omega322

I know most of you will laugh, but to me this was important, my first real step into modeling, I hope in the future when I've gotten more knowledge I can deliver some amazing stuff for you guys to critique .

a model of a sort of flying thing i made for my mod.

Needs some kind of legs, like for when it lands. It looks neat but odd without some kind of landing gear.

Vary up the buildings in the sky box, I see 3 identical buildings with semi different color.

I always do this out of habit, but I also only ever create one brush in any map, the rest are all copy and pasted then edited to whatever I need, so if I need a mitred corner wall I copy and paste one I've already made. I also spend hours nodrawing hidden faces, ie inside a mitered join or flush with another face, which looking at Valve's maps and what other people have said I don't think is necessary? I've never heard a proper answer either way on that.

Same as I do, habits die hard.

Faces touching in hammer are not rendered, so weather they have textures or nodraw doesn't matter. Like in a Mitered corner.

I can give you the bottom line to this Topic, It does nothing.

In the above pic, When the compiler runs the vis leafs and comes to the corner, it sees the same thing, the compiler doesn't care what the shape of the block is, it only counts whats within the boarders of that block (Hence why when you compile and run around a map, if you no cliped outside the map, you don't see a hulking brush emitted from the wall.

BUT

Mitering your Corners does have one major Benefit. When your compiler compiles lighting, it bounces from the light source around itself to the nearby walls, it calculates which walls or faces are hit and saves the shadow/light data of each face.

So now, as seen above, when you don't Miter your corners, you end up with 3 separate faces being stored or "hit" by light, mitering however limits it to the two faces allowed! This may not seem like much, but, if you have a map with about.....125 corners (Which is really small TBH, you other Level designers can back me on that) that means your map is collecting light/shadow data on over 375 faces VS. Mitering, you'll only use 250. (Basically it will streamline your lighting/shadowing and make the overall file size smaller)

Well, over the past few years I've gotten into basically everything there is to level design, architect, lighting, texture creation, custom sounds for ambiance, hell even particle editing for Half life 2 EP2 and TF2. By no means am I a pro at any of them but I can say I'm fairly decent. I've allways had this soft fear of learning how to model, mostly due in part since I see the amazing things others make and I say to myself ' How can I ever compete with that?' But, enough is enough, I need to bite the bullet and jump into the world of modeling, so i ask you all, those with heavy experience and knowledge of modeling, where is a good place to start? what are the best resources to teach some underfunded student with an urge to create? what program is the best(To start with)?

Not to bad for an initial 30 min layout and another 30 min lighting/detailing.

Comments? Advice?

Yes not bad, but still pretty bland . Understand it is only an hour's worth of work, but subway stations always have so much potential .

Take a look at Sa7an's ND map, which I think is absolutely awesome .

That's a good example of all that extra detail that can go in there. Also the ceiling looks a tad strange. Dunno, maybe its that big block sticking out..

skdr - looks secks, can't wait

That is pretty sweet! and I understand what you mean!, let me see if I can trick this baby out a bit more. brb in 5 hours X3.

I've been mapping for a community called necropolis, and now that the bunker maps is almost complete, I figured creating the spawn for the subway/sewer map would be fun and interesting.

Not to bad for an initial 30 min layout and another 30 min lighting/detailing.

Comments? Advice?

I'd go with a different font other than the standard TF2 text. Perhaps also don't have the 'Slaughterhouse' text overlap the skull like that.

You could even have 'Slaughter' on one side and the 'House' on the other side of the skull.

Okay, is there any particular font you'd recommend? Something that has a defined tf2 time frame esc feel?

I was working on this advert for a tf2 map I'm making, what should I add/remove/fix to give it a better feel?

- current

When I say Mountain esc, I mean as in like a cold mountain Feel, when your in the map, I want players to think to themselves "Fuck it's cold out here"

Those are amazing mate, did you make all those custom textures and materials yourself?

I myself have been working on a Bunker in the mountains esc map, still heavily wip, most textures are just place holders till I get into more details.

Brush ##: nummapbrushes == MAX_MAP_BRUSHES Side # Texture: [some_texture]

Description:

You have too many brushes in your map (more than 8192) The given brush is just the first one to go over the limit, it's properties in this error are useless

Solution:

Delete some brushes, turn some of them into models for area's high in detail. For singleplayer maps, you may decide to add a level transition and split the map into multiple levels. Multiplayer maps that reach this limit are probably too big for multiplayer anyway.

See also:

MAX_MAP_BRUSHES

IN a nutshell I've hit the set brush limit in hammer, I know this can be bypassed since the map rp_C18 has much more brushes then allowed.

How do I bypass the set limit? is there a special command to run?

I'm modifiyeng a map atm, and I'm using func_areportalwindow to block of sections of the map, for some reason I keep getting thie ingame though

YOu can pass through it but it should disappear and show just the hallway when you get within a certain range of it. the settings are as follows

fade start and end distance are 750 (Slightly longer then the hallway)(basicly when your within the 750 it disappears like it should.

translucency limit is 0

The material is tools black.

What am I doing wrong :\?

One thought I just had though was whenever I compile it useing the red cicrled area it comes out allright, but when I compile fullscale it fucks up, the map has loads of leaks, you think those could cuase that to happen?

Though I'm not an expert fully in hammer I am comfortable, and I really enjoy your idea, you can contact me at...

Email: Omega322@msn.com

Steam friends: alpha322

Hows about a Santa Infected!?

"Merry Christm'Glurb!!!"

Good start btw!

you sir just won the internet

So after talking to a few other forum members and taking thier advice, rather then spam the Level design W.I.P. thread with stuff I'm working on, I'll post my own work here for others to comment on and rate.

So far with Source SDK Everything I learned has been self taught, I know compared to most other members my work and ability is novice, I understand that and want to improve my ability, I honestly want to work in the video game industry as a level/concept designer. The best way to improve myself is to have others judge my work and tell me what I need to do and learn to improve, so for now I'll throw these out for judging. Remember good or bad I want your opinoins, if you think my work is shit then say so, if you think I need to learn something that's missing Give me a link or tutroial.

My most recent, part of a mapping contest.

Old work about 2 months old.

Even older around 4-5 months ago

your probably right aevirex, i dont know the technical details that much, except that almost every deferred renderer i see these days renders shadows nicely

i made some signs that I'm going to place around everywhere!

I might work them out a bit more, depending on how well you will see them in the shots.

I Love it! Those signs just changed my mental aspect of the level, it wen't from "abandond city" to "abandond city, Becuase Of a failed Expeiment O_o?"

Just wanted to throw this in Pericolos0.

I don't know if it's just me but throughout the whole process of you making this, the texture for the dirt ground irks me, I know it's trying to be 3d but at the same time the way the hill curves it doesn't feel "natural" you know what I mean?

Lately I wanted to bring a "F.E.A.R." isc feeling to the hl2 genra without those random "lol zombie is there then gone" scare tactics and I think

Great because it's not like reflective floor tutorials have been around since the hl2 beta leak... many.. many years ago. Please stop posting in this thread.

My apologies for not sitting at your level in mapping ifO, but hey all of use where new at one point, you guys way before me, I'm still a novice at mapping attempting to improve myself, rather then act like an ass and telling me to stop posting why not tell me what to do to improve?

Lately I wanted to bring a "F.E.A.R." isc feeling to the hl2 genra without those random "lol zombie is there then gone" scare tactics and I think I got a good part down .

So yeah it looks like your average not so well lit Room, but what's this? what do you see in the floors reflection?

I'm working on a a prefab for 2 floors in a hotel, the top floor will feature a pool and rec. area, the one below will feature a boiler room on one side and some cheap living quarters on the other, what would you guys recommend for a nice clear looking water that doesn't bleed on the edges? (notice twords the left on the water at the edge you see some Lighter green? that's bleeding colors that arent there)

Did someone delete my post ?

Like I said before I lowerd the Bloom, removed most of the DoF and tweaked the color correction.

That's just bloom, dof and color correction. Don't know why this should be on par with Crysis tbh.

Thank you for stating the obvious, Now i'll ask again, What can I do to improve?

Trying to master Shadows in HL2 to the point of Crysis Qaulity,You likes?

Ignore the props and stuff, just focus on Shadow and lighting, what needs to be learned/fixed?