activity weight bug is problematic. If I change the default in WW to integer, who knows how that will affect someone's animation that is expecting a float value? I just don't have the time to test all possible mods/values, etc. If the VDC is wrong and activity weights are supposed to be integers after all, I can easily accommodate in WW.

Here is the problem with the activity weight:

A sequence can be written like this:

$sequence dosmomething "seq_dosmomething" activity ACT_RUN 1.0 fps 30.0 fadein 0.2 fadeout 0.2

That's been valid for as many years as I've been working in Source. And it works in all other games I've tested. And until this last update, it worked in CSGO.

But now it fails. Instead, it must be

$sequence dosmomething "seq_dosmomething" activity ACT_RUN 1 fps 30.0 fadein 0.2 fadeout 0.2

But assume you have a setup where the three activities have a weight of 1.5 1.5 and 1 because you want the first two to happen more than the first. While you can obviously change these values, it might mean that this sequence and dozens or hundreds of others need to be edited to be 15, 15 and 10 to get the same result. Now that's a lot of wasted time and effort.

Thanks. I've been dealing with several issues in the CSGO community in the last couple of weeks because of the updates. Not only this, but the fact that CSGO's studiomdl.exe suddenly get's mad about any activity weight that's set as a FLOAT. To my knowledge, sequence activity weights have always been floats (and this is what the VDC has said for years). Now to successfully compile models into CSGO, you much change QCs that may have been compiling perfectly in all mods for 10+ years. Information on this specific issue is located at http://www.wallworm.net/index.php/topic,1554.0.html if you want to forward that one too. I honestly expected that bug to get fixed almost immediately. I've patched WW to handle it automatically for staticprops... but for animations, I cannot presume the values should be integers when users already have the values as floats.

There is a bug in the CSGO FGD:

Quote

@PointClass base(Targetname) sphere(radius) = point_hiding_spot:
"Adds a hiding spot to the nav mesh at this location."
[

This class is not closed. I discovered this because WW can crash when parsing the FGD now.

The fix for WW users is to edit the FGD file to be like this:

Quote

@‌PointClass base(Targetname) sphere(radius) = point_hiding_spot:
"Adds a hiding spot to the nav mesh at this location."
[
]

Since I almost never get any replies when emailing Valve, can someone with some good connections forward this info onward.

In the ongoing quest to make 3ds Max more fun as your level editor, please welcome Brushify, a new geometry modifier to help you keep your geometry valid as brushes. While I've been building geometry plugins to create systems of brushes (like CorVex and ShellVex) I've come to learn that many people with Hammer backgrounds prefer to work on everything one brush at a time. You can still use Brushify on larger systems or collections of objects, but it can help Hammer users transitioning into Max.

Important: this plugin only works in 3ds Max 2016 SP2+.

Added a new geometry class into this tool. Current owners can login and get the new addition. Here is a video showing it in action for converting some GrowFX nodes into simpler props for games.

New goodie added to Wall Worm today: batch import of photos from folders to 3ds Max Material Libraries linked up to Bitmap2Material substance nodes.

Quote from blackdog

Hey what you mean, Autodesk is moving to a subscription model like Adobe?

Yep. Cool for some scenarios... but bad for consumer influence overall--especially for an industry that might not want one company to have the monkey on the back of all young talents primed to get hooked on careers. Hopefully it's all hunky-dory... but we'll see in 10 years. But that's irrelevant to here and now I'm a 3ds Max advocate... regardless of the current direction of the business behind Max.

Just wanted to share some new info on this contest. There are now several sponsors giving away software prizes for this:

GrowFX from Exlevel

Zookeeper from Ephere

RichDirt from enRichPro

At this point, first place will get nearly $1,000 of software prizes.

I'm looking forward to seeing some of you guys dabble in this. It's going to be fun!

Quote from jackophant

I appreciate the power of the tool you've created, but owning 3DS Max in the first place is an obstacle. I used to have it for free with my student email address, but I sadly didn't get very far with it and now my attention is focused on blender (not that I've got very far with that either so far! ) because of the ease of access.

Are there any plugins / workarounds / converters for blender to work for this?

Good luck with round 2

Thanks for the comment

In terms of any Blender integration, no, that's not something I have spent any time exploring. Max has been my playground for many years. Every time I've installed Blender to check out the features, I always feel like a blind sloth trying to catch fireflies in a windstorm. It's certainly an awesome asset to the world. I just haven't ever felt moved by the spirit to do more than peek in on occasion.

In terms of the obstacle of owning Max... that's soon past a possibility as Autodesk is taking away that privilege. After this month, you can no longer even buy Max, Maya, etc. Later this year you lose the ability to buy even the larger suites. This is something that is philosophically at odds with my views on how things should be. But those currently on maintenance subscription can continue to own upgrades. All rental after that. So if that trend goes on forever, you'll possibly see me tipping more serious toes into Blender (but it's not something I foresee anytime soon).

In terms of this contest, I can already tell that users are for more inspired than the first. So I'm excited about it. And I'm in communication with other prominent plugin developers to offer commercial plugin prizes.

I tried to get a level design contest for Wall Worm last year. It failed to get anyone involved. But I'm tenacious, and after I talked to many of the WW users who considered participating but did not, I went back to the drawing board and have come to round 2.

The previous contest had too many expectations (I wanted level designers to use all the advanced features in WW without giving them time to learn the basic Max UI... so the bar was too high). Hopefully this new one is more likely to get people to participate.

In Old School Level Design Contest #1, you are not allowed to use models. Nope. Just BSP.

To help inspire, I've shared a silly little level called bsp_heaven compiled into Black Mesa that I made in jest for BM level designer Chris Horn's birthday last month. That silly level was made from scratch to final compile in 24 hours in Max. Hopefully it helps spur some creativity and helps get some interest.

[Blocked Image: https://wallworm.com/bsp_heaven.jpg]

There was a setting display bug that failed to show the new project path in the global settings after restarting. So I've fixed that in a quick update.

Also, new video to help WW users understand how to get their transparency into game.

WW has a new update that includes a new global setting called Project.

This field is the path to a Max Project Folder. If you set a project folder and save it with a Preset then the current Max Project Folder will switch to that folder when you change between presets. This is helpful if you are working on multiple projects that should not share source files.

Use Cases:

• You are working on two levels inside CSGO but for two completely different teams/projects.
• You are working on multiple different games.

General Setting Hints

Hint: You can make multiple presets for the same game/mod.

Hint 2: If you are working on a mod with different branches (for development reasons) you can create different presets where only those paths that need to differ are different (for example, maybe just the game info directory and bin directory differ).