Prefab - Wall of Embedded Bookshelves

[NeonsStyle]

Hey Guys,

 

Now my maps done, I'm bit bored n still want to mess with DR. Since I've been doing a series on Layers of Fear, I was inspired by some bookshelves in that game.

 

Here's a short video of two types of the prefabs. They are individual units, that can just be slotted together how you want. If you want a copy of the

prefab, just PM me. Do you think it's fine as is? Needs more detail? Varieties? Be great if we had some less grainy version of the posh grey wood texture.

 

https://youtu.be/_Okn7eGTigo

 

Images of the single unit (build up the wall above yourself lol

 

Grey

 

 

Red

 

 

Grey with Brass Trim

 

 

Here is the latest version. This one is for my next map. This has had all the details remodeled to make it look like it should in a room like this. This is a modular, so you can copy and just add on to it to make as many as you want, and there's no fiddling. If this post should be in assets, feel free to move it. Just wasn't sure which thread to put it in. Oh, you can't have this version. , however you can have the earlier ones and change it into this.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL04hJe3Z50

Edited August 30, 2016 by NeonsStyle

[Bikerdude]

have you got the prefab for this, so I can tweak it and make it skinnable before adding to the mod.

[NeonsStyle]

Sure Biker, I'll pm you a link to the 4 versions.

 

Neon

[NeonsStyle]

Is there no way to add specularity (shine) to some surfaces? Some of these would really benefit from a satin sheen.

 

I've improved on these now. Looks a lot better, I'll show you when they are finished.

[nbohr1more]

Specular maps should work?

 

{

blend specularmap

map <path to image>

}

 

As I recall, the gray level affects the brightness while the alpha affects the gloss behavior.

 

Is that not working for you?

[NeonsStyle]

I didn't know about it nbohr1more. Thanks for that. I will use that next map

[Dragofer]

Very nice, those look impressive ingame what with the combination of the gas lighting and the wood.

 

 

A comment about the make, I've seen that you're using very thin detail brushes, grooves and such. That can be problematic in a couple ways:

- the engine can run into difficulties if it's asked to generate many brushes of that kind as brushes are meant for things like walls. At some point the engine may start failing to render large chunks of brushes under the strain, even simple ones like floor brushes.

- there are many very long and thin triangles, which are unusually taxing for a graphics card. These come not only from the brushes themselves; they get rendered again with every light that hits the details, and yet again for every light if it should cast shadows. And the engine has a tendency to fragment brushes into even more and thinner triangles. This would come under your performance question in another thread recently.

 

 

The first point could probably be avoided by turning the brush&patch components of the bookcase into an .ase model so that it no longer needs to be compiled by the engine; this would also solve the brush fragmentation problem and reduce dmap & loading times.

DarkRadiant has an inbuilt script which can turn brushes&patches into .ase models. To do so: select the brushes/patches, go to 'Script' at the top of the screen, 'export ase', give a name and name a filepath in your fm's 'models' folder, export, then go to 'Files' at the top and click 'Reload models'. (checking the first checkbox option in the export dialogue puts the origin of the model in its centre (default), unchecking it puts the origin where the map's origin is)

 

 

The second issue would be more a question of asking yourself how visible each detail is. For example, in your second video the trim of the lamp pillars is very noticeable and adds alot to the scene, while all the grooves above the lamps and inbetween the pillars would need to be consciously inspected in order to be seen. Those would be good candidates for saving on perf.

 

And lastly, while normally not making any difference, in this case it might be worthwhile to apply caulk to the unseen surfaces of the long thin brushes because they'll be copy-pasted over and over.

[Spooks]

One can always make the bookcase into an entity with different LOD stages - Lord knows we barely have enough LOD entities as it stands.

[Springheel]

- Lord knows we barely have enough LOD entities as it stands.

 

That's going to change in the next update.

[NeonsStyle]

Thanks Dragofer. Some good points there, especially for something I'm working on atm. I didn't know about ASE models. Also didn't know about issue with thin brushes. If something is converted to a ase model, could be loaded into something like blender and rescaled? Be really nifty if it could. Would save me a lot of work.

[Destined]

There pretty sure is. Just google "Blender ase import" and you should find a script for that. You will just have to be sure, you have the right blender version. Sometimes scripts only work for specific versions.

[Dragofer]

Finding the right script for the right Blender version can be tricky indeed. JediaAcademy's .ase importers exporters will work with modern Blender.

[NeonsStyle]

Thanks. I'll look into that. Jedi Academy was a fun game. Messed with some editing for that.

[NeonsStyle]

I have made these bookshelves look much much nicer, and as soon as I get it into blender and can resize them, then we can have a couple of variants

for small and large rooms, cause the final version is just gorgeous. I'll release them all then.