Tie Facility

[ChalklYne]

The first few halls and the majority of the hangar will be decently the same, but it will take a turn in the hangar as the normal door to exit will be welded shut and it will have a different route to take. I have the first halls all the way up to the hangar almost finished just having serious problems with the shaders atm. mainly I need a shader with a diff, spec, env, and glow, and one without glow. But my blend funcs are screwy I think. I will post the shaders soon and we can get that kink worked out. heres a few screenies of the progress so far... The floor has a different texture on it now, ill post newer pics soon I have a lot to organize right now

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

now what I'm going to do is post pics of each individual map object and a ref pic of what its supposed to look like, and we can pick apart some of the shoddy texturing and things needed to make it decent.

[katanamaru]

Yay mirrored floors! I love those!

[ChalklYne]

I need to know about the d_model key in gtkradiant. It says you can have a misc_model_breakable and when you break it, a d_model (dead model) will spawn in it's place. I need it for things like this can anyone elaborate?

 

 

 

 

[AradorasXeon]

I am not quiet sure if you think what i think, but once I made a misc_model breakable by making a physic clip (which was func_breakable) and I targeted the misc model, For somereason I targeted the physic clip from the misc_model (I am not sure if you really need this, I just did it for some reason).

I don't think two misc_models can be spawn from the same point, so either make a different spawn on the 2nd misc_model, or spawn the 2nd misc_model 1 grid away from the 1st one, so when 1st is destroyed they will see the 2nd one, and they won't notice it's 1 grid away.

To be honest I don't know what is a d_model key.

[ChalklYne]

A little more work. The exterior is all base textures still until I get the geometry decently beleivable. I'm trying to save as much geometry as possible. So far only the exterior and floor are made out of brushes. The rest are models. I think I will finish the TIE fighter next so I can wrap up the hangar and move forward

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Im trying to play witht he exterior lighting as to kind of blacken out a few areas to save geometry... As always... a WIP

 

I suck at texturing and might recruit someone to reskin the map_objects

 

Hey guys I'll be honest with you... I can't remember how to map. I used to wayyyy back when I first started, but don't remember much at all. I know theres things like vis and portals or whatever to make sure you're not rendering the entire map all at once, and things like that which I have no idea about. Nor do I really feel like going back and re-learning it all as I'm sort of on a roll here. I want to finish modelling the hangar in XSI, then the wing assembly room, then possibly the cockpit assembly room, and will leave the rest alone. The halls can all be pretty much copied and pasted and twisted around to make new halls in between the rooms. And if I feel like making any other small rooms in between the halls, i think it can be done copying and pasting most of it, maybe a few brushes. Point being, I'm close to starting Raxus Prime, and would honestly like possibly someone to help me with the cliffs notes version of what I will need to implement map-wise to have an effective FPS and what not since everyones screaming MP I want to make sure I handle that aspect properly. So, either someone chip in a bit and let me know what I'll need so I wont have to read throught a bunch of websites again and waste time I could be building. The map_objects are pretty much like legos in gtk. you can just snap it all together after I build it in XSI, maybe add some lighting here and there and what-not. So yeah either someone let me know what vis and portals and how to save fps in these maps for MP, or take em and make em MP friendly after i clip all the legos together...

does that make sense?

 

I'd rather be bustin out models all day then relearning a bunch of GTK 

Edited July 23, 2013 by ChalklYne

[eezstreet]

Aside from the pipes in the last picture, the texturing looks perfectly fine. No, my biggest gripe would have to be the lighting, especially the level of ambient light (which is too freaking high) and the lighting in the hallways, which looks off.

[ChalklYne]

Sorry man I should've pointed out in the first post that I have no idea of mapping and lighting I can't remember much at all. I edited that last post

 

I do understand what you're saying and agree the hallways need more lighting, and the ambient scale in gtk should be lower i think its at 64 when i put it at 32, it looked black as hell through those windows. I think maybe I should drop it back down, and fix the glare on those damn windows so I can see it better

 

Ive exported the brushwork and will now build a more optimized version with XSI to save tri's and texture loading. so the majority probably 95% of this map will be models. i dint plan on it being that way, but as opposed to gtk I can build it in xsi with far less texture loading and tri's.

 

 

 

Thats what ive exported. i will rebuild it tonight

 

 

I'm just not sure the best way to compile the map in GTK...

Oh crap i think i remember... the models will all be detail right? And non_solid? Then you have to no_clip it in gtk huh? Something hell I'm lost. I'll just keep building  =)

[ChalklYne]

Exterior rebuilt. Still have to optimize it and uvmap it but I'm liking how it turned out.. Plus I can do it all in maybe One texture, then possibly alpha map the arm extension peice and the cascading peice if that pillar after I get it to render nicely. Hell I dunno. But how's it coming along?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ChalklYne]

And here it is all optimized (meaning I removed un needed tris and backfaces). So With the GTK export being almost 10,000 tris, the new exterior will be roughly 1,232 tris and instead of 50-60 instances of textures it will call for just two. Should be ok for FPS I hope.

I'll UV unwrap it tonight maybe

 

 

 

 

[Szico VII]

I'm just not sure the best way to compile the map in GTK...

Oh crap i think i remember... the models will all be detail right? And non_solid? Then you have to no_clip it in gtk huh? Something hell I'm lost. I'll just keep building  =)

 

Correct, and Correct. But its clip it, not noclip it.

[ChalklYne]

Correct, and Correct. But its clip it, not noclip it.

Once I make them non_solid... wont they stop receiving shading info from the lighting?

[ChalklYne]

A piece before I uv unwrap it

 

 

 

 

 

 

[katanamaru]

So you are modelling your stage and skinning it rather than making it in gtkradient? Interesting. I didn't know that was possible.

[Szico VII]

Noclip isnt an 'option' with models - you put one in using radiant and they automatically are nonsolid. You have to surround them with clipbrushes. You have to set the lightmapped spawnflag if you want them to shade using lightmaps properly.

[ChalklYne]

So you are modelling your stage and skinning it rather than making it in gtkradient? Interesting. I didn't know that was possible.

I wasnt planning on it, just seemed like after I built a piece in GTK, I looked at it and thought hell, I can save 75% of those tris and use only one texture instead of the engine having to load 5 or 6 for one detailed piece. I exported the brushes into XSI, and just rebuilt em with farrrr less tris and it will only have to load 1 texture for it. No backfaces or between hidden faces. Granted those issues can be solved with caulk, I just figured it was better on the fps mainly because of the texture thing. Also, in gtk... if you move verts around and stuff, you risk stretching textures. I got frustrated with it and said screw it Im just gunna build this peice in XSI... and got addicted. Now I just need confirmation from one of the coders maybe that this will be easier on the engine. I'm just more worried about how JA will act once I have a map of 95% models. The tri count is wayyy less than any normal gtk map, and the textures are far less as well... Just not sure if those will make a significant difference.

 

I will tell you this much. i have every model right now set as solid in gtk (just because i wasn't sure how to do it until scico let me know whats up) and it seems to play fine. and I have a ton of detail in here. So I'm sure once I non_solid, turn into detail, and clip it all, it will be pretty sweet.

[ChalklYne]

 bit more accurate exterior and tri+vert count. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ChalklYne]

Slightly more accurate, with less geometry, and a final count on everything bfore I Uv unwrap it and slap it in the map. I'm satisfied with it now and this is the final version. No more tweaks to the exterior. It would have been hell to get this all correct and optimized in GTK. For me at least

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'll be moving on to finishing up the TIE fighter after this texturing and shaders. The long arm and the structural beams are alpha mapped.

 

 

 

I would appreciate if someone wouldn't mind making me a decent skybox for this map . And help me figure out the lowest res/ best results way to get a good couple of dogfights going on out in space without using models. I want to maybe just have an animated alpha plane with a TIE shooting. And one of an X-wing shooting. Then maybe just set waypoints for that alpha plane so I could have the entire dogfight scene out the window be maybe under 50 verts. It should be possible as long as they fly out of the view each time rather quickly. Then maybe pop up somewhere else to give the illusion of tons of them out there.

Any other ideas that would be easier or better on the engine?

[minilogoguy18]

Show a wireframe before you start unwrapping, I bet there are tons of points that can be removed without changing the shape/volume at all since in one of your previous screens I could see tons of optimization that could be done.

 

I'm intrigued by modeling out a map and just placing everything in radiant, flagging objects then compiling since the tools in radiant are far inferior to Softimage in terms of building geometry. Are you able to get proper bounding volumes of the exported models?

[ChalklYne]

Oh yeah the models' bounding boxes seem to be working fine. Although I was told I will have to make them all non_solid and clip it all for maximum FPS. In regards to your question at least, yeah that's how I have it set up right now as all of the geometry solid, and the only real brushes are the floor so far. not even walls behind the models as I modelled them in XSI to snap together pretty well. I set the snapping in gtk to about a 16 I beleive it was and just snap them all together. it is honestly saving so much brushwork/ geometry right now because yeah like you said thers just some things you can't do "properly" in GTK. I seem to be having no problems right now with it, but I plan on having quite an extensive exterior, and quite a few halls in between the major rooms, plus when you take into consideration the hangar. the hangar has to have possibly 15 people on it at a time to be considered done properly at all. Plus the elevator spawning new people every now and again. Plus the visible dogfights out the bay door. So I am trying to experiment with this and really just maximize what I can get out of the engine for this map. This one, raxus Prime, Felucia... those maps are full of clutter and have so much going on that I just want to give it the best chance possible for decent playability. 

 

As for the wires... It's hard to show or explain because theres so much going on... I'll PM you an .obj of it so you can dissect it and take a look for yourself. Keep in mind though, the only backfaces that aren't deleted, are either seen from the window view of the 3 different times you can look out the window and see it coming down the halls to the hangar, so some of it had to be there, and also, remember that you have to be able to look out the hangar bay and not have issues there as well.

[CaptainCrazy]

Looks great so far!

[minilogoguy18]

I managed to knock 99 vert's off the model, there are a lot of weird polygons though, is it Radiant that draws all those unnecessary faces? I'd probably just use it as a reference a build a new mesh over top of this one, it's pretty messy.

[ChalklYne]

DAMNITT!!!  mini I found it you are dead right as usual. Just deleted a bunch of verts some jarbled up unseen faces in that tall building to the side I rebuilt everything between the first 2 updates, except that building because I thought it would stay the same, Doing so, I kind of built over the top of some areas that needed to be deleted. Good eye man

 

Also, somewhat unrelated... If it is something we can all quickly agree on needs changing I will, but I won't allow this entire mod to be picked apart anally by every modder out there until it fits everyones sensitive little desires. I will never finish. I won't rebuild anything unless I'm totally screwing the pooch somewhere.

 

 

Final Count:

8 objects,

1,670 tris, 

1,278 verts

 

 

 

 

Thx mini

[minilogoguy18]

On the 3 square panels there are unused vertex's, you can spot them becuse they are on the outer side of the object and the 2 edges they connect flow in 1 straight line, if that vert doesn't stick out any it can be removed.

[ChalklYne]

I been looking for a half hour and cant find it. Are you talking about the 3 panels lined up along the side of the rounded floor peice?

[Setlec]

never modeled until now but i have to say that this is very intimidating skill that you have ChalkYne! awesome work can't wait to play on that map!