Sketchbook: Vig
mod
After doing next to nothing creative at work for the last 3 months, I've been having a blast getting back into mapping.
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Lift
Aircraft Tug
Main ref and inspiration
Nothing like a little more ref to get things rolling...
Basically its my take on 2fort. Instead of 2 forts built inches from each other the bases will be an aircraft carrier (Blue) and a dock/warehouse (Red). The bases will be symmetrical and the trick is that only a few key detail props and textures will change. If this comes off as too much of a gimmick or I can't get the dock to look the way I wanted I'll cheese out and just make them two carriers and just hick up the Red base. I'm going to try my hardest to get the first option working but if I can't get it balanced then I'll have to go with plan B.
Harsh crits always welcome.
Image_03
Image_04
Image_05
Image_06
Lift
Aircraft Tug
Main ref and inspiration
Nothing like a little more ref to get things rolling...
Basically its my take on 2fort. Instead of 2 forts built inches from each other the bases will be an aircraft carrier (Blue) and a dock/warehouse (Red). The bases will be symmetrical and the trick is that only a few key detail props and textures will change. If this comes off as too much of a gimmick or I can't get the dock to look the way I wanted I'll cheese out and just make them two carriers and just hick up the Red base. I'm going to try my hardest to get the first option working but if I can't get it balanced then I'll have to go with plan B.
Harsh crits always welcome.
Replies
What are the grid marks and green boxes for in your main ref/inspiration picture?
I think the same holds true for Maya and UnrealEd but I haven't confirmed it.
Not important but; in the first inline image, the barrel of the gun on the left isn't reading as round. The other guns look great so I imagine it'd only be an issue if that 'head on' angle is going to be a high traffic route.
A visual queue to establish the distance between the edge of the top deck and the main tower would be handy (it seems a lot flatter in image 1 than 2). The runway would be on the other side of the tower and this a storage/work yard?
Thanks for explaining the grid.
looks like a fun map.
edit: math error
Also thanks for sharing awesome ref images.
For the UE unit, AFAIK, 96 (UE)units = regular human height (6 ft). So it came down to 16 (UE) unit = 1 ft.
Technically this is the run way. The front turrets would rotate forward as the planes take off, I rotated them sideways to help block off the front of the ship. There will be a second runway that angles off to the left in shot #2.
Lee3dee
There are 4 ways to cross the gap between the bases.
- 1st bridge being the top of the lower right turret in shot #1. That turret has been moved more center and lowered and works pretty well as a bridge. I might even add a gang-way ramp type prop kind of half ass strapped to the top of it looks more like a make shift boarding deck and a turret rolled into one.
- 2nd bridge is between the dock and the ship where the angled runway and the dock meet.
- 3rd bridge is in shot 5. If you fall in the water you must use the 4th route, you can't climb up on 3. This has 3 path ways that lead into the ship.
- 4th is a hatch at water level which leads into 3 path ways into the ship. The Red base this same hatch will be a sewer pipe.
Inside the bases there are 3 paths and a few rooms and ramps that connect them. Its kind of complicated to explain but really easy to navigate. It's all kind of compact too because I really don't like running down long hallways and I like having options when you're going in and coming out.
Vailias, rybeck, thanks for the info I'll have to write that down... done.
A big thanks to CheeseOnToast for helping me figure out the texture shaders. I have the paint shaders working more or less like I need them too I'm leaning toward masked reflections but the phong test came out nicely and it ran a tiny bit smoother.
I worked on the sub filling in the details. Because the sub is used to get from the top level of the intel room down to the lower decks, and it provides a Line of Sight blocker (too easy for one eng to rule all three levels) the collision mesh needs to be spot on but not costly.
if you need a server to test it out on i'm renting a 64 player server now that i just got up and running.
This Tug goes between the Air Craft Carrier and the dock, blocking the players off from the open water/sky box. I didn't bother to put in rudders or propellers because you'll never see them. I used the advanced painter script to paint the rope splines on the life ring, man I love that script.
This prop goes on top of the bridge.
I also created a bunch of hoses, wires, hooks, railings, that all go in various places. I also finished the sub and started creating the materials for the Corsair. I'm not going to bother taking renders of them all when they are so minor. Since the blue base is totally blocked out I copied it over to the red side and it looks like I can transform it into a dock without effecting the CTF mechanics, woot!
Let me know if you need any testers, I suck at tf2 but I'm great at breaking things
Keep at it man this is looking killer. I am up for testing as well.
This map looks so cool. Can't wait to play it! If the mechanics are as good as it looks I predict this will be a widely popular map.
I need to finish blocking out the red base and putting in place holders for future props then I we can play test the hell out of it.
Advanced Painter : http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/advanced-painter
It lets you paint splines (and objects) on any selection of geometry. I've edited the script so the spaghetti tool doesn't place knots/verts so close. But my edits make some of the other tools buggy which I haven't figured out how to fix, so you're better off using the default one until I figure it out.
I started to optimize it a bit and once I bake the Life Ring down to the low poly it will drop by 1k-ish I went nuts with the rope =P
good job so far
greetz
my only crits would be the tugboat seems over stylized. tf2 is cartoonish, but does not really use the skewed (whimsical) geo that it seems like you are using on the boat.
other than that its all fantastic.
Maybe better tools have since come out?
http://www.vigville.com/wip/ctf_decker/ref/TugBoat/1225002_Huntington_Tugboat_web.jpg
I might mock up a quick rounded version to see how it looks before I start unwrapping.
What kind of errors are you getting? The only thing I can think of its a collision mesh problem, which you could drop the "$collisionmesh" from the QC, or its a material issue.
You need some kind of material assigned to the defuse slot for it to spit out a valid SMD. When you get serious about the material showing up in game, it needs to match the name of the VMT file. The extension doesn't matter, I like to use psd's so when I archive the model it saves my psd to. So if my VMT file is TF2_TugBoat.vmt then my psd in the diffuse slot needs to be called TF2_TugBoat.psd
K-Man, yup using 3dsMax 2k8. The exporter wunderboy wrote works pretty well.
http://www.wunderboy.org/sourceapps.php#max9_smd
But there are some funky rules you have to follow for collision meshes.
- It uses smoothing groups to tell the difference between each collision pieces, took me a few hours to figure that one out.
- The collision meshes need to be closed and it likes to patch over concave surfaces, so you end up having to break up the collision mesh into easy to digest blocks. BUT you're limited to 22 separate collision shapes per model. You can either set a flag that gives you an unlimited number of boxes, or start breaking the object into separate models.
- The UV's need to be continuous pieces, otherwise it will give an error about "2D geometry being less then .05" or some silly error. I just apply a Planar UV map to the whole thing collision mesh and it spits out a valid SMD.
Feel free to post here, PM me or hit me up on MSN, with any errors or troubles you're having. I totally feel your pain, it took me a solid week of head on keyboard action to get it all working. whatever error/problem you hit I've more then likely hit it already, no need for your forehead to be all QWERTY.
Really nice work so far.
Is the boat in playable space or just external decoration?
I a little tossed up, but leaning toward the rounded version They are both unwrapped and fairly close in poly count so its a matter of style. If I go with the rounded, I'll round out the decking under it and I might decrease the number of windows. I might make one Red and one Blue and park them on both sides of the map, instead of doing an elaborate hose refueling station I had planned for the opposite end...
It saves the mdl files to;
The line in my .qc file reads "$modelname CTF_decker/TF2_TugBoat.mdl"
If I delete the CTF_Decker part from that line "$modelname TF2_TugBoat.mdl" Then it puts it in the models folder. If I don't have a CTF_decker folder it won't compile. If you're using the example qc file I wrote up, and your SMD's aren't in a Mojokey folder it won't compile.
Are you dropping the files on a shortcut to studiomdl or the exe itself? I think the drag/drop method only works on shortcuts.
Are you using the version of studiomdl found in the OrangeBoxSDK? I think there is another version someplace else.
heres my qc
$modelname /thunt/box/box_ref.mdl
$body "Body" "box_ref.smd"
$staticprop
$surfaceprop "metal"
$sequence "idle" "box_ref.smd"
$collisionmodel "box_ref.smd"
{
$concave
}
heres the directorys
C:\Steam\steamapps\rhinokio\team fortress 2\tf\modelsrc\thunt\box\box_ref.qc
C:\Steam\steamapps\rhinokio\team fortress 2\tf\modelsrc\thunt\box\box_ref.smd
C:\Steam\steamapps\rhinokio\team fortress 2\tf\materials\thunt\box\box_ref.vmt
C:\Steam\steamapps\rhinokio\team fortress 2\tf\materials\thunt\box\box_ref.vtf
Oh yeah, I created this batch file to make compiling easier:
"%sourcesdk%\bin\ep1\bin\studiomdl.exe" %1
pause
I'm finding sourcesdk to be good advertisement for the Unreal 3 engine!
- BoBo
Alex
T & J, it's dropping the g_path for some reason. that shouldn't read "box_ref" it should be the full path to your QC file. It looks like you might be using the ep1 version of studiomdl? Try the orange box versions found in:
"D:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\rhinokio\sourcesdk\bin\orangebox\bin"
Since your materials are in a subfolder you'll need to add the $cdmaterials line to your .qc file after the $body line.
Your .qc file should look like this:
$modelname thunt/box/box_ref.mdl --removed the first slash, doesn't really matter
$body "Body" "box_ref.smd"
$cdmaterials thunt/box/ --added this line, points to the materials subfolder
$staticprop
$surfaceprop "metal"
$sequence "idle" "box_ref.smd"
$collisionmodel "box_ref.smd"
{
$concave
}
Also when you export your smd make sure you only have a diffuse texture assigned it (no bump or spec maps). It also needs to have the same name as your vmt file in this case box_ref.bmp would work fine.
as far as material in max i have the .vtf plug and have the vtf on the model.
thanks for alll the assistance
i disagree with justin about it being an advertisment for unreal.. cause once i do get something in i'd rather it be in a game i'm interested in playing
"LightmappedGeneric"
{
"$basetexture" "thunt/box/box_ref"
"$translucent" 1
}
feast your hungry viewing orbs on this!
The top line "LightmappedGeneric" is the shader type. Lightmapped is more for materials used on hammer created objects like walls, floors ect.
For props and models you want to use "VertexLitGeneric" if you get into doing characters we'll need to talk about $phong, but thats another chapter in another story all together.
Heres a break down of all the shader types source uses.
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Shader_Types_and_Parameters
Using "$translucent" 1 means it pulls opacity mask info from the alpha. I think the alpha is white and thats why its not showing up? If you don't need an opacity mask you can drop the "$translucent" 1 line from the VMT and just have it read:
"VertexlitGeneric"
{
"$basetexture" "thunt/box/box_ref"
}
To check the alpha channel of a VTF, in VTFEdit go to View > Channel > Alpha or hit ctrl+shift+a (ctrl+shift+c to view all channels again).
EDIT: WOO-HOO NICE GOING!
What does it do? Absolutely nothing.
like a chain link fence?
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/%24contents
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Using_Bspzip_to_Embed_Custom_Content
But doing that doesn't make them bullet proof just idiot proof. Anyone can unzip/unpack the bsp and get your models out, its just not as easy. but I'm sure it will thwart a few assmonkies.
does this script allow you to draw splines using a wacom tablet? Eitherway, I'd like to know where I can get hold of this script? You make it look very useful
It's a great script and you can control the brush with anything that works like a mouse. Sadly there is no support for pressure sensitivity. It would be great if pen pressure controlled the size of the cross sections when using the toothpaste brush. But being able to paint wire bundles in seconds kicks ass.
You might not like the way it creates some of the splines, and in those cases convert it to edit poly select an edge that runs the length of the spline and hit "convert to shape" this will give you a new spline that behaves.
I also use it to paint/scatter objects, rocks, bricks, leaves, grass planes, bushes, trees, garbage, bla bla bla.
One thing tho, maybe you've run into it. somewhere between me running the script and adding 27k polys in the scene I can no longer render the scene properly, im thinking its just a glitch because it works fine again after I re-opened Max, but if its somethign I did that I shouldnt have I was curious if you might know what would cause that problem?
thanks again vig
Also undo was twitchy and sometimes would crash 3dsMax if I undid a paint. So instead I would exit paint, delete the object(s) and repaint. The script seemed to get more stable under 3dsMax 2k8 but I ended up changing the spline painting part of the script around to suit my needs and it made some of the other brushes in the tool buggy.
I think, (haven't actually checked it out) Maya's Paint effects do the same thing, and much much more. I'll be really disappointed if this kind of thing doesn't exist in Maya. Which I'm thinking about learning later this year...