Epifire

Oh well that's a screenshot of Wolfenstein: The New Order which utilizes all Megatexture detailed surfaces. As most of you already know I'm going to attempt a Megatexture (or several thereof) for my current project. Wolfen-NO has all that overhead room for extreme detailing so all they have to worry about finicky blending options for the world details. I'm not completely certain how their actual toolset works, but you're supposed to be able to slap anything onto a surface and then just save the details into the Megatexture you have loaded for your current level. So no matter how detailed the material is in the editor, it all gets baked down into diff/norm/spec information in the end. What interested me in this decals bit is having other options. Say for instance if I just wanted to make a cool detail for one part (without making a whole texture sheet for that part of the map) I could just add decals per instance where needed. The obvious downside to the Megatexture's all unique surface detailing is that it's huge in file size no matter what. My plans are to only commit large geometrical faces (that are being tiled). So I'm more like Megatexture v0.5 as far as the theory is concerned. The optional decal method is just really handy if you're trying to sidestep the massive undertaking of manually created Megatextures.

Do elaborate? While I'm going to be heading up the idtech5 texturing process in all unique surfaces, I'm curious as to the other method for smaller instances?

So much work leading up to this, I'm just dying to show all that I have in plan even for this demo. There's two other planned sections currently that I haven't shown yet. The lower Laboratory section and an adjacent vent shaft leading out from that point. It'll be short and sweet but I'm banking on presentation over game length for this bit. My hands are tied when it comes to some other aspects, so you'll be seeing me reaching out for some assistance down the road no doubt. It's bold but I have plans for a single, new NPC that I cannot implement completely on my own. My hopes are that you guys like the core of this mission so much I can get some help to bring it into fruition from it's demo state. Only time will tell but I can't emphasize just how cool it is to work with people here on something as fun as The Dark Mod. Even if I do end up getting on at some studio, I see myself helping with small projects around here on the side anyway. EDIT: OKAY okay, this should probably be it for a while. I'm detailing some of the existing images now that are finished so they can be passed onto the painting later on. Either way it sure beats the plain ambient occlusion maps. Behold, diffuse details! Specular details and proper dirt shall be added later, but this is much closer to the what the ending product will look like!

Hey guys, when I need to start sending the Castle Lab to folks for testing is there a standard method for packing a mission easily? Like right now it's kinda a pain because I have to go and rummage all my content folders to pull out all the models, skins and anything else I've customized for a level. I was looking in the beginners guide and they just covered compiling. Are there any pack tools that just pack by in manner by used assets in a level? I know we had something similar with BSP stuff back in my Source modding days. I mean I can certainly just smack all the contents into a pk3 but it'll get really time consuming to do that a lot for iterative testing periods.

This is pretty awesome for something just out of the box. And it looks like they even offer software to easily combine your own sounds to mix and balance if I'm not mistaken? The sounds interlacing in some of these (especially the factory) really remind me of some Thief levels with the Hammers. I'm not one for using other pre-made assets whole sale (because I'm just that stubborn to learn myself). An application to aid in this process sounds a lot better than hassling with the crude layout in Audacity. I do want to pick up FL Studio when I do make the plunge into sound work. The dream is to make games for a living and do sounds work as my hobby, but that'll have to wait a while longer. This may certainly help a lot in the meanwhile. Many thanks for posting!

So my progress has been slow as I've been working more on special side projects for other mappers around here lately. But I've been experimenting with different (very low) amounts of fog in the staircase. I'm also done with the major structural portions in the staircase tower, so now it's down to creating a maze out of it. Gonna bust out the walls, create blockages and most generally just not make it an easy, straight shot to the top... The dirt is a lousy placeholder until I get around to the texturing pass. It's going to look loads better when detailed as I'll be able to paint over geometry edges and have very fine amounts of dirt/debris. I'm looking forward to getting to the texturing but at the same time I'm scared of how it's going to hold up in my attempts to combine lots of smaller 4k images into several fairly large ones. All together I'm not entirely convinced I can make a megatexture out of it without the proper tools. Though heaven help me, I will have most of the large surfaces left as unique surface details. Even if it does increase the load time, I'm pretty sure my vram can take it. How that holds up on other rigs outside of my own demo test is a different question though. NOTE: Besides the dirt, everything is being shown in normal maps and ambient occlusion only. No special diffuse details have been added in yet.

Tweaked version of the warehouse is good. TDS was where I came onto the scene with the Thief games, so all the blue is definitely very reminiscent of Ion Storm's take on the game. Epi-Approved!

I actually miss the simplicity of my old Microsoft Sidewinder. Sucks to find out Microsoft shut down the Sidewinder series in 2014. I have the Logi502 but I'm not as hip with the button layout. The two buttons off the side of the left click are just kinda awkward if I bind them to anything but an inventory up/down selector. Otherwise if it's a weapon I always end up bumping them by accident.

Well if you ever want that certain brush based spiral staircase turned into a model... *whistles looking in the opposite direction*

For me it really depends on the project. A lot of the time I bank on themes and plots because I'm a details guy and most my inspiration comes out of those two. I generally invest most my time into the art aspect (as good art is rather time consuming) but gameplay is equally important to me. I'm extremely abstract in terms of my construction methods as sometimes I start working on some quick art pieces to anchor my themes in the level with. I also like to light things (at least with basic coverage) very early, as I tend to use that a lot for highlighting objectives and important areas. I try and pick out as much as I can with mood and pacing as early as I can as well. If I nail down exactly what I know is going to take part in the space I'm creating, I can leverage the rest of the development around that understanding. At this point I've done enough to know roughly what I'm expecting to do or see in my level, so if I'm not sure I don't work right away. This is a really big deal as a lot of people push themselves to work just because they have the time to do it. It's bad when you're unsure of your whole direction, as that often leads to redoing things later when you better realize the project. This isn't to say I don't take notes, or block out layouts. Here's a bit behind how my workflow for the current Castle Lab demo I'm working on... I had most the story to the setting scripted out in my head, but the basic jist of it is that you gotta steal a special device from a mad scientist. You're breaking into an underground lab through a vent shaft. This leads into the lab, and after stealing the device, you have to escape through a old access tower. It's a run down and unused part of the castle, so it's a maze of floors to cover. What's worse is Hadrian (the scientist) is onto your stealing of the device. Now what that boils down to is that the stair case surrounds a chain lift (elevator) suspended in the middle of the shaft. Hadrian in a fit of rage activates his robotic monstrosity (which was currently on standby on the central lift). Now with this behemoth slowly rising through the central shaft, you have to beat the mechanical monster to the top. The lift is slow and churning, but you've got a lot of stairs and obstacles to cover. So the latter end of this mission/demo is about the tension and practicality behind a narrow escape. That being said I still didn't have a clear idea what was needed to make this interesting. So I blocked out a stair case to start with... All this did though was let me know just how boring stairs get ascending ten flights to the top. Sooo I cut it down to seven total (which was far better than ten). But I had to mess around in my blockout version to get an idea for it all. Quite a good deal later (in the above shot). But having much more rounded/organic structural details aided the project as a whole. Then I realized I needed additional details per floor to break it up even more. So then I created a list of what needed to be done (so that I didn't lose track or forget!). Each number signifying an individual floor. "1: Intro and a lotta dirt (maybe cob webs?). 2: Continued dirt and then some barrels.3: Storage with lots more barrels.4: Wall shackles, maybe storage slots for bodies in the walls?5: Blown out ceiling from the floor above. Tunnel through the storage recesses.6: Blocked passage is resolved by a very small cat walk outside the windows (windows must be busted out for this!).7: There's a hole in the center of the floor with some makeshift bridge across it. The ending picklock scene is also here at the end." Short and to the point, but it covers most the major details I needed to keep track of. Right now I'm actually tackling the first floor and tearing out walls to put in a lot of dirt and debris. So it's not done yet but that's just a bit of insight on my current work I'm doing. But even still I've really not been hammering away with this near as much. Working on side projects with other TDM authors on their own work to break things up a bit. For a while I just had to set it aside after just slamming out the highres to lowres mesh work nonstop for three days. I'm career minded about all the game work but I have no team yet. When on your own, you've gotta find a stride that works for you. For me I know for certain I make super bland art when I'm feeling either uninspired, or just plain simply tired and wanting to unwind after a long week. We all have lives outside of TDM (most of us anyway ) but sometimes you really just don't want to build things on your days off. I had about two weeks of just brain mush moments, and just simply wanting to relax on my days off. And that's okay, because when I come back I just pick up at a suitable point and continue. Running yourself into the ground is the worst idea. If you're career minded like me, you may ask yourself, "how am I supposed to do this all the time like the pros?" But you have to realize most those devs aren't working a grocery job on the side (the games are their job). So it's easier to get burned out when you simply just don't ever seem to get a break. When you're working on games exclusively as your full-time job it's totally a different kind of scenario. You're not having to put in the hours when you get home, because you already did that at the office. So it's not my own excuse but my reasoning as to why I have to take purposeful timeouts. When you feel rested and are both mentally and physically able to handle both, then it's great. But you have to make room for the human factor, and not beat yourself up over it (so otherwise not being Epi) So there's my two cents.

Ahhh, see I was combining both old and new methods accidentally. I don't think it causes any issues directly as I they all seem to work without any hitches. For some reason I was under the impression the description line was used for no more than an actual description (not the actual material type declaration). So what I'm seeing is you need to list the material type as the first word in the description? Cause it looks like that and whatever else you want to add after. That's where my confusion was at.

Well I'm getting to the part where I get to tear out the walls and bust things up so here's the random brick debris of the day!

This should be a bit better... https://www.mediafire.com/folder/7q1r8him1y63d/TDM%20Repository Also I put my sig to better use and just have that there instead. New stuff when in full working order will be updated into those same files. With the exception of anything that was built for a specific user (special secret project-ish things).

Oh does it not let you download the whole folder? Hmm a zip should work right?

I could probably do this in a different thread but random people had been asking for my machines I've made in TDM so far. This should be all the available stuff, PM me if there's anything wrong with it. Cheers! http://www.mediafire.com/folder/h27iw21t822we EDIT: I may have a separate thread later that showcases some of the stuff but this is my main file dump for now. New stuff will be updated into the same link!

Well as long as the lightmaps weren't overlapping to active fires that could be put out, each light could have it's on/off state tied to a toggling skin too. This tells me a lot, but just out of curiosity what was your lightmap resolution set at? My whole purpose I want to do is be able to throttle the amount of darkness, back beyond the ambient_light mainly for dark (barely accessible) areas of the map. Primarily corners and low spots that are too far removed from light sources to be receiving much light. What it should end up doing is give me two dark thresholds of light. The darkest being the lightmaps that blend into the ambient world light. It would also help prioritize more important areas of the map to lead the player by light.

The optimization is my biggest concern. Even if this was made of actual brushwork the big problem is that it's all open. You hardly have any visual cutoff from any angle (stairs or the central elevator shaft). With even two lights running shadows I notice a bit of a hit on my frames. Shadow meshes and disabling different portions that don't really need to be taken into account will help I think (certainly did with my other models I made). There is space between the floors as they were built to snap together in XSI (our other name for Softimage) so there is room for BSP to be added in between. My current plans are to demo this space for a very specific scenario so I don't plan on having any NPCs running around as of yet, but monsterclip wouldn't be too hard to add. If you make stuff around one floor it can be duplicated up to another with ease, since each floor was actually modified from a single floor to start with. Here's my workflow. Build the basic blockout (using precise unit measurements) and see how I like the scale of the mesh in-game. Then I start making my tiling textures. Both the stone floor and brick were setup in Softimage to tile correctly, sculpted in Mudbox and then baked back down to a 4k texture in Soft. All the areas I require to tile are ones that will be taken into account for the massive texture painting pass. Once the sections are complete I will split different levels into groups that are good enough to fill 8k worth of UV space without compromise. Here's the interesting part. Once all the areas are set to be painted, all the floors will be loaded into Substance Painter. SP allows for multiple meshes to be painted at once with their own individual maps. Norm, Diff, and Spec all included with it's export. There I can blend stuff, add dirt, colors and more detailed destruction! Now you may be wondering, how am I going to tile the maps? They will actually be loaded into SP and then tiled (not before) since we can't have the classic overlapping UVs as we ordinarily would. Now hopefully between four 8k texture sheets there shouldn't be any noticeable detail loss. Only time will tell. Do indulge me with this information (maybe in PM if it's fairly lengthy). Currently you're looking at two meshes in that whole map since I'm just testing the layout, but I was betting that would change down the road. Alsssso there's a whole lab section I'm building that you all haven't seen yet. But I planned on having that around a corner so I could run it in it's own VisLeaf for sure. That should be at the bottom of the shaft but more on that later!

Random question as always guys. Is there a recommended blend mode to be used for custom lightmaps? Yes this does mean I'm making considerations for manually setup and baked lightmaps. Not sure TDM would even look like it ran on the same engine were it done right. Wouldn't even have to be at a high resolution, but it would look mighty fancy. Depending on the target hardware the constraints are considerable. That and just how easy it is to mimic my light values and positions from DR back into Softimage. My modeling app supports a rendermap feature that allows me to save lighting data onto a texture (either with or without the diffuse). Also something on that same line, would there be a blend function that could be disabled or culled out by direct light sources? Manual lightmaps would be super if we didn't have moving lights like the lantern or NPCs with torches. Otherwise pointing a dynamic light at a dimly lit area would still be dim, even with the lights. Just some more crazy Epi-thoughts of the night.

Sure thing! I'd love to give a good and in depth article on the process. Depending on how well Substance Painter likes my massive (paint the whole friggin level in one shot) method, than I should have no problems for the last step. What's great is that if you have a good hand for modeling it's much more freeing to not have to worry about normal BSP mapping constraints. I can't tell you how much I've tweaked things and pulled stuff around to fit for this project. It's a pretty organic kind of structure with practically nothing being grid snapped (which is infuriating to work on at first). Such as the the major brickwork. It's based off a large brick sheet I sculpted out into a 4k texture for generous resolution. Nice thing is it's big enough that I could stretch the thing out a lot to minimize excessive tiling, as it's used nearly everywhere. I'll be able to paint on top of it for dirt, moisture, and buildup details to break it up even more. What's even cooler is any UV edges I can mask even more with Substance Painter on the final detailing pass. Really excited!

Okay so I told myself I wouldn't post any WIP shots but... oh well. No brushwork is present either. All my geometry and spaces have been planned out in XSI. It's still pretty rough, but the overall form is there. Enough that it was at least worthy enough for some lousy screenshots. Been pretty excited though. Started it about a week back, and it's come a long way in a short time. All highres details, no actual texturing has happened yet. Each floor will have a bit different details and layout. Can't wait to show you guys what the scenario will be, as I actually have a pretty specific plan for what gameplay will be taking place in it. As some of you already know, I'll be taking into account the megatexture theory for this run. All major surfaces (with tiling textures) such as floor, ceiling and walls will be detailed individually. Gonna see how far I can push the texture limits for this one. Still so much more detailing to do!

Greetings Pete! I ask a lot of questions as it's my many questions thread. Currently I've been trying to arm myself with various techniques to tackle different scenarios. Parallax mapping isn't the end of the world, it would just give me one more thing to bring out depth a bit more. So it's not a necessity, it would just be the icing on the cake. However for Megatextures that's a different story. Laying down your baseline tiling textures is a start but lack much realism with their edging. Vertex Colors are a step in the right direction as it gives much more customization to how the materials are blended together (very good for exteriors using large spaces). Megatextures are obviously the most detailed and involved of the two choices. It's more time consuming but provides the best results as it gives the ultimate level of control. I have plans currently to map into 8k textures and section parts of the map accordingly. It's a slightly less mega version but I'm willing to try it out and see what we get. Now you may be wondering why split it down? Well first I can't export a map higher than 8k with Substance Painter. I may also be able to combine four 8k maps into a single large texture as that should be enough pixel space for my current map. Substance Painter gives me a great deal of tools to really detail my meshes. So with the major walls and floors paint-able, it's crazy but it should look pretty awesome when finished. The best part is once I figured out my workflow it's actually not too hard. There's a lot of meshes that wont be in the, "megatextures". Smaller structural details that aren't tiled will have their own texture as usual. But when it comes to the unified painting method for larger tiled areas, the larger the better. It's just easier since it's less divided. Hope that answers some of your questions. Hopefully you'll be seeing some of my work on this next project shortly!