Portfolio Redesign + DM_Zest + Making of Article

Minos · Apr 2011

Hi!

I redesigned my portfolio and released a HL2DM map called DM_Zest, which got the first place on MapCore's Cube Challenge. I wrote a Making of article of this map, which can be read here. You can download the map here.

Some screens:

My portfolio can be accessed on www.thiagoklafke.com

Hope you like it and let me know if you have any suggestions or find any typos!

~ Thiago Klafke

Alberto Rdrgz · Apr 2011

Wow i love your scenes REALLY inspirational stuff.

aajohnny · Apr 2011

Awesome work... can't say anymore...

d1ver · Apr 2011

Sweet stuff, Thiago, sweet stuff. Not much to add here.)
one for the bookmarks for sure.
rock on, bud.

and yeah thanks for the tut, I'll check it out in the morning, but definitely interested.

cheers!+)

Fragged · Apr 2011

Nice environments! I really like the tall "sleek and clean" building. Reminds me of the environments in Mirror's Edge.

The sharpness and colours on your latest map is looking very cool.
Only suggestion I have is that the environment could use some more dirt and / or signs of use.
By it's size it looks like the place is visited daily by alot of people, yet there are no traces of them.

shotgun · Apr 2011

i remember u posting these shots and they're very nice, but im not sure how does this constitute as a dm map.. at least the zest building
then again, i havent actually played HL2 dm so...

WarrenM · Apr 2011

Great article, thanks!

mrturtlepaste · Apr 2011

sweet, thanks for sharing! I'm really enjoying your color choices.

snow · Apr 2011

Love the sci fi scene, what was your general workflow for texturing all of that? I always wonder how with few texture details it can look so beautiful, is the diffuse just a plain colour and the spec has all the details? thanks!

Minos · Apr 2011

Thanks everyone!

@shotgun: I think you are mistaking the Zest UDK scene with dm_zest. Although they share the same name and textures they are totally different works!

@snow: I plan on doing a writeup about that environment as well so I'll get more in-depth later. But most of the wall and ceiling pieces were created with only 2 textures, a tiling wall and a bunch of trim textures mashed together in a single sheet. I then used vertex colors to add color details where needed. Because the textures were so clean this worked like a charm. The only downside to this technique is that vertex colors don't get picked up by lightmass in UDK. If I were to rework this scene I'd replace vertex colors with colored diffuses, that will use more texture memory but the result will be much better.
PhilipK wrote a great tutorial on this subject btw: http://www.philipk.net/tutorials/modular_sets/modular_sets.html

Here are the two textures I used the most to create the modular pieces:

Try to spot where I used those two textures:

So yeah I find generally easier to create the textures beforehand when working on modular sets like this. If you make a unique texture for each piece you might end up losing the ability to tweak them later.