Posts by Motanum

Quote from Yanzl

54 minutes ago, Yanzl said: Speaking of Substance and CS:GO, I patched together a Source engine looking shader for substance.

Get it here: http://gortnar.com/vmt/shaders.7z and put it in ...\Substance Designer 5\resources\view3d\shaders

This deserves it's own thread!

I expanded on this by making a template for Substance Designer to be used with the Source Shader. Download here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/dvkakn8mlij5…emplate.7z?dl=0 Instructions on how to set up are on the read me file

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/ztzhVL8.png]

I also made a Base Source Material node. You can use this node to get up and running the source shader for quick results, then later on plug in custom maps for env mask, and specularity (Phong). You can also work with height map and then the node will get the normal map.

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/L09gxXJ.jpg]

Example Node. To explain the very basics.

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/3ojlXUZ.jpg]

Quote from Quotingmc

10 hours ago, Quotingmc said: I think you need to tone down the number of inflatable rings, there are at least 10 in practically ever screenshot.

Other than that, this map looks awesome

Haha yeah! I kinda use them right now as the default cover/block item.

Wow! This looks awesome! Can't wait to play it! Bets of luck man!

So it has been over a month, and i thought it is time to update you guys. We had a playtest from Mapcore last Thursday, it went well I think. It was fun and besides some minor issues, I think it was a good test that brought out some issues with the map which I have been working on. There are quite many changes and I don't have time to go through all of them in detail, but if you guys have questions, please ask.

T Spawn. I spent quite some time with T Spawn, blocking out some visuals I had in mind. Still some work to do, like the restiveness bushes but I think it helps out to tell the story of the map for now for those who look at it. Not a big change from the layout perspective.

Spoiler

Queue Stairs. I rotated the pipes so that terrorist can now throw some nades from the stairs towards middle. CTs could molotov out the mid entrance at T side which gave CTs a huge advantage. i also added a little room on the side so Ts can hide and wait for nades do dissipate before pushing out.

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Middle. general thoughts are that it felt too cluttered. While I intended the middle are to be busy with props and pools, it was too much. Too much cover, too many angles. I simplified it a bit by remove some slide ends and making them some shallow pools. There is lot of height changes, but it reduces greatly the amount of angles and cover on the area. I also changed the wave pool walls to the T side, so Ts can have cover to run to when they push out. It was too much of a bottle neck, where if you managed to push out, you had very little options to go to. Bots run with rifles out, so I managed to get to middle quicker than them which gave me a false sense of timing. It should be much more even now.

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CT Spawn, not many changes overall. Some testing for art pass, consensus was that it felt too crowded, so I expanded that area already.

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Lower Pool and Toxic Repository. The green slide will have a waste repository theme to it. it's a cave where radioactive waste from nuclear reactors are kept. It gave me a chance to have one place called toxic, use a bunch of Nuke props, and to look interesting. The slide is a placeholder, it will have it's own unique model. However, the change to it came from making the path to A site longer for terrorist while reducing the chokepoint at the little door that was before. There is still a chokepoint but it's wider and further back on the trajectory, after which giving many options to spread out. The 3 water slides, podium I call it, will have to go some changes. before you could climb up any of the slide entries and shoot from anywhere, which made the Ts very vulnerable as they had no idea where the CT would peak from. I changed it to block the area with props and will add some rocks to simplify the layout over that area. The slide which you can climb on the side is proving to be a bit annoying to navigate, more clip work is required there. Huge disadvantage as when you move to shoulder peak if you miss you will slide down missing your position.

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Bombsite A. Mostly the same. Got some visual updates. There is an issue with the torrent props, where the collisions will sometimes screw you up and stop you. And also one model has an issue with lighting (Thanks Source!) which is baffling to me.

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Bombsite B. This bombsite was pushed further back to CT spawn. The window on the side suddenly made the room not feel so claustrophobic. it was quite tough to play around as a T this time. This is the harder bombsite, but I think over time as players get to know which are the common holding spots, the site will become easier.

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I think this will be all for now. Still quite some work to do. Hard to know how long it will take to make.

Top View

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Other Screenshots

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Cheers!

For CSGO, I am using 3ds Max, simply because of Wall Worm. I wouldn't be doing CSGO maps if Wall Worm didn't exist. The issue here is the licensing, I could afford a static license, but if you can;t, then use the student version. Learn it, and once you can afford it, get the full license. That's the Autodesk strategy, they give their software free to students, and when they become professionals, they pay their full licenses.

Buy photoshop, is not that expensive, 10 bucks a month and it's very much worth it, everyone uses it. I used Gimp early on, but never really catch up. When I bough photoshop and learnt it, I haven't looked back at all.

Substance Designer/Painter are pretty cheap on a Steam sales, so no reason not to get those either.

I think the reason not many studios use blender is support. A company needs support from the company when developing in house tools. I had to use autodesk support a few time, and they are very quick to respond.

Hello guys!

The indoor water park AquaBlast has received a bomb threat from a terrorist group.

On my previous map, I couldn't get to do any water attractions, so for the past few weeks I have been having an itch for making water slides. So I started working on this project for the past weeks and a half. The map is still a very heavy work in progress. And currently have a layout which I hope to playtest soon, as well as working on a few water slides, to get an idea of how much work and time making the water slides will take. I made the map with an idea in my head of what each area will be, so detailing will just be a matter of time and dedication to bring up the map into the visuals I have in mind. My plan is for it to be much less cartoony than my previous map, pharaoh.

The main source of inspiration is Akvapark (Google Maps), in Latvia, where I used to live years ago and have fond memories. I do however use reference images from many places. I think the biggest difference is the size, to fit the size of a csgo map, I had to make the main building (middle) smaller than what a real water park would be like. The indoors area and pools will have glass ceilings, so you can break them off and throw nades from room to room, which should help out with nade preparation before trying to take over a site. So, it's indoors, but with the functionality of outdoors.

I will keep this thread updated as before, but I still have no clue how often that would be. The weekly updates from pharaoh, were good for me, it helped me get my thoughts on "paper" and I had a clear idea of what I should be focusing next at the beginning of the week. So there is a chance that I may retake that. Or I could just post here all my thoughts. Time will tell.

Some screenshots of course!

Middle of the map. It has a empty wave pool, a lazy river, a toilet bowl water slide, as well as some extra minor features. Like a dive slide, and a tunnel for the river. I am not sure the extent of access to players for the top area (heaven), I fear it may add too much veritcality to the map for the defending CTs. CTs come in to middle from behind the toilet bowl.

Spoiler

Bombsite A

Bombsite A is on the outside area of the map. It has part of the river as well as a gate for the torrent, the current generator for the wave. It fills up with water and then rushes it towards the river. It has some bars to prevent guests from getting to dangerous areas. Then, on the pool at the lower level is 3 body water slides. I think they will be called podium, and be bronze, silver and gold. You can use the bronze one to climb up, in case the main access gets smoked out.

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Bombsite B

Bombsite B is the arrival of 2 intense water slides. I haven't worked much on that area. It is very close quarters, so probably a target for Ts when they can't afford very expensive items. I am not sure of the cover placements, and i have to see how the play test session goes, and see if the entrances are alright as they are. The balcony on top is accessible by boosting only. The stairs shown are the access way for the Ts, its the contact point if both teams rush, although, I expect CTs to don't rush, so they can set up nades to defend.

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T spawn. They come from the back of the building. Have a neat story line idea for how they got there, so I guess you guys will have to wait till I work on that area to know the story for that.

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CT Spawn. The CTs come from the lockers room and showers from the main entrance of the park after the ticket booth. Again, some ideas and reference images for that room, but those will have to wait for another time, for when I work on the room.

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Finally, here is the radar image. A bit outdated as I made it before the water slides tests. it should help you guys out to figure out the layout. Nothing very new or different. It's the typical clover. I also try to avoid as many overlapping floors as possible, as I find those very confusing in other maps. basically, the most it overlaps is on the stairs at the bottom left.

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That is all for now. I hope I can have the time to stick with this project again. I have a lot of work to do on the map, but if I can get it to where I envision, it should be self motivating to work on as well as being a pleasant place map to walk around and play.

Cheers!

Looks sweet! And sounds very interesting! Can;t wait to try it!

I used substance Designer during the creation of my map. @Yanzl can probably provide better info, but from what I gathered during these past 8 months. For source you create the diffuse and noprmal maps. You can create specs, but thoe are a bit tricker to get into , as model and bsp shaders work differently.

Here is some info on Wall Worm about specular maps. http://dev.wallworm.com/topic/34/alpha_spec.html

What I did was to create a normal shader, so diffsue, normal, specularity and glossyness. I could be wrong, but fiddling with the levels and grey values for textures got me the results. Glossyness is phong in source. I didn't create any phong maps, only added the value to the VMT for phong. I did create specular maps for models, so for example, hanging clothes, where the hook would be metal, but the cloth wouldn't be metal. Again, lots of tweak to get the correct metal values in source.

What substance designer shows is a great start, but to get the same results in Source you will have to fiddle around with the levels. At least in my short experience.

For my workflow, I made the substance files and the textures. Then I saved the png for diffuse, normal and if needed specularity. Then in 3ds Max using Wallworm I would bring in the model and it's textures into source. If you don't have 3ds Max, then you can use vtfedit to import the png's and save them as vtfs.

About Substance Designer VS Substance Painter

I haven't used much of Substance Painter, I am in the prosses of getting it into my workflow. But from what I understand, you use Substance Designer to create the basic textures, like bricks, concrete, grass, sand, rocks, etc. Then, in substance painter you bring in the sbr, the substance designer materials and paint them into your model.

However, in SD you can bring in your models, bake various maps, like AO, World Position, Curvatures, etc. ANd SD has many generation maps, where using the baked maps you can create various effects. Like sun burns, edge wears, metal wear, etc. very usefull. So what I used to do was that if I had multiple models that have the same base textures, for example, a stone wall. I would create the texture for a model, where it has some inputs, the baked maps from the model. Then at the end, I simply save the pngs, then change the inputs of the baked maps, and save those for the next models, very quickly.

This also means that I could change out the UVs, change the model's polygons and I wouldn't lose any work in SD, as all I had to do was to rebake the baked maps, and SD would recalculate the textures.

Sure, there are things SD won't do. If I wanted text or decals, I had to make those on photoshop, transform them in SD and apply them, which is a bit od, and there were times where I wish I could simply paint over the model some effects, like scratches or so, which is where SD would have been welcomed to know before.

Roaring Peaks just received a bomb threat to it's upcoming attraction Pharaoh's Curse.

I am a bit late on uploading here, but I was busy doing some tweaks and thinking how I wanted to approach this post mortem. For now, I made a timelapse video which I hope you will enjoy. I plan on doing a blog during the week, if I get time while watching Dota's International. I also can do a longer timelapse video, with commentary highlighting the changes specifically that you see in the video. Could be interesting but I am not sure if there would be an interest for that. Let me know.

Since release on July 7th, the map went through some extra minor iterations. Some texture changes, some color and saturation levels fixes. Some props placements clippings, etc. Overall if the last time you checked it out was back in Mid July, I invite you to check out the changes. It's also on 3kliksphillip server (No idea until when), so you can join his servers and play there with other people. I have fun playing there.

Thanks for reading and commenting on my threads! It's been a very pleasant experience and regardless of what the future brings, I am glad and proud of de_pharaoh.

Cheers!

I solved those 2 issues. I changed the color scheme and reduce the saturation values on Behind the Scenes areas.

Images Below

Spoiler Images

I plan to post a blog later today. I have also yet to do work on clips, though I have notes of some issues that people told me about.

Thanks for the feedback guys!

Looks great

Quote from will2k

1 hour ago, will2k said: [Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/op5QL6N.jpg]

Some issues I have are the follwoing:

The cliff texture looks odd. Very noisy and the colors I don't buy. Reduce the blacks I suggest and change the whites for a more orange color maybe.

Second, this texture here:

[Blocked Image: http://puu.sh/pURiB/211fce191a.jpg]

It looks a bit low ress compared to the rest. The shadows of it are also wrong. Notice how the sun cast a shadow from left to right, yet the line is lighted first, then the shadow, this gives the illusion of it being coming out, rather than being pushed in. I am guessing it's intended to be pushed in. I suggest that you flip the texture on the horizontal axis, or just have the normal map capture that light info.

Overall, looks sweet. Can;t wait to play on it!

So, anyone actually seen it? I know I haven't due to low reviews, and there being other better stuff to watch.

Hey guys!

Pharaoh is now available! Please enjoy! Subscribe and don't forget to rate!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/fi…s/?id=719528723

Thanks for all the feedback. As for the map, I am willing to do modifications based on feedback from the bigger community. However, it will be at least a month (Unless something urgent requires fixing), as it takes a while to compile and make sure it's ready for publish. As well as given that I am going away for holidays on the 16th, and come back on the 25th! 10 days away from my PC!

Anyways, I am gonna think about what the next blog post will be, and probably a mini post mortem.

The old WIP version is now hidden. So, you will only be able to play the new version

Cheers!

Quote from JSadones

2 hours ago, JSadones said: I always wondered, is it allowed to change Valve their models/textures for commercial projects?

Either way, awesome change ! Fits the environment

For commercial projects? No. In between Valve's games (From HL2EP2 to CSGO, and from CSGo to Portal 2, and from Portal 2 to L4D2, etc) they don't care as far as I know. From a Valve game to say, a UE4 project, then it's getting more grey.

Hey guys! So de_pharaoh is almost ready for release!

You can reed the full blog post. It's quite long this time, hope you will enjoy it.

I looked at the post above me. the optimization one, as well as the other suggestions. Thought about it and I have an update. On the optimization area, the map does better now. Some changes the the layout to improve optimization as well as skybox optimization, as that was the biggest contributing factor to low fps. Now with a 770 GTX, pretty much all CSGO settings on high or highest, I get 200 fps on T spawn, which was is I think the heaviest part of the map. Should be better than nuke, at the least. I've utilized pretty much all tricks on the book, Area portals, hint and skips, prop fading. PCs will only get better now, so I am confident that the map as it is currently can be handled by pretty much all PCs.

When the new version is out this week, I encourage you to go into wireframe mode and look around.

And yes. the final version will release this coming week, unless something happens! As always, more info on the blog post, but I will post some screenshots here!

Spoiler Images not words

Cheers!

Quote from BazzlingDalls

4 hours ago, BazzlingDalls said: I played a bit on this a few months ago, some of these major problems you might have fixed, but im guessing not all. First problem i noticed was that mid was literally useless, throughout most competitive rotation maps mid always offers new entrances into a or b site and re connections onto paths accessible from t spawn, but this map doesn't add any new entrances into either of the sites, making it useless. Also each site is disadvantageous to anyone holding the site as there is 0 spots for cover, which is a huge problem. And visually i can say that its not terrible, but you can do a lot better.

Hey man, map changed a lot from a few months ago. Would you like to go through the most recent version of a few weeks ago? Or check out some of the changes on the blog post.

http://www.motanum.com/de_pharaoh

Hope you like the changes from last time you played it.

Why are the edges so jarred? Overall I like it, You can tell because of the various levels of grey, more of the gun's detail

I don't recall the blaster model from the movies. But it could use various tones of grey on various part, currently it looks to flat and you can see any of the detail from the model.

I haven't played insurgency, but from the images, the mapping looks very clean and neat. So I love the direction it's going.

Neat as duck!

Hey guys, I just posted a new blog post!

It goes through the heatmaps obtained from the reddit playtest last Tuesday. I find it quite interesting and maybe you will too. based on that data I am gonna do many changes to the map to preapre for a final release.

http://www.motanum.com/de_pharaoh/week-24-playtest-stats

I won't post the screenshots of the heatmaps here, as I think that it is better with the text description and comments.

Cheers! Hope you guys enjoy!