What I'm Working On

[D3ads]

DAT CHAIR.

[NihiL]

DAT CHAIR.

IT'S PERFECT!

My second (incredibly unpolished) tutorial is up on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7iRg6iMbq0

Hey, as promised on Twitter, I watched your tutorial live @FMPONE - but I was late with my questions and thoughts, so I thought I'd maybe write them down here.

- First of all, I liked the idea of decoration walls. I would previously split my world brushes for multiple textures and thus unnecessarily increase my leaf and portal count. Making a second wall for that instead is pretty clever! I guess you just have to be careful if you want to keep your room dimensions (moving the world brushes out a bit so as not make the actual room smaller)?

- With func_brushes you showed us how to disable shadows and mentioned that you'd disable the fake ambient occlusion shadow (and keep the sharp normal shadow) because that makes your level look better. Can you elaborate a bit on that? Do you just dislike the ambient occlusion effect because the shadows look a bit noisy in Source? I've personally never done this and never thought that it looked bad with all shadows enabled. Is it something you just eyeball, when and if to do it for which brushes? Or is there a rule to it?

- When it comes to your color theory and your examples, it seems that we were exclusively talking about texturing as opposed to lighting, right? I mean, on Season or Cache, the colors seemed to come more from the diffuse textures than from colored light sources? Is that correct? What about light color then? Do you keep them white? White-ish? Or do they reflect your ~3 color palette for texture colors as well somehow?

Thanks for taking the time to livestream/record your tutorial!

[leplubodeslapin]

- When it comes to your color theory and your examples, it seems that we were exclusively talking about texturing as opposed to lighting, right? I mean, on Season or Cache, the colors seemed to come more from the diffuse textures than from colored light sources? Is that correct? What about light color then? Do you keep them white? White-ish? Or do they reflect your ~3 color palette for texture colors as well somehow?

It was both about texturing and lighting. The spice color in this case is more in the textures but it can also be in the lighting with small but noticable lights.

And the 2 primary colors are mostly due to lighting, the "blorange" thing is about mixing these 2 colors in your general environment lighting. For example using a blue color for your ambient (which defines light in shadows, kind of) and orange for your brightness (which defines the color of light coming from the sun). It's a classic, because the contrast between these 2 colors is nice and immediately creates something good looking. And you could find other examples of course.

Cache is a great example :

You see, the shadows create a blue theme and sun lighting is more orange. And the contrast looks great immediately. Red and yellow are the 2 spice colors here i guess.

[NihiL]

Thanks, great post. It clears up some things for me. Sun light being orange-y is obviously a given and spice colors are clear as well. But can you control the blueness of the shadows? I've never tried this in Source, can you change the ambient (shadow) colors to be blue?

[leplubodeslapin]

yes of course. I decompiled de_cache to take this screenshot to show you (sry shawn)

This is the light_environment from cache. It's clearly orange and blue, that's what makes the sunlight orange and shadows blue. Try to find your own values, that fit the most to your needs.

[jackophant]

because the contrast between these 2 colors is nice and immediately creates something good looking. And you could find other examples of course.

"blorange" is typical in the film industry from my understanding, but the key here i think is that they are "complimentary colours". it's colour theory:

Alternatively, because of your setting, I would look to see what valve have used for colour values in Dust2. I wouldn't be surprised if it was more orange/blue, but a faint yellow-orange/blue-violet could be worth trying.

Maybe make a small test map for quick complies

[NihiL]

Sweet thanks guys. I always messed with the ambient setting of my pointlights, not the light_environment, this makes sense. Cheers!

[FMPONE]

It was both about texturing and lighting. The spice color in this case is more in the textures but it can also be in the lighting with small but noticable lights.

And the 2 primary colors are mostly due to lighting, the "blorange" thing is about mixing these 2 colors in your general environment lighting. For example using a blue color for your ambient (which defines light in shadows, kind of) and orange for your brightness (which defines the color of light coming from the sun). It's a classic, because the contrast between these 2 colors is nice and immediately creates something good looking. And you could find other examples of course.

Cache is a great example :

You see, the shadows create a blue theme and sun lighting is more orange. And the contrast looks great immediately. Red and yellow are the 2 spice colors here i guess.

I this is a solid analysis/explanation.

- First of all, I liked the idea of decoration walls. I would previously split my world brushes for multiple textures and thus unnecessarily increase my leaf and portal count. Making a second wall for that instead is pretty clever! I guess you just have to be careful if you want to keep your room dimensions (moving the world brushes out a bit so as not make the actual room smaller)?

- With func_brushes you showed us how to disable shadows and mentioned that you'd disable the fake ambient occlusion shadow (and keep the sharp normal shadow) because that makes your level look better. Can you elaborate a bit on that? Do you just dislike the ambient occlusion effect because the shadows look a bit noisy in Source? I've personally never done this and never thought that it looked bad with all shadows enabled. Is it something you just eyeball, when and if to do it for which brushes? Or is there a rule to it?

- When it comes to your color theory and your examples, it seems that we were exclusively talking about texturing as opposed to lighting, right? I mean, on Season or Cache, the colors seemed to come more from the diffuse textures than from colored light sources? Is that correct? What about light color then? Do you keep them white? White-ish? Or do they reflect your ~3 color palette for texture colors as well somehow?

Thanks for taking the time to livestream/record your tutorial!

-For sure, try to factor that into your decision making.

-I was joking about faking ambient occlusion, but with good normal mapping you can accomplish a lot.

Here's a cool GDC talk called the Ultimate Trim that goes over powerful normal map techniques http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022324/The-Ultimate-Trim-Texturing-Techniques

-I was speaking about colors in general. As leplubo describes, it's more important what the overall color palette of you scene is than drawing a distinction between lighting/textures

 

 

[El_Exodus]

Sooooo....   Any updates/new screenshots for Santorini?

[FMPONE]

It's going well. Slow and steady

[FMPONE]

Coming soon!

 

 

[RivFader]

Wow, this looks amazing. And just in time for the next operation as well!

[FMPONE]

Wow, this looks amazing. And just in time for the next operation as well!

I wouldn't be so sure about that unfortunately. I'm not going to hurt the map to make a deadline, quality comes first.

[MTCyclone]

Coming soon!

 

 

This looks damn sexy! Good job! I hope valve add some good maps in next operation. Bloodhound just sucked...

[mr.P]

Coming soon!

 

 

this my lord, is inspiring!