Level Design Help Files

[blackdog]

Oh I have that course as well! I bought it in December I think, when was on a good discount.

Unfortunately I haven't watched more than the first 4-5 lessons (and didn't practice any of it), but seems a thorough explanation. Goes deep into the basics of the UI and basic command/functions.

Watching video content on Steam is a drag though, until now is implemented very poorly, there's no playlist of sorts, there's no "watched" label that tells you where you left, every video you click opens a new window/player.

I hope they have improved since then, since it was just a few days ago they announced they are starting to provide movies in the catalog.

[JSadones]

3 hours ago, blackdog said:

Oh I have that course as well! I bought it in December I think, when was on a good discount.

Unfortunately I haven't watched more than the first 4-5 lessons (and didn't practice any of it), but seems a thorough explanation. Goes deep into the basics of the UI and basic command/functions.

Watching video content on Steam is a drag though, until now is implemented very poorly, there's no playlist of sorts, there's no "watched" label that tells you where you left, every video you click opens a new window/player.

I hope they have improved since then, since it was just a few days ago they announced they are starting to provide movies in the catalog.

I'm having some minor problems as well, but everything is running smooth for me.

[blackdog]

Don't get me wrong, it was smooth for me as well, just the experience is poor, but is a Steam fault.

[R-C-MAN]

Hey Guys I have a question about stairs in Hammer.

I know when making stairs example 8x12 and you attach them at the corners and make how many you need. Group them and then use the clipping tool to cut the bottom half off, place a NODRAW brush underneath so they don't leak if open to the world. What happens when you create metal stairs as I've created here, since they do no need a nodraw brush underneath but are a func_detail do I need to do anything else. I was thinking of placing a player clip on top so the bots don't have issues with them.

http://imgur.com/GFCcnE1

is there anything I am missing?

Thanks

RC

[Squad]

1 hour ago, R-C-MAN said:

I was thinking of placing a player clip on top so the bots don't have issues with them.

http://imgur.com/GFCcnE1

is there anything I am missing?

Always clip stairs  

Other than that, seems like it's good to go.

[text_fish]

Does anyone else ever get this funny texture glitch in Hammers' 3D view?

 

[Freaky_Banana]

On 25.1.2017 at 5:29 PM, text_fish said:

Does anyone else ever get this funny texture glitch in Hammers' 3D view?

 

Yea, I get this too. No idea what it's down to though  .

[poLemin]

On 25.1.2017 at 5:29 PM, text_fish said:

Does anyone else ever get this funny texture glitch in Hammers' 3D view?

 

Yep, happens every now and then. It will not appear when using "3D Textured" instead of "3D Shaded Textured Polygons" in the 3D viewport.

[Squad]

What poLemin said. It happens with quite some textures from train iirc.

Most of the time I'm in 3D Textured mode, so I don't really notice it anyway

[text_fish]

I need water at different heights within the same PVS. As far as I understand it this is very illegal in Source, however the higher body of water is not in the playable area and is only a visual thing, so I think I should be able to hack something together. My current thinking is to create an animated refract texture to sit on a brush face just above a fairly plain opaque texture, though I've no idea how costly this would be performance wise or whether it would even look any good.

Any ideas?

Edited June 28, 2017 by text_fish
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[leplubodeslapin]

2 hours ago, text_fish said:

I need water at different heights within the same PVS. As far as I understand it this is very illegal in Source, however the higher body of water is not in the playable area and is only a visual thing, so I think I should be able to hack something together. My current thinking is to create an animated refract texture to sit on a brush face just above a fairly plain opaque texture, though I've no idea how costly this would be performance wise or whether it would even look any good.

Any ideas?

You can use water at different heights, you just can't use the real-time reflection shader that Source uses on 2 separate plans.

That's why you can find 2 types of water texture : Expensive and Cheap. The cheap type can still have reflections but it will be cubemap based (which can be fine if it's not a playable area !). So, try to read some water VMT files and create 2 water texture using the same diffuse and stuff, just use the cheap cubemap reflections shader for the higher water brush.

Also, most of the time you don't need to use a refract texture but a normalmap mask.

[text_fish]

28 minutes ago, leplubodeslapin said:

You can use water at different heights, you just can't use the real-time reflection shader that Source uses on 2 separate plans.

That's why you can find 2 types of water texture : Expensive and Cheap. The cheap type can still have reflections but it will be cubemap based (which can be fine if it's not a playable area !). So, try to read some water VMT files and create 2 water texture using the same diffuse and stuff, just use the cheap cubemap reflections shader for the higher water brush.

Also, most of the time you don't need to use a refract texture but a normalmap mask.

Thanks for the reply Lep, I had thought that was the case as well but it stopped the expensive water from rendering correctly and when I looked in to it on the VDC I found out that expensive and cheap water can't be used within the same PVS.

As a temporary workaround I've placed a brush with a semi-transparent watery-looking texture at the height I want the non-playable water and I've got an expensive water volume underneath at the same height as the playable water, which sort of gives some movement to the area. It's still far from ideal, but I think I'll move on to another part of the map for now and hopefully in time I'll come up with a better solution.

Edited June 28, 2017 by text_fish

[Serialmapper]

Does anyone know how to properly use the new compound  HR overlays like those in the picture?

For example i want to use only the part where it's written "kasbah". When i want to resize the overlay in half it always ends up only with the other half that i don't want to use, no matter the side where i drag to. I had tried with texture lock but only deforms the overlay.

Edited November 15, 2017 by Serialmapper

[Rad]

Maybe try to copy values from the original one?

[Serialmapper]

It worked for that specific overlay. Anyway from that i observed that the following parameters were altered, and by playing with them, plus using texture lock i finally found a way to properly use the complex HR overlays.

 

Edited November 5, 2017 by Serialmapper