AngelModder

Well daily update time today we'll be discussing lights and bright ideas. First this is not exactly a new method but perhaps this will give others some ideas. I needed a realistic light so for me this screamed one thing that I've never seen any one d in JKA. Filament and realistic shadowing. Step one of course was to build a giant light and light bulb as I would need them, then compile the entire thing with a _lightmapscale of 0.125 (the sharpest one can get without frying q3map2's little brain. Step 2 was to acctually look at how it said the lighting would work, one of the reasons for the light needing to be build on a larger scale, was not only for the models detail sake (and my sanity during building it), but also so that the light entity itself could be placed within the actual bulb and ergo show me what would really happen. The result looked some thing like this... Tisk Tisk q3map2, you have yet again completely disappointed me... While this result is highly disappointing and has the downward effect of hurting our light compile it does show me one thing I need, what the shadows roughly should look like So now we move on to step 3. Step 3 involves a little Photoshop™ work and this little shader here complements of @@Oobah Texture Shader - Now, we compile again only this time everything that is the light fixture has been set to a func_group with _cs set to 0 a, This makes is so the light fixture itself not longer casts shadows ergo only my decal shadow/bloom will be the visible effect. This time around we got this, and a much faster compile since Q3Map2 needed to compute nothing all while getting a better result then it ever could have given us. WOW! now thats how we all want our lights to look right? Now all that was left was to turn it into an ase (with the decal as part of it) and wallah end result is this beautiful light that snipers will love zooming in on! Regards... AngelModder™

Never mention the shame that is swtor ! I do agree though this would make a sick model for jka.

Alright well I figured it being the 1rst of the month I would show you folk's what progress has been made and what is yet to come. So i broke it down using the ships floor plans. Allot of it is at 50% but do take into account that 20 days ago, none of this was even here or was about 15% at the time, it was just a blank Hull and a few hallways. ! So in 20-25 days i'll be starting a closed beta and then of course April 10th is open beta, FULL release will probably be the end of April, I do apologize but the work load and research is immense. And doing this by myself takes a while XD. I do promise though that Open beta will not disappoint It may just be shy some finishing touches and a few other planned interiors I want to include like some bedrooms etc. Theirs also a shot of a VERY early wip water shader. I decided since this go around the exterior would draw about a 1/rd of the tris the original did it might be safe to do what I always wanted and add a mirror shader to the water. Now for those of you with low end machine or just have problems with mirror's I will be including a few VIS friendly buttons in the ships bridge, they will allow you to turn on and off certain thing's. Things like the furniture, the mirror water, and a few other effects to help further optimize it for personal or server use. As I said though this water is highly subject to change appearance wise, mostly I just wanted to get it working first before fine tuning. An interesting note is that if you're on the ship say on the deck, unless you can physically see the ships reflection, it doesn't draw it. So the only time you'll have it drawing will be in spectator as you're flying around the ship. Luckily Mirror portals follow the rules of vis work. So a few notes on this last picture. I know it's very very dark, do some research you'll learn that on the night of April 10th 1912 it was extremely dark not like Cameron showed it in his highly inaccurate film. The sea was calm (although I'll be making it look like real water asap), with no moon, but more stars than many had ever seen, the horizon seemed to just fade in to a black mass only broken by the stars above. As such I have busted my ass throught the entire map to make sure that the lighting is correctly done, the right tone the right wattage, hell lights even make an electrical humming sound when you're near them. I want YOU, to see and understand that night and what they were up against as you undoubtedly blow each other and my beautiful interior to bits. While I want every one to of course have fun wit the end result, I want you to remember this is above all my own form of a memorial, and to once in a while stop and read the names on the walls. 1,500 some odd souls names will be carved into the oak paneling surrounding the grand staircase. Read them, read the ages next to each name, theirs a lot of children, a lot of folks no older than us whose lives were tragically cut short. So as your having fun, remember them once in a while. ~AngelModder™

I understand mate this is a use with caution sort of thing. Although I do have to admit I am anxious to see my project with actual specular mapping and height mapping. As you've seen in the photo's theirs a lot of wood and carving's every where. It would look quiet grand to build it compatible (as an option of course) for those using the rend2. I do wish I knew a bit about JKA's Q3 coding I'd offer to lend a hand, but perhaps just showing folks what it can do on some thing like this will peak some interest?! On that note to address those watching this topic with anticapation of it's topic name, I've been going through the last few days and doing a bit of fake baking. This means I am loading the carving textures etc up into Bitmap2material and pre rendering the the normal maps into them. While not as effective of course as true height mapping it does give a deeper feeling to the textures. However sadly my computer can not handle doing this to some of the bigger textures. So any that I've used that are in the 4096 range I won't be able to do this. Not only that it works best on the smaller one's as I have to print screen the texture bump mapped then convert that back into a texture. Tonight was a busy one. Starting at the upper most deck (te boat Deck), I've begun final detailing, this means the celing texture's the floor, the windows and wall panelings are finally being fitted in. A small but worthy sacrifice I've had to make is to make the windows on the Boat and A Deck none transparent for the sake of area portaling it away from the exterior of the ship. these areas view out to the decks beyond and I couldn't handle hearing complaints about the lagg of this effect this go around. However on the B - D Deck's, the portholes are built into the hull of the ship, here you WILL be able to sea out to the sky and sea with no fps draw either way. A simple thing I know but one for a moment I wasn't sure would work effectively fps wise.

I'd give it a try, I mean the more folks involved imo the better overall image the developers get of whats really needed. My question would really be how does the q3map2 handle compiling such implementations, and weather or not the new effects hit the fps. I understand it's a new render so it's possible it could be better fps then vanilla jka, but I wonder if it limits the map size more due to compile struggle.

I am hoping I'll have some things ready for screenshots tonight, I've had some problems the last few days that I'm finally weeding out the last of. I'm so far behind right now it's insane, if I could just get a break from these damn little error here and there.

LOL That'd be my cousin then eh? I know from the little I could understand it's basically a new renderer for the game, in a sense making JKA use what you might consider quake 3.5 LOL. Still have no idea how you get it or how it effects mapping, I don't know if I'd really trust suc a thing, these sorts are usually riddled with bugs and unstable, JKA runs like crap as it is much less would I wanna add a bunch of FPS consuming effects. Just my opinion of course.

Well firstly I don't even know what rend2 is tbh, I keep hearing folk's mention it, but I have no real idea what it is even, must be some horrible publicizing on some one hands... Any ways, no the released version will not sink like you would think, it will have two static points (2 separate maps) for the sinking, one at around 1:25 Am just as the bow was starting to slip under, and a second at 2:18, just before she broke. Theirs sadly no FPS friendly way to sink her and not drive people's computers crazy using the q3 engine. Not at this level of detail any ways. That having been said, the static moments she will be in however will be very detailed. for FPS reasons and functionality the first variant at 1:25 AM will have angled water brushes, at different levels for the interior and exterior.

I wish it worked that easy @Zefilus. A new shot of the re worked D Deck landing of the forward grand staircase, theirs two textures I want to replace on it but it's good enough to show a preview of! Enjoy Oh and yea... So, I made a booboo, I hired a cheap contractor to do my plumbing, click the spoiler to see what happened !

Here is a sample of the 1rst class dining saloon ceiling texture. This texture is super HD, the actual in game texture is 4096 X 4096 while my Photoshop™ PSD is a resolution of 8192 X 8192. I found that any small of a working platform cut the sharpness of the details. If your going to spend 6 hours on a texture you sure as hell don't want it to look like crap. This texture is not to be used without my express written consent. ~ AngelModder

Oh yea yea I did use this is idea for the lights shadowing and bloom effect.

It is actually more narrow just like the original thing. Every aspect of this is map is measured out down to the inch. One of the first thing's I did was to establish a set of scales that I could agree on. At the top one person can pass through on each side, most pictures you see of replicas or even the film, greatly widen it to emphasize it's scale. But in truth it was fairly narrow at the top with just about 3 feet on either side of the center banister at the top. Every room, every pillar in this even tables will be measured.

Seriously out of 50 views not one person can help? :/

What do you mean XD?

You could also try using the q3map2gui, it's a good program all around for compiling and converting.

Titanics mighty anchors.

Don't foget you can always use _lightmapscale to sharpen the lighting as well on particular models or func_groups. Most of my mapping is done in func_groups so I can control each area/thing's lightmap, so blurrier (_Lightmapscale 4) where theirs a lot of ambient and no real defined shadows, and (_Lightmapscale 0.125) for things I want to have a very defined shadow. I actually really encourage folks to use the Func-Group technique in there maps, it can save you invaluable .bsp size and compile time and come out with a much better overall map image. Be warned though as some may know, the sharper the lightmapscale the more fps it seems to draw and can some times bug if you go below 0.250. You can also in turn tell different groups to cast or not to cast a shadow, such as a light source its self some times should not be casting a shadow. Use _cs 0-1 and _rs 0-1 to controll this. _cs means Cast shadows 1 is on and 0 is off, _rs is receive shadows 0 is off and 1 is on. An example for a light source say a chandelier would be _cs 0 (meaning since it's the light it shouldn't be casting a shadow depending on how it is suppose to work realistically) and then _rs 1 meaning that things can cast shadows on the light source its self if they are able to. These commands can also be placed of course on any model. A side note about func groups, they can be set to structural or detail, so they can be used like normal the engine does not see them as an entity so make sure you detail and structural correctly as you normally would when using func_groups. ~AngelModder™

Allow me to first off state that this is not a request for passive aggressive pointing me at a tutorial. No offense intended by that of course. Rather I have been asking for weeks on a few other platforms for guidance on how to "Vis" a particular thorn in my. side. As well as more to come I am sure. My deadline for this projects end (April 10th) is quickly approaching, and I have no more time that I can waste trying to solve these problems. What I need is an expert at "Vis" work to aid me, to look over my work on a daily bases and either guide me and teach me, or to physically lend a hand in taking care of these problems. I have included a link to a sample of one of the particular circumstances this person would be dealing with. A Multiple level area with a center well with a running staircase down it. The goal would be to set it up to where no more then 2-3 of the 7 floors of the staircase are rendering depending on the players position. Who ever takes this position of course already understands the meaning of all this. Again I am done trying to learn what obviously just doesn't make sense to me. I get it, but I am not an artist at vising, nor do I have any more time to waste on this with already so much on my plate for my last jka project. Please Pm me on here if interested. Series and experienced replies only. I would also request that you not be afraid of using a microphone, as I learn best that way and or can explain it best through talking over the situation. Thank you for your time ~ AngelModder™ (Link to example A) https://www.dropbox.com/s/ct066jheo5h2r8r/Vising.rar?dl=0

VIOLA the finished lights and effect! This was actually a really fun piece to pull together, I have a similar light fixture in my house so it really helped to see how the shadows and lighting should look.

The lights will no longer cast blotchy ugly shadows, rather they will cast the correct shadow pattern and give off a bloom effect.

Well it's been a busy past couple of days but B Deck forward and C Deck Forward are nearly complete, just a few finishing touches and they're done. The floor and ceiling textures, the last bits of pipping and ductwork, and of course room numbers. Also included a photo of the gsc with the new pillars in, say good bye to the old floor and ceiling textures! Tonight's going to be a lot of Photoshop and shader work.

Redesigned a bit of the pillars last night, from day one the tops had bothered me. It was a hell of a search but I finally managed to find good enough photo's to piece these together. On the left is the new one's, on the right the old.