Making my first map - loads of questions

[Psyrius]

I've been into some mapping before, but mostly at beginners level. Nothing very spectacular. But I love it. But I feel I get stuck every time since there's so many questions that keep coming up.

The map I'm making now is an aim map. A year ago I was going big and was thinking I would make a competative map and I read about principles and what I should think about etc. But it ended up being to hard the moment I felt everything was a mess.

 

I don't want my map to look shit and I want everything to be in proportion.

 

Problems/questions:

1. If I'm making a room that's 512x512 and 128 in height and there's a second floor with the same size - is it correct that the outside of that building's height should be 288 if the walls and floor/roof is 16?

2. Since the outside of that building is in a "odd" number, I usually step into texturing problems later.

3. Should I always try to make the inside of buildings - like hallways, rooms, platforms etc. be in any of these numbers 128, 256, 512 and so on... to make it look natural?

4. What I've done is that I started making floors, walls, rooms, stairs etc with the block tool and started importing props. Sometimes I find a prop that I really like that I want in a specific place but it doesn't fit because the room is too big/small. And it's kind of frustrating since I have to erase and move alot of things to make it work... I guess you learn with time - but if you were in the same situation, would you make something with the block tool that looks like that prop? I want to make some beams in the roof of my little warehouse looking map, but I'm afraid to use too much blocks to make the map run badly?

5. If you would make a small "aim map", how would your workflow look like? Would you start with the block tool to make floors, walls, rooms, stairs etc? And then texturing? And then lighting? And then props? Or do you kind of do everything all at once?

6. Do anyone know of a tutorial which shows how to make a nice looking map from start to finish?

 

Can't think of more questions right now, but they just keep coming up all the time. If someone would allow me to spam you with questions, I could even pay you a small fee for the trouble through paypal

[biXen]

I am fairly new to Hammer as well, but I'll give my 5 cents.

1) There's no strict rule that the height needs to be 128 or the floor needs to be 16. Those are guidelines, the best thing you can do is check in-game what's comfortable or not. It shouldn't feel like the roof is on top of you.

2) You can always cut up a an outside wall, or have a ledge or something that breaks it up, allows you to just use the same texture and just shift it a bit. Also beware that there's textures that are made in more than one piece. 

3) There are reasons to stick these numbers, such as texturing, but not for everything. It's more natural to have things random, as long as they aren't wrong/hindering. Humans will think a level where everything is rotated in perfect 90 degree angles as unnatural, because real life isn't perfect.

4) It's possible ot make something with blocks and export as a prop which you can then import back into your map. So might not be something you need to worry about. That said, the good maps have a scary amount of custom props, and if you can see that you could use a whole set of them it might be worth adjusting your level to that, while still in block/greybox mode. If not you are better off living without it first and just using a placeholder for it.

5) Block and greybox until it feels right, then test it a lot. I would try out some concepts if I had any, such as special architectural elements I wanted to have in the level. Might texture a bit then, but go back to greybox until it all feels right. Then work on lighting and texturing for the important areas. Props are not important until later for me, I will just have placeholders. In fact I'm not even sure if I can get props for everything I want.

6) Not a big proper map, the closest I've seen is 3kliksphilips videos and the articles here that are linked from the beginner's thread.

[jackophant]

@Aerium88

1. The outside measurements don't have to match the inside + any wall thickness. You make the walls as thick as they need to be.
2. It doesn't matter what size the building is, but initially I would work on a 32x32 grid. You can adjust grid size with the square brackets, and find out how large each grid square is by creating a box. At the top of the menu there are 2 options, texture lock "tl" and texture scale "<tl>". Have both of these unchecked so all textures you place use original alignment otherwise they will be all over the place.
3. Don't worry about the neat numbers, concentrate more on getting a size that works for gameplay: make sure people have enough room to maneuver and allow space for a full jump, unless it's a doorway which is allowed to be lower.
4. Leave props until later. You can use the odd one to give a sense of place for a particular theme, but concentrate on the brushwork first (and for the love of all things holy in this world make sure you have grid snapping on, toggle it with shift+w). Can't really help you with finding props too big for your rooms, that's just a lack of planning.
5. The process for a small aim map would be the same for a large, fully featured map: Start with block it all out in some sort of grey texture (I type "meas" and/or "reflect" in the texture browser filter to get the useful ones up. You can type "tool" for tool textures as well). When you're happy with your layout and sightlines, start to work in a bit more brush detail like trims on walls, or holes for windows etc. Then start to apply textures. How you do the cover for your aim map is up to you, but brushwork cover is more reliable imo. props tend to have funny hit boxes which mean you do damage like "124 in 7 hits" with an AK or something silly. Something you should do anyway, but especially for aim maps is use 64 unit tall boxes sparingly.
6. Most of what makes a map look good is the planning before hand. A large element of it will be your proficiency with hammer, but with the planning you take the thinking out of it. Find some nice reference images and actually copy some of it with brushworks/props. Don't copy layouts though as real world locations might look nice and natural, but rarely play well. Best I can suggest is go through some links I posted here: https://www.mapcore.org/topic/18911-attn-new-map-makers/

 

[Psyrius]

Thanks alot to both of you  I'll add more questions here when they come up.

[Psyrius]

I have roof windows in my warehouse which consists of a frame prop and a glass/window prop.

I have set the sun direction from the skybox in a manner which I like, but I do not like the shadows the glass/windows cast.

Can I change so that the windows do not cast any shadows? So that it's just the frame that does?

I tried to go into the properties of the glass/window prop and change "Disable Shadows" from No to Yes, but it didn't work out the way I wanted.

Sorry for the weird slice up top, but you get the picture  Here is my roof windows:

The left one is "Disable Shadows" No - The right one is "Disable Shadows" Yes.

This is the result I want, but I achieved this by just removing the glass/window prop - which I don't want to do.

 

[jackophant]

Honestly I'd leave it. Not to put your feelings down about it, but that is a massively trivial detail.

If you really want to do anything, use a brush you've crafted yourself with a glass texture on it, although it'll probably look worse.

[Psyrius]

Okay Jackophant, I'll leave it Thank you.

[Psyrius]

The beams in my roof is acting strange. The lighting seems fine when they're very distant from you, but the closer you get to them, they turn black. What's causing this and is there a fix?

 

 

Edited July 28, 2015 by Aerium88

[TooProForYahoo]

Make sure they aren't clipped into anything, usually that is the problem.

In other words, make sure the beams aren't in the roof or inside of a wall

[Psyrius]

Make sure they aren't clipped into anything, usually that is the problem.

In other words, make sure the beams aren't in the roof or inside of a wall

Okay, thank you It looks like that was the problem. But it's weird because if I drag the walls away 1 unit from the beam, it gets a tiny space between the beam and the wall. Oh well, I guess I'll find another solution.

[Psyrius]

My next question is how I should proceed to make a night skybox? I want the ambience in my map to be dark, but everything will be lit up by lamps.

I've played around with "light_environment", but the skybox is still too bright. "cs_baggage_skybox_" seems to be the darkest one available for me...?

My guess is you need a custom skybox? But how do I add one? And where can I find some nice ones? I've been googling my ass off this morning, but I can't find anything good.

[biXen]

You can use dusk and make the light_environment a bit darker. I don't think you really should have it that much darker if you have an outside area, as it will likely be unbelievable light sources when you light up areas enough outside of that.

For skyboxes, I am making a custom one myself, but I bought the one to use. There are plenty of sites that offer them to buy, there are also free ones, if you search for sIBL you will get a set of them. 

To use them in game you have to do some conversions because CSGO uses a different format than they come in. If you aren't using HDR skybox you can use "cube the sphere" (Google) to create the 6 images CSGO takes as input. If you use HDR you need to use a different program to avoid losing lighting information when you convert the images. 

It's a pretty complicated process if you haven't used HDR's before at all. The other thing you need to do is to cut the images when you create them for CSGO, this is all described in the Valve documentation though, just search for Source skybox and you'll find links to most of this.

I am thinking of creating a tutorial for all the processes I find to be a bit complicated with the whole Source/Hammer thing, but no promises, as I have way too little time already for the contest

Edited July 29, 2015 by biXen

[Psyrius]

You can use dusk and make the light_environment a bit darker. I don't think you really should have it that much darker if you have an outside area, as it will likely be unbelievable light sources when you light up areas enough outside of that.

For skyboxes, I am making a custom one myself, but I bought the one to use. There are plenty of sites that offer them to buy, there are also free ones, if you search for sIBL you will get a set of them. 

To use them in game you have to do some conversions because CSGO uses a different format than they come in. If you aren't using HDR skybox you can use "cube the sphere" (Google) to create the 6 images CSGO takes as input. If you use HDR you need to use a different program to avoid losing lighting information when you convert the images. 

It's a pretty complicated process if you haven't used HDR's before at all. The other thing you need to do is to cut the images when you create them for CSGO, this is all described in the Valve documentation though, just search for Source skybox and you'll find links to most of this.

I am thinking of creating a tutorial for all the processes I find to be a bit complicated with the whole Source/Hammer thing, but no promises, as I have way too little time already for the contest

Do you mean "Dust"? For this map that I'm making, it's just an indoor area. That's why I wanna test to have some nice lighting inside, but also windows that you can look through to see that it's night outside. I'm trying to understand what you're saying with sIBL, cube the sphere and all that. But I feel it's getting abit too complicated for me ^^ Why the heck isn't there just a tutorial somewhere to make a nice looking night map in CS:GO?! I've seen alot of them and Valve has also included alot of different night maps in their "operations".

*siiiigh*

Edited July 29, 2015 by Aerium88

[biXen]

To be honest I was very surprised at how few proper tutorials there are for 3dsmax or maya to source/hammer and things like that. Sure, there is some (old) stuff, but with the amount of user created content I'd guess there was more. 

Anyways, I was speaking about the sky from the sky list that is dusk time of day  

The process of making and converting HDRs is pretty much the same no matter what software you use, but of course that can be complicated enough on it's own. I'm lucky enough to have made my own custom environments for 3D scenes so I've already done a lot of that. 

For your problem, if you have limited visibility outside, just create a fake skymap which doesn't cast shadow and don't let the skybox contribute to lighting at all or create a fake skybox that is just a starry night picture or whatever you want. Even in arch vis 3D scenes "outdoor lighting" is usually just faked with area lights. 

If something is too complicated or doesn't work as you want, do what Pixar would do, fake it

Edited July 29, 2015 by biXen

[Psyrius]

My sky looks okay now with the help of a 3D skybox with dark concrete walls and dark fog  lol... The only thing I don't like with this is that the light from the skybox isn't rendered into my map. I'd like some subtle moonlight through the windows. But I'm just so lost right now... I managed to get a basic understanding of VTFEdit, so that's cool. But I didn't get my custom skybox texture to work eventough I put in the correct location in the .vmt file.

"UnlitGeneric"
{
             // Original shader: BaseTexture
             "$basetexture" "skybox\Sky56\sky56bk"
             "$nofog" 1
             $ignorez 1
}

The version of the .vmt files is 7.5, so that shouldn't be the problem. However, none of the boxes are checked in the Image -> Flags. Should any boxes be checked before it can work?