Forum posts

I watched this series on BlenderCookie, plus one or two other videos. Then I basically just messed around until I got the hang of things, googling stuff every now and then if I couldn't figure something out. I think I might have figured it out quicker than someone with no experience due to all the time I've spent with SketchUp, but you would probably pick it up even quicker if you've got experience in Max. I had no experience with UV mapping or animating beforehand. Although I think I still need to work on animating.

Anyway, I hastily threw this metal barrel texture together to have a look if my technique was any good. I am honestly surprised by how not crap it is:It's not final, but I think I am possibly on the right track.

I think I've figured out the smoothing now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g3Tb-ZQMF8
I tried what I think you meant about the grips, but it didn't look as good imo. Maybe if it were rubber grips with wood panels like on a Ruger Redhawk, but this is going to have plain wooden grips with the little medallion.

Also, here's a wireframe view with the frame and cylinder highlighted:. I could probably cut down on detail a lot more and make up the difference with texturing.

Also Ghost, that is certainly an interesting texture. Did you make the model?

Messing about with animations.
I am aware that the cases come out weirdly, but right after I noticed that Blender messed up and wouldn't let me change the keyframes.

I decided to give weapon modelling a go:I was surprised, as this took roughly 10% of the time to make compared with SketchUp. That, plus the possibility of texturing it*, animating it* and ultimately making it* into a weapon model for HL means I will definitely be looking at this further.

Although, as you may be able to see I have to work on figuring out smoothing.

*Of course, by it I mean a version that isn't at 2346 tris.

I think Imgur is the image hosting site for Reddit, so they probably fund it. It's also now my default since Imageshack started charging.

Anyway, I wasn't able to get the animations sorted out for the pool cue, so these are two seperate models files, shown next to their brushwork originals:I might try moving the origin of the cue leaning against the table so that it's on top of the table so it's lit up, and then fake the shadow from the table by modifying the model texture.

I'm really getting quite excited thinking about all of the possibilities.

I decided to try placing it in the middle of the floor, and it showed in the correct position, so it was the placement. I'll try moving the origin of the model further away from the wall, so that there's less stuff around it. That should also improve how the cues are lit.

Thank you kind sir!
Here is the model of the four cues in the rack, successfully showing in Hammer:And here it is in game:As excited as I am about my first ever prop model working, that joy is slightly tarnished by the fact that for some reason it's floating about 8 units higher in game than it is in the editor. I'm not sure if it's due to placement or the model itself, but I'll have to figure that out.

Also, I have yet to properly convert these cues into models:I was planning on having them both be different animations for the same model, but I'm having trouble setting that up right. For some reason both animations show up in the .mdl as being the same, so I'll have to work on that tomorrow.

I wasn't happy with this:And I certainly wasn't happy with this:So I decided that if I'm making the textures, I may as well make some models for it:The rack will still be brushwork, but the cues are models.Now I just need to convert these to .mdl's.

ALso, you make a good point Trempler. I shall make a new sky after the models.

I decided to try and make some textures completely from scratch, rather than using a base from CGTextures.I cheated a little with the carpet. I couldn't think of an image to put on the centre, so I pulled my family coat of arms off Google Images and used that. Perhaps this is a room in my house after I win the lottery.

And Archie, I have no idea what any of that is but it sure looks fancy.

I can't actually remember why, but as soon as I realised I'd never finished it I re-dl'd it. I'm not at home though so I have yet to install it.

I realised the other day that I had actually never finished Black Mesa. I've only played up as far as those first houndeyes you encounter, right after the resonance cascade.

Btw, was just looking through entries so far and i noticed 1 thing that would really add to the overall feeling of the levels - thin, black outlines on brushes. Think of Borderlands 2 art style.

I vaguely remember reading a tutorial somewhere on how to do that, but after a quick look it doesn't appear to be on TWHL. It may have been for SketchUp originally, although the same method works for HL.
I've uploaded an example map here.

Unfortunately I started getting some errors which I couldn't work around in time, so I've uploaded it in it's unfinished state.
Linky!

Changed compile settings, map compiled in 5 seconds. Let's hope it will still compile that fast for the final one.

Did all those tips, and everything is set to a texture scale of 25.
It's getting stuck on vis (still!), and it looks like it's stuck on the very last LeafThread.

I may just port it to Ep2 HL2, because Rimrook doesn't have Ep2.

Oh dear. I'm not quite finished yet, but I decided to give it a preliminary compile. About 5 hours and it's not done yet. D:

I've been experimenting with it, and it seems that everything I try doesn't work in one way or another. Technically the train body should be on a different set of paths from the wheels since the wheel brackets connect to the track at each end, and the train connects to each wheel bracket at their centres, but frankly I can't be arsed to do that. Having a different path length makes it so that the chances of the different entities going out of sync is too high.
I'll have to just figure something out.

Your first WIP looked really neat too!(did you scrap it, or will you try to include it in your entry?)

The train is going to end up being part of an elevated train system in the same map.

I'm going to go with that I think, but timing it will be difficult.

Nice tree. And the swirly thing under it looks nice too.

Meanwhile, I am experimenting with func_tracktrains:I'm thinking of a method to make it so that the wheels don't pop out of the track, but it will probably end up being fairly complicated to set up.

I was planning on doing more on my entry over the past week but had been held up until now.
Making trains is fun.

I found my old microscope, so I took it by carefully balancing the tablet on the platform and holding my phone up to the eyepiece. I'd probably be taking photos of everything through it if illuminating the subject wasn't such an issue.

Since the weather here is typically crap, I haven't actually seen the moon in about a month because of all the clouds.

I did however get a photo of the pixels of my tablet at ~500X magnification (iirc).

I've been away from home for the past week, so unfortunately my Blender learning was on hold. I'm still in the process of learning how to use the program, but I just finished my first textured model today, working from a tutorial so I could figure out UV mapping.

Ooh, thank you. I shall definitely have a look at that.

I'm intending to end up modelling for HL1, but I am a looong way away from that. Since I literally just started yesterday, I don't see there being much use for a tutorial, although I made one anyway just in case.
I doubt there's anything there that's specifically useful for a mapper, but in my defence I have just started doing this really.

I figured that learning how to model with a modelling software other than SketchUp can only help my mapping, as it will hopefully allow me to create props and stuff. So here is a render of my first ever model in Blender.Forgive the horrific lighting. I just started a few hours ago so it employs every technique I currently know. I wanted to experiment with multiple light sources and colours.

WARNING: LONG POST INCOMING
Well my participation for the rest of the thread has been lax, so I'll put some other lists here:
Top 5 Expansion Packs:
This is difficult, as I haven't actually played that many, but I would say
1: Op4
2: The Shivering Isles
3: Fallout 3 (I can't remember which one I liked the most, as it was a long time ago. I'll just list them all here)

Web Series:
1:Vsauce. A YouTube channel where interesting questions are asked, and very interesting answers are given.
2:Sims 3 - Redneck Brothers by Robbaz. A Let's Play series of the Sims 3 by a madman.
3:Periodic Videos. A YouTube channel by the chemistry department of the University of Nottingham. Each video typically talks about a particular chemical or element, and maybe shows an interesting experiment related to said chemical.
4:Inside Adam's Cave by Tested on YouTube. Each video has Adam Savage of Mythbusters doing something in his workshop. Showing a prop or costume off, making something, or just giving a tour.
5:Grand Illusions.
A nice old man showing examples of his massive toy collection. Each video is generally quite short and easy to watch, and as a result it's quite easy to spend an hour or so watching them.
Honourable Mentions:
Scott Manley's KSP Let's Play series, Interstellar Quest.
CHOW, a YouTube channel about cooking tips, that sadly seems to be inactive. Entertaining mostly because they quite often had really stupid tips, and the comments could be funny.

Top 5 Games:
This is a difficult one.
1: Kerbal Space Program. A not too serious space program simulator that still utilises real physics (to an extent - it uses a patched conics system rather than n-body physics, for the sake of simplicity). Contains a solar system of planets that are roughly 1/10th the size that a real life counterpart would be, which is still pretty huge. The game has a Jupiter analogue, Jool, which is roughly the size of the real Earth. You design and build your ships, and pilot them to wherever you want to go. It really has potential as an educational game. It doesn't actually teach you that much by itself, but it's really effective at making you want to learn more to make your space program better.
2:L.A. Noire. An open world sandbox game set in Los Angeles in 1947, where you play as LAPD detective Cole Phelps. Quite slow paced, and with a very long campaign, it's more of a game that you play for the story than the gameplay, although the gameplay isn't bad. There is combat, but the main focus of the game is examining crime scenes for clues and interviewing suspects, and trying to piece together what happened at each. The story is immersive and the setting of postwar L.A. is lovingly crafted, and it is a game that I would recommend.
3:Hitman. I would list the whole series here (apart from Absolution, which I have not played yet). A very slow paced game series (generally) that can nevertheless be played like a standard shooter if you really want to. Doing so, however completely misses the point of the game, as it is primarily about stealth. Sneak in, assassinate the target, sneak out. Nobody should know you were ever there. The series came into it's own on the second game. If you want to play them I would recommend playing Codename 47 first. People who have played the others first generally can't stand the first, which is a shame because it contains my favourite mission of the whole series. They're difficult games, and preplanning and studying the map before the mission can be crucial to getting the best rating.
Note: Hitman: Contracts isn't included in the Steam collection due to licensing issues with a song in the soundtrack. However it can be found relatively inexpensively on eBay.
4:Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I probably spent hundreds of hours playing this on the PS2 when I was younger. It doesn't have the depth or the serious tone of IV, but its a hell of a lot of fun.
5:Bioshock: Infinite. Yet another game where the story and setting are the main reasons for me liking it. The gameplay was lacking, but that's not why I was interested in it. It was really tough deciding between this and Bioshock 1. Both had amazing settings and stories. Bioshock's in-game storytelling was superior. You were presented with a mysterious, ruined city, and only found out about it through listening to audio diaries. Similar to Infinite, but better. Infinite differed in setting in that it showed the city before and during the collapse, rather than just post-collapse. Rather than the player progressively finding out what happened, in this case you find out why it happened. Infinite won out with the main story though. You could learn more about the setting just like in the first game, but it was better at really making you care about the characters, and who actually would win the conflict.
Honourable Mentions:
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. A richly detailed open world fantasy game, Where you could flat out ignore the main story and just play the side quests and still spend a hundred or so hours being engrossed and entertained by the world.
Fallout 3. A richly detailed open world post-apocalyptic sci-fi game, Where you could flat out ignore the main story and just play the side quests and still spend a hundred or so hours being engrossed and entertained by the world.
Thief: The Dark Project/Gold. Another very slow paced, stealth game. One of the best such games that I have ever played. I just need to finish it one of these days.
Half-Life. If I need to explain this, you're on the wrong website.
Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy. One of the most underrated games I've ever played. It would be a fairly generic shooter if it weren't for the psychic powers aspect of the game. Being able to pick up enemies and fling them into a reactor, or sneak up behind them and drain their life energy until their heads explode made this a very entertaining game. It's apparently available for free as an ad-supported game on PC.

Top 5 OSTs (in no particular order):
Black. This game was porn. You came for the action, and the developers knew it. The story was a complete afterthought.
TES IV: Oblivion. As good as it is, I'm sure most of the reason why I like this soundtrack so much is because of the nostalgia.
Hotline: Miami. A synth heavy 1980's inspired soundtrack for a violent, but extremely fun game.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Even though the soundtrack is supposedly by Hans Zimmer, most of it, including my favourite track, was actually composed by Lorne Balfe.
Metroid Prime. A great soundtrack for a great game.
Honourable Mention:
Halo.

Top 5 Mapping Techniques:
1: Alt+Right Click texture application. When I found this out, I was shocked that I hadn't seen such a useful technique mentioned before. So I'm mentioning it here (even though it's already been mentioned in this thread). It's just so damn useful.
2: Face splitting in VM. If you have two edges on the same face selected, and you press Ctrl+F, a new edge will be created connecting the two. Very useful for increasing the complexity of shapes, especially combined with the ability to merge vertices.
3: The 'stencils method'. Probably the same thing as Zeeba-G's Templates method. If you want to make a complex shape, and you can in some manner figure out where the vertices are supposed to be to make the correct shape, then making a stencil or template marking out where these vertices are supposed to go makes it much easier to create the shape with VM. Example: sphere.
4: For really advanced geometry, sometimes it might be necessary to figure it out in another program. For this geodesic sphere, I first created the shape in Google SketchUp. I then measured the xyz coords of each point and made a tetrahedron based shape with vertices at these points in Hammer. It took a long time though.
5: Maths. Some people prefer trial and error, but I tend to find this way is quicker and more effective. Basically, if there is something I need to figure out, I calculate it. If you have a barrel rolling across the ground, using the diameter and the speed it is moving you can calculate what it's angular speed should be. If it has a diamater of X, it has a circumference of pi*X. If it's moving at Y units per second, then it will revolve Y/(pi*X) times per second. So the angular speed will be (360*Y)/(pi*X) degrees per second.*
If you have a texture that is 128 units wide, and you have a cylinder that you want to wrap it around seamlessly, then you work out the circumference of the cylinder (150.7964 units for a 48 unit wide cylinder), then divide that by the width of the texture (1.1781) to get the texture scale you will use. In this case it will be 1.18, due to Hammer's 2 decimal place precision.
Since the cylinder is made up of flat faces however, it might be more accurate to use Pythagoras' theorem to calculate the actual circumference from the size of each face. A 12 sided 48x48 cylinder will have an actual circumference of 149.866 units, so the actual texture scale will be 1.1708. The more faces there are on the cylinder, the more accurate the approximation will become. (If the cylinder were 6 sided, the correct texture scale would be 1.1308. For a 24 sided cylinder, it would be 1.1757. Compare with the approximated 1.1781)

*Note, I am extremely tired at the time of writing this. These calculations may be wrong. Usually it's a viable method though.

That's a hard one. I'd say that number 1 is definitely Perfect Dark: Zero. It's the only game I've ever played that I didn't finish simply because it was bad.

Number 2 Is TES II: Daggerfall. Arena, while it was very difficult to get into, was actually quite enjoyable once I did. I didn't however find any enjoyment from playing Daggerfall. It was just too buggy, an-HALT! HALT! HALT!

Number 3 Would be Driv3r. The only redeeming features of the game are the car destruction and the video editing modes. I spent many minutes going on rampages, blowing up cars with the grenade launcher and making films of the chaos before going and doing something else because there was nothing else of interest in the game.

Number 4 would be Duke Nukem Forever. If it weren't for the fact that it ran very poorly on my computer, and it was a huge disappointment. In its defence though, I wasn't expecting anything more.

Number 5 Would probably be Call of Duty: Black Ops. Modern Warfare was where I first got into the series (although I have since played the earlier ones), and that was really good. Initially I wasn't fond of World at War, but after a while I began to like it. The multiplayer wasn't great, but I had a few good memories of playing it at friends' houses. The campaign of MW2 was kind of crap, but the multiplayer made up for it. Black Ops was where I began to feel that there wasn't really anything left of worth in the series. It had an interesting concept, but it didn't make good use of it. MW3 and BO2 also left me unimpressed. I haven't even played Ghosts.

I was intending to do a dark and moody city in the dead of night, but I may have to rethink the idea. The palette is a bit too bright, and 'lighting' this is a bitch.

Made a few flag designs with that Java app. I think I will go with the second one on the bottom row, the blue and orange one.

I've noticed on two or three occasions that when I open Sledge the ordering of the viewports will be different from what I usually use. Such as the top left being the top, bottom left being the 3D view, etc.

I have no idea why this is the case, afaik I've never changed these except to change them back to normal.

I would love to enter this one, but I'm not at home and due to circumstances it's looking like I won't be home for at least a week.

Rubber slowly falls apart when covered in oil as well.

Doesn't that depend on the type of oil? Like isn't silicon oil safe to use with normal rubbers and plastics?
I don't know off the top of my head if silicon oil is non-conductive though.

@Tetsu0: I couldn't enter, my internet took a dump at the last second and I already had plans so I couldn't stay and try to fix it.
I wasn't happy with it anyway, I really should have started sooner. When I'm back home I'll finish it up and upload it.

This morning I decided to do a last minute entry. I really should have started sooner. :
Hopefully I can get it done in time.

I had an error a few minutes ago where using the arrow keys to nudge a particular group of brushes (containing no entities) caused the crash dialogue to pop up. Opening the error window showed a few instances of the group has no children error. Deleting these fixed the problem, however I also encountered a bug with these.
If instead of deleting them I selected 'Go to error' on any of the instances, then the 3D view would go black. Pressing 'Z' to look around in the 3D view would cause an infinite loop of crash dialogue boxes to open up.
Changing the 3D viewport to a 2D view, then back to 3D would allow me to look around without crashing, however none of the contents of the level are rendered, making it appear as if it's an empty level.

I was thinking about building something with sandstone, because I think it looks nice, but there isn't really anywhere for it in Twobbington Manor. I decided to build a 1:1 scale Roman Colosseum. After looking it up, I realised just how big the Colosseum is and that it was a stupid idea.

So then I went and started doing it anyway.This is going to take a looong time.

I used to have a free renderer for SketchUp on my old computer, which worked fairly well. I figured that once I'm done the model I would find out what it was called and then render it with that.
If I need to then I could isolate rooms and remove a wall or two to make the insides more visible.

We don't have a basement. That's the ground floor, plus the stairs leading up to the landing outside my bedroom.

Fun fact, that room to the very left is a bathroom, below my bathroom. The two rooms are slowly pulling away from the house. Two of the walls of my bathroom have cracks an inch wide that go all the way through to the outside.

As I said, the construction quality of this house is just great.

Well a few hours ago my parents gave me some plans of my house and asked me to make it in SketchUp so they could see how some plans for renovations might work. This is what I have now, perhaps tomorrow or the day after I will be able to show some renderings of my house.It is taking longer than anticipated because this house was built by drunk monkeys, so there aren't many right angles. I have a laser level and measuring tape so I'm taking the time to actually build the house as it is, rather than as it should be.

Thirded as soon as I stop being broke.

Uh...

1. Breaking Bad
2. Game of Thrones
3. Futurama
4. QI
5. Father Ted

I haven't really watched TV in years. Game of Thrones, I would describe as being good, but not as good as all the hype makes it out to be. I only started watching it because it seemed like I'm the only one who hasn't watched it, but it is good enough to continue watching on its own merits.

I actually started watching Breaking Bad before I heard any hype about it, mainly because I liked Bryan Cranston from Malcolm in the Middle and I wanted to see how effectively he could play such a completely different character. However due to lack of time/options for viewing it I am yet to begin watching season 4.

For Futurama, enough said.

QI is excellent. I pity those in the US who can't watch it. (iirc the reason it never made it there was due to issues with licensing the images that show up on the big screens). It's smart, funny, has a varied roster of guests who are almost always hilarious, and it has Stephen Fry in it.

As for Father Ted, if you've spent at least a week in this country and haven't heard anyone referencing a joke from it you must be deaf. It is extremely well loved in Ireland, and I found it does actually live up to the hype.

HL3 confir-
I'm sorry, I can't do this.

I haven't really paid much attention to E3 in the past five years or so, most of the gaming I've been doing has been with just a few games on Steam. There's always this year to check it out though.

My prediction is that HL3 will be confirmed as being cancelled, as Gabe Newell is sick of all the jokes about his weight.
Also, Microsoft will accidentally let slip that they are actually run by vampires who live beneath the earth.

First screenshot is a lie, I am not playing Half-Life now.

What time?

Three minor things:

Would it be possible to close the error window using the enter key like in Hammer? In Hammer if I press Alt+P to open it and no errors are found, the close window button is already highlighted so pressing enter closes it.

Also, when using tab to switch between values in the texture window (like scale and position), could it be set to auto highlight the text in the box? I find the quickest way to change those values in Hammer is to tab through them and just type in whatever values I want, but the fact that it doesn't automatically highlight them, especially with the added decimal places, makes it take a lot longer having to manually highlight or delete the preexisting numbers.

And the {INVISIBLE and {BLUE textures show up as fully blue, even when hide null textures is toggled.

You could also use an env_laser pointing at each target and use a multimanager to turn them on/off in sequence. Adding a noise value might simulate the spread of the gun.

It vaguely reminds me of one of the multiplayer maps from one of the Halo games.
Looks pretty nice though.