Mornstar maybe

[PhilipK]

Figured I should stop spam the wip thread.

So I thought I'd start a dev thread for this showing the latest progress (and asking for help since I run into new problems all the time and you guys have been great so far helping out )

Latest stuff. For some reason I didn't get the sprites to show :\

(got this error, but I tried other sprites too with same result it seems: Precache of sprites/glow_test02 ambigious (no extension specified))

[Squirrelly]

The wood wall texture is too grainy and doesn't flow well with the rest of it, at least IMO. Good work otherwise.

[PhilipK]

Ty

I think it's mostly due to the spec which peaked way too high on the bright side. But yeah, you might be right the diffuse might need to be a bit less grainy as well. I'll fix that next.

[ReNo]

Not too sure about those box shaped bright spots around your ceiling lamps. I'd recommend dropping the light entities further below the light fixtures to stop it being so pronounced, or maybe increase the constant on them to stop it being so highly focused. Loving the textures so far, though I can see squirrelly's point about the wooden panels looking a bit too noisy, at least from the distance shown in the screenshots.

For your sprite problem - sounds like you just forgot to add the .spr extension to me. Can't remember if it's needed or not actually, but that error suggests that it is.

[Minos]

Lighting looks a lot better phill, but move the point lights downwards (or tune them down a bit).

[Sa74n]

yeah lights like the ones you chose there wont light the ceiling around them. you should use light_spot instead and just put a sprite in fron the of the model.

looks a bit empty, dont you think? no doors on the side, only one window... give this room some sense, will ya?

[OrnateBaboon]

The tree shadow looks a bit crisp in comparison to the shadow on the left, so depending on how high poly the room is going to be, you might be able to adjust the light maps to suit. I also think a shine (is it called a specular map?) would look good on the tile textures.

Have you added a shadow control entity yet? Can't really tell from the screens, but this will give your props_physics a shadow, as well as the characters running around the map.

[PhilipK]

they got specs. almost all textures has and quite some normals too.

it's just i think ive really set up the cubemap pretty bad.

When you select faces for it. I suppose you should only chose the large ones like walls and stuff and im not sure if it's high enough above the ground now.

[OrnateBaboon]

Just add a cubemap to the middle of the room, though make sure it is 16 units away from all brushwork. You won't need to assign any faces to see the effects. Go to the console, type "buildcubemaps", and that should work.

[PhilipK]

Thanks, good to know you don't need to assign faces.

Pics are updated now. Got the spots working. Perhaps a little too much intensity on them still tho :\ it's on 150 now.

[hessi]

Just add a cubemap to the middle of the room, though make sure it is 16 units away from all brushwork. You won't need to assign any faces to see the effects. Go to the console, type "buildcubemaps", and that should work.

and after building the cubemaps you should change to another level like de_dust and change back to your level to make sure your game will reload the complete bsp and resources.

[Defrag]

Precache of sprites/glow_test02

As ReNo said, the extension must be added (most of the sprites are .spr I think?) which I find to be rather stupid. You'd think they would build Hammer to auto select the extension based on whether it's a .vmt or a .spr.

Anyway, you're better off using point_spotlights instead of that sprite, IMO. Point spotlights will retain their directional information when rendering, so they will always face in the correct direction regardless of your view angle, whereas that sprite will always be view-alligned. This gives some weird effects, as the sprite will always be view-alligned but it has a pronounced direction and is elongated vertically. If you want to see what I mean, walk under a light that is using that sprite and then look up.

[skdr]

Looking very good PK!

One small suggestion. Add some kind of overlays to the ceiling just on top of the pillars, so they dont look like they're floating.

[ReNo]

they got specs. almost all textures has and quite some normals too.

it's just i think ive really set up the cubemap pretty bad.

When you select faces for it. I suppose you should only chose the large ones like walls and stuff and im not sure if it's high enough above the ground now.

Though you don't HAVE to assign faces manually, any faces that aren't manually assigned to a cubemap will pick the nearest one. That can mean picking one that is on the other side of a wall, or in the room above, and so on. I'd recommend that you manually assign faces to cubemaps if the faces are significant or you want to ensure consistant reflections across different surfaces. Note that you can only assign a certain number per cubemap manually - can be annoying in rooms with a lot of brush based detail but they normally allow you plenty to cover the main surfaces. You should, in general, place your cubemaps are eye height too (around 72 units above the floor).

[BaRRaKID]

I know you had troubles with the light, nut i'm oving how it loks now, really nice ambience.

My biggest advice if you'r rusty on mapping for source is to go to interlopers.net, it has tutorials on petty much everything you need to know. (cheap publicity )