[RELEASE] Bespin Duel Remake

[SomaZ]

So this is intended to be some "behind-the-scenes" and/or feedback thread for the released Bespin Duel Reborn mod, which you can grab here:

 

The idea behind this mod is simple: I need something to show the modern rend2 features. Duel1 is quite small, so lets just remake this. Easy

Like so often in life, things aren't as easy as they seem at first glance. I imported the original duel1 map into blender and realised that this will take quite some time to actually remake the complete map. This is like redoing 40 materials and rend2 requires Albedo/BaseColor textures, normal maps, roughness maps, metalness maps, ambient occulsion maps and in some cases hight maps. Uff.

Spoiler

Image by @AshuraDX

Since most of the walls are based on the same materials, I created one material from scratch. This material I repurposed as a master material in substance designer. All other wall materials are based on this master material.

Spoiler

First material made in Substance Designer

Reusable material graph derived from the first material

Another material using the resusable one

Another material using the resusable one

Here are some images when I was testing the first iterations of the textures in-game

Spoiler

After finishing all the materials I wanted to replace completely, I started modeling all the missing parts of the map.

Spoiler

Left model is the highpoly model, right model is the lowpoly version with baked normal map

After that I started building the new map.

Spoiler

After I added all the materials and models to the map, I started working on the lighting in blender. The first iteration of a lighted map looked like this

Spoiler

I worked on a proper sky for a night time version of the map, but was never really satisfied, so I started working on a day time version instead

Spoiler

Last few edits for the materials and some adjustments to the lighting

Spoiler

If you are interested in more details of some of the workflows or if you want to know more about a specific model or material, feel free to ask.

[SomaZ]

So, I started baking the remaining textures for the vanilla mp/duel1 map. Once I've finished the remaining ones, I'll update the download.

[Futuza]

Anyway you'd consider including the source stuff for this for other modders that want to try and see an example for how to do things with rend2?  I'd like to add rend2 to JKG at some point, but I'm not much of a mapper and not really too sure where I'd have to start with that aspect of it - plus I gotta merge rend2 with JKG's source too.  I'm not really ready to do it quite yet as I'm busy with some other things for the mod that take priority, but I imagine there's other projects like ours that would like more instruction for how to use/implement rend2.

[SomaZ]

Just now, Futuza said:

Anyway you'd consider including the source stuff for this for other modders that want to try and see an example for how to do things with rend2?  I'd like to add rend2 to JKG at some point, but I'm not much of a mapper and not really too sure where I'd have to start with that aspect of it - plus I gotta merge rend2 with JKG's source too.  I'm not really ready to do it quite yet as I'm busy with some other things for the mod that take priority, but I imagine there's other projects like ours that would like more instruction for how to use/implement rend2.

Yea, I will release some of the sources when I had some time to tidy them up. One essential part for rend2 is just modern asset creation. I can't really teach that. Though there are lots of resources online for it. I planned on doing some tutorials on some things like: "How to properly bake normal maps for rend2","How and where do I place cubemaps and what do they actually do?" or "What are deluxemaps and why should I bother?" 

All the blender lighting/mapping stuff I'm still figuring out myself tbh. Theres some kind of workflow, but I think I could potentially streamline this much more, make it less error prone etc. Main problem about that is that I really dont have much time right now and it will just get less end of october. Trying to teach as much as possible to others and helping where I can.

[Noodle]

Was the mapping part done in blender too or did you do it in GTKRadiant and just applied the textures to it? 

[SomaZ]

4 hours ago, Noodle said:

Was the mapping part done in blender too or did you do it in GTKRadiant and just applied the textures to it? 

Yea, I used this addon: https://github.com/c-d-a/io_export_qmap

I used blender to blockout everything. Later, once I've added all the models, I build collision brushes for the models in Radiant though. Building brushes in blender is a huge pain tbh. Wouldn't recommend it. Extruded terrain is something different, I would never do this in radiant agian but always with the addon I linked.

[DeMaddin]

First of all, I'd like to commend you on this outstanding remake and the work on rend2. It looks fantastic and actually motivated me to map for JA again after more than 10 years.

Could you elaborate a little more on the process of generating the lightmaps, specifically the HDR ones? You wrote you are using Blender for this, correct? Looking at the PK3 you released, it seems the .hdr files in the maps folder contain the baked lightmaps. I guess q3map2 cannot generate these. But then I am asking myself, how the lightmaps are compiled into the BSP. A decompiled version of your map at least revealed some q3map2 parameters being used. It seems you are combining the Radiant BSP with the Blender BSP using the -mergebsp switch.