How to create more visually interesting maps

[Beyond Heretic]

I've been making a handful of maps in GtkRadiant for a while. Although something I've noticed is most of my maps just feel like some variation on square rooms connected together. I'm wondering if there are any tutorials on how to make competant looking outdoor environments. Stuff like how to make hills or cliff faces.

 

I'm also wondering if there are any in depth tutorials on lighting in the Quake 3 engine. Since I don't feel like I have a very good grasp on it yet, and all of my lighting feels very simple and uninteresting compared to some of the maps I've seen for JK3. I'm also wondering if there's a tutorial on how to make water currents (IE: Water)

[DT.]

Have a look at JKA's yavin water shaders, pretty sure they did something you're after there. Also for the best visuals, you should use the misc_model entity to insert models (made in a 3d package such as 3ds Max, Blender) into your map. You can only do so much with brushwork.

[Beyond Heretic]

Have a look at JKA's yavin water shaders, pretty sure they did something you're after there.

So far I've found two water textures labelled waterfall and a few shaders marked waterfall. With the former, it appears as a still texture. With the latter, upon applying to the surface of a Caulked brush just causes the surface of the brush to appear as an error grid.

 

For the best visuals, you should use the misc_model entity to insert models (made in a 3d package such as 3ds Max, Blender) into your map. You can only do so much with brushwork.

So far I'm still learning. I want to learn to make environments similar to this screenshot of the first level.

I'm just wondering if there's a way to manipulate brushes into more natural shapes in the editor. Rather than creating the meshes in Blender and importing them into the editor.

[Ramikad]

All in all terrain and rocky walls are the only features you can manipulate into something decent without resorting to models. You may be interested in these tutorials:

 

http://jkhub.org/tutorials/article/101-terrain-creation-using-easygen/

http://jkhub.org/tutorials/article/92-hand-shaped-terrain/

 

But for single rocks I suggest you making models, since they need more natural shapes. Creating such shapes in Radiant is not convenient, because brushes tend to misalign textures at certain angles (and it's time consuming), and patches tend to be heavy on the game when spammed all over the map.

 

About the lighting, if you feel the map is too dark overall you may want to set a _minlight <value> in the worldspawn, which will light it up a bit.

_lightmapscale 0.125 makes shadows much smoother and generally leads to a better lit map, at the cost of compile time (also since it needs to be compiled with a -bounce 8 compile to work properly) and potentially a compile error.

Add the -patchshadows command at the light stage of a custom compile build to make patches project shadows.

Also, another good trick is to use light shaders as opposed to light point-based entities. Check out the base shaders to see how it's done.

 

As for the water (though unrelated to currents - but I can see how a tcMod scroll in the shader could resolve it a bit) check out Darth NormaN's Water Tutorial:

 

http://jkhub.org/tutorials/article/62-realistic-water/

[Langerd]

Making the MD3 models is a way to go. It works nice with props, detail objects and decorations. It also very nice to make trees, plants and even rocks.

I used blender to create some pipes,tables and even gong . Also you can scale them and rotate them without messing with the texture (i wanted to rotate the brush crate once and the texture was messed up.. With MD3 model of crate you have a detailed object and also an object that is visually good looking )

Some examples:




Most of them are made by me i am not very good at textures but still they can give the map a very good looking. Without them maps would be big hollow areas.

Of course making some details with brushes and patches is not a bad idea too. It depends what textures,shaders You using Of course  decorated textures can be very effective and change the hollow room into the very nice looking area:



In my opinion for the good looking map it is important to make things in the style and atmosphere that they should be. The Tatooine maps should have dirty textures, leathers, rusty metals, rocks, sands etc. But cloud city for example should have a very clean decorative walls, floors, some colored glasses and they should be not very sharp and dark.

And also... Lightning.. without good lightning map would look worse than what we expected. In my opinion the master of lightning is one of the members called Pande - His tatooine map is a masterpiece. The lightning in this map is very effective and it shows in a very nice way tatooine city. I also find out how it works on my Cloud City map. Adding the mix of orange and blue light created a very beautiful effect For making the great effects with lightning i also recommend the fog- it is rly great for dark ancient areas or for death pits but i also find a great way to make things with light.



Fog can make a rly great effects. The star wars have a lot of places where there is a foggy stuff It effect on the lightning and glowing shaders. If it used in good way of course because sometimes it creates the laggy problems and the map doesnt look quite good.



I hope i will help D: I just show the tricks i learned. I am here to help