Post your screenshots! WIP thread

Striker

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-29 18:37:04 UTC Post #289761

Tried it before trying the SSBump Generator but it's a pain in the butt to use and it did'nt work.

So you didn't use SSbump generator? You better use that instead of commandline generation, because it's way easier and it gives you a preview window.
It was complicated for me too, but since I learned it's sort of a routine to create a normal texture. The only problem is creating lots of textures.

Oh Muzz, always complaining about complicated stuff!

StrikerI forgot to check the oil pressure

DiscoStu

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-29 18:43:26 UTC Post #289762

He mastered all the easy stuff long ago.

DiscoStu

The Mad Carrot

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-29 19:53:22 UTC Post #289763

Oh i messed that sentence up. What i was trying to say, the commandline app was a pain in the butt, the ssbump generator does its job.
But the bump effect looks ugly, when im up close with the flashlight.

The Mad Carrot

Skals

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-29 20:18:08 UTC Post #289764

Tetsu0 u call that a model? $:\$

SkalsLevel Designer

RotatorSplint

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-29 20:23:57 UTC Post #289765

@Atom:

I'm not sure what causes that.. I think it has to do with how they changed the math that calculates the surface normal. You can sort of see how the pixels of the ssbump map don't really blend and transition as smoothly as they do in the traditional method. This sort of issue is present in the ssbumps Valve, themselves, have put out too. It seems to be a tradeoff between an overall upgrade in lighting behavior with a hit in absolute accuracy and up-close detail.

I guess that leaves it up to you as far as which method is better for a given situation.

Also, I don't know how this works with world geometry textures, but on models, you can have albedo and normal maps whose dimensions don't match, and the engine will scale them in such a way that their edges will match. If you want more detail in the normal map, it might be worth trying to make one at twice the resolution and see if it scales correctly in-game. This way, you'd get 4 texels of normal map data for every individual texel in the albedo, diminshing that stair-stepping effect you're seeing in the engine.

RotatorSplint

Striker

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-29 20:56:11 UTC Post #289766

Honestly, that model looks like a ... pacifier(weird names englishmen have!)

StrikerI forgot to check the oil pressure

Blitzkrieg

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-29 22:03:13 UTC Post #289767

it pacifies. hence, pacifier.

Blitzkrieg

DiscoStu

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-29 23:58:17 UTC Post #289768

Of course, it makes much more sense in romanian.

DiscoStu

Tetsu0

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-30 00:55:23 UTC Post #289770

dude it was just a test to get something into the engine. get off me lol.
I'm slowly working my up to gibable props and then i can have something good to show for it. Plus i think i found a halfway decent smd exporter for blender. good thing too because i'm not too fond of XSI.

Tetsu0Positive Chaos

RotatorSplint

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-30 01:25:56 UTC Post #289772

I love XSI.. but the support for it is almost non-existent. The SMD tools for it are ancient, too, especially the import function. It's functional, but if you wanna import a decompiled model that's been rigged, all you get are the nulls; no bones, no animation controllers, nada. Yuck.

I guess the "best" choice in this matter is 3ds Max, but if you've got a good exporter for Blender, more power to you. Start crankin' out those models, sir!

RotatorSplint

Skals

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-30 05:40:48 UTC Post #289774

dude it was just a test to get something into the engine. get off me lol.
I'm slowly working my up to gibable props and then i can have something good to show for it. Plus i think i found a halfway decent smd exporter for blender. good thing too because i'm not too fond of XSI.

Yeah I'm just joking. So far I'm also learning to create models in my college, and I've actually made some nice models of tanks planes animals etc

SkalsLevel Designer

kdunivan

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-30 13:18:02 UTC Post #289783

@Atom: I have been experimenting with some normal mapping myself and find that I get the same problem with the whole flashlight thing. The texture from a distance is awesome but when turn the flashlight on it "flattens" again.

Am I doing something wrong here or does the flashlight just automatically nullify the whole bump effect?

Also, did you put a cubemap in and build your cubemaps after compiling?

Funny thing is, I grabbed a random texture off a bumpmap site and it looked great. I really feel I am doing something fundamentally wrong....

"LightmappedGeneric"
{

"$basetexture" "(mydir)/(mytexture)"
"$envmap" "env_cubemap"
"$surfaceprop" "metal_bouncy"
"$bumpmap" "(mydir)/(mytexture_normal)"

}

Haven't done much to the text file. Going to do a bit more research today to see if I am missing something. And yes, it's all named correctly.

kdunivan

The Mad Carrot

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-30 13:21:01 UTC Post #289784

Also, did you put a cubemap in and build your cubemaps after compiling?

No. It's a brick wall, i don't want it to be shiny (unless it's wet).

Do you also have the difuse texture that normal map belongs to?

The Mad Carrot

kdunivan

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-30 13:36:01 UTC Post #289785

They were both 1024x1024. I scaled them down so they would be under 2M.

I will get a screen shot here in a little bit for you. The texture looks great but could look much better. I have been messing with it for 3 days.

LOL

kdunivan

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-30 13:57:47 UTC Post #289786

http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/1208/arenacube0000.jpg

What the heck is that pixelation all about? see the small squares?

http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/1813/arenacube0001.jpg

http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/4089/arenacube0002.jpg

http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/8986/arenacube0003.jpg

http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/1807/arenacube0004.jpg

http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/9903/arenacube0005.jpg

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/8127/arenacube0006.jpg

http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/4103/arenacube0007l.jpg

And the top view just kills the effect all together. Not like you are going to be able to get there but some will inevitably use noclip. lol

kdunivan

Striker

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-30 13:59:14 UTC Post #289787

Wait a second....

StrikerI forgot to check the oil pressure

RotatorSplint

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-30 15:10:42 UTC Post #289788

What the heck is that pixelation all about? see the small squares?

That's the texture compression in the normal map that gets applied by default when you throw it into vtex.exe. The file size is smaller, but it screws up the normal data near sharp transitions. No good.

Assuming you aren't using VTFEdit, when you compile your texture for the normal map, create a .txt file with the same name as the normal map and save this in it, with quotations:

"normal" "1"
"nocompress" "1"

Then drag-and-drop that onto vtex.

RotatorSplint

DiscoStu

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-30 15:23:36 UTC Post #289789

TENSO?

DiscoStu

The Mad Carrot

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-30 16:12:22 UTC Post #289790

kdunivan, what a load of ugliness. The bumpy effect i mean.

Assuming you aren't using VTFEdit, when you compile your texture for the normal map, create a .txt file with the same name as the normal map and save this in it, with quotations:

"normal" "1"
"nocompress" "1"

Then drag-and-drop that onto vtex.

Would that also fix the pixelation seen in my screenshot with the flashlight?

The Mad Carrot

RotatorSplint

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-30 16:37:02 UTC Post #289792

Maybe? I'm still learning about ssbumps. I don't really know how much you can really deal with that though.. Like I said, it may be an inherent issue with ssbumps.

RotatorSplint

The Mad Carrot

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-30 16:47:46 UTC Post #289793

Alright, ill try it out soon.

The Mad Carrot

Striker

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-30 17:36:05 UTC Post #289795

Why do those annoying shadows occur? After all, the room's lightmap grid is set to 4, for fine shadows. Will they disappear in a final compile?(vrad is set to normal right now).

StrikerI forgot to check the oil pressure

kdunivan

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-30 18:35:48 UTC Post #289796

I figured the sharp edges would be a problem. I spent alot of time removing and refining the edges and cleaning up the original image. I did not know about the compression.

Then drag-and-drop that onto vtex.

Do I drag the normal map and the normal map text at the same time?

@atom: thanks for the vote of confidence! It's still a work in progress. This is basically my third room now. Not to mention the cube is spinning and has no real lights sources. I have spots on the bottom and the top but only the spots on top are giving off dynamic lighting (point_spotlight).

Would you just leave the texture flat? lol

kdunivan

The Mad Carrot

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-30 18:43:52 UTC Post #289797

I have to say, the bump effect on that tilefloor in Striker's screenshot looks really good. Is it an ssbump or normal map?

kdunivan, i guess sooner or later you'll get it right.

The Mad Carrot

kdunivan

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-30 19:27:45 UTC Post #289798

Hey, thanks for that tip Rotator. As you can see the pixelation went away and now I have the nice crisp line I wanted. Also cleaned up alot of the detail on the cube texture itself although you can't really see it for this crappy screenshot. There are always much darker than the actual map. Looks great in map and walking around it though. Thanks again.

@atom: did you apply that to your texture as well?

kdunivan

The Mad Carrot

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-30 19:42:34 UTC Post #289799

@atom: did you apply that to your texture as well?

Was playing games, so no. I'll try it out right now!

The Mad Carrot

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-30 19:53:21 UTC Post #289800

"normal" "1"
"nocompress" "1"

That should be

"ssbump" "1"
because it's an ssbump map, not a normal map?

But it seems to have fixed it, the pixelation is gone:

The Mad Carrot

Striker

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-30 20:35:38 UTC Post #289801

How about my problem guys?
Atom, I am using ssbump on that texture, if only you checked the the earlier pages of this thread....

Kdunivan, when making your VTFs, pay attention to your compression format.

Here's a useful link.

For fine gradients(non compressed image), choose BGR888. If you have an alpha layer(for,say, specularity), choose BGRA8888.

StrikerI forgot to check the oil pressure

kdunivan

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-30 20:49:05 UTC Post #289802

@striker: personally, I like your texture. It looks alot like a bump texture I already have.

What's wrong with it?

And I am not using an ssbump, just normal bump. And I pretty much drag everything to vtex. I guess I should use vtfedit more often.

I am all fixed up now though....

kdunivan

Striker

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-30 20:53:17 UTC Post #289803

It's not about the texture :|.

Why do those annoying shadows occur? After all, the room's lightmap grid is set to 4, for fine shadows. Will they disappear in a final compile?(vrad is set to normal right now).

I even made an arrow on the screenshot...

StrikerI forgot to check the oil pressure

ninja defuse

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-31 07:02:01 UTC Post #289810

ninja defuse

kdunivan

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-31 11:59:30 UTC Post #289820

Sorry, didn't notice the arrow....

Try a final compile and see what happens....

You could put a mild light or two scattered around the room (set at like 5).

kdunivan

DiscoStu

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-31 18:04:07 UTC Post #289841

@kdunivan/striker: Yeah the tile floor looks good, but it looks like it could really use some scaling down. Those tiles look HUGE.

DiscoStu

Soup Miner

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-31 18:13:01 UTC Post #289842

Mt. Eden, Defuse

Also, can you give us a better 3D screenshot? With that 2D clusterfuck of colored lines, surely there are better 3D scenes to be seen.

Soup Miner

Rimrook

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-31 18:30:26 UTC Post #289844

rim mentioned some program that is supposed to simply uvw unwrap..

Nope.

RimrookSince 2003

psilous

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-31 18:31:46 UTC Post #289846

psilous

Striker

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-31 18:40:49 UTC Post #289847

@kdunivan/striker: Yeah the tile floor looks good, but it looks like it could really use some scaling down. Those tiles look HUGE.

It's already scaled to 0.15. 1024x1024 texture

StrikerI forgot to check the oil pressure

DiscoStu

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-31 19:09:28 UTC Post #289850

Perhaps you should shrink it a bit more then.

Uhh psilous, what's that?

DiscoStu

psilous

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-31 20:16:02 UTC Post #289851

An exact (mostly) to scale parody of the MegaMan3 Snakeman stage, ported for Half-Life Goldsource Deathmatch.

/edit

Well, about a third of it, so far.

psilous

kdunivan

Posted 13 years ago2011-01-31 21:24:32 UTC Post #289852

@Striker: I would just cut the size in half. Make it a 512x512. That should help with any sizing issues.

@Psilous: You are going to use some null textures right?

kdunivan

ninja defuse

Posted 13 years ago2011-02-01 07:58:15 UTC Post #289879

custom texture from cgtextures + Gimp = goldsrc > source ^^ just kidding

ninja defuse

Suparsonik

Posted 13 years ago2011-02-01 08:28:34 UTC Post #289881

Dang that looks nice.

SuparsonikI'm going off the edge to meet my maker.

psilous

Posted 13 years ago2011-02-01 11:14:27 UTC Post #289891

Definately.

@kdunivan - well, there are walls to put in yet. the end product is going to resemble more that of a winding tube.

psilous

kdunivan

Posted 13 years ago2011-02-01 11:38:04 UTC Post #289893

@psilous: It's all good....just asking....Looked like alot of texture on the outside. It would surely kill your render.

custom texture from cgtextures + Gimp = goldsrc > source ^^ just kidding

LOL

kdunivan

Suparsonik

Posted 13 years ago2011-02-03 22:40:37 UTC Post #289977

[EDIT]:

Coming close to being done, once I get everything like the spawns, props, and weapons in place, it'll be time for the compile. Then I will search vigorously for errors.