peter_spy

It's the two stages for ambient world light and frob highlight to work right:

I'm using this and the reference page from ModWiki, but for someone who isn't used to write code, that isn't enough IMO. There are too many things that can go wrong, and your ability to troubleshoot is second to none when you're just starting. I've been writing down the examples I managed to figure out, and those you all helped me with, in my WIP thread, so that may someday be used as a base of references for someone who doesn't want to learn GLSL.

I think it would be great to have a comprehensive material reference page in the wiki, with code and pictures, since these questions repeat quite often. It's a huge task, but it would be great to have something like this: https://docs.unrealengine.com/udk/Three/MaterialExamples.html

That soft shadow technique looks cool at first, but it's not that good for character shadows in those screenshots. The question is, how it affects performance, since the lights will still be dynamic? I guess it's just some kind of shadow interpolation? Not that anyone's expecting a lightmapping system from TDM team, that's enormous task, and it would generate a whole host of other problems My thoughts exactly. But shadows using alpha channel could be useful for stuff like grass or leaves, since faking organic stuff is a bit harder.

Welcome to the forum, Carlton It's true that there are many variables here, and it can be really overwhelming. But, 3d stuff is kind of a lifelong hobby, you can learn things at your own pace. The important thing is to practice regularly, e.g. I had a few year break in modeling and I forgot a lot of useful things.

^ My god this material was hideous. This is how it's supposed to look: https://skfb.ly/67xtM Also, after some initial problems, I can say that the roof section is shaping up quite nicely:

Actually, that is true. My brain keeps telling me that "it's too complicated", "you have no idea how to do this". But eventually I come up with the idea, and it's not that hard.

No I didn't. But most of those techniques are engine-independent. When you switch engines these days, all you got to learn is interface and differences in how shaders work. Oh, but that reminds me, I feel like that self-patting on the back attitude from the 'Triple A' thread needs some counterbalance This is what students do these days, and if they can do it, so do you: So get down to work and up your modeling / level design game, people!

I see DuckDuckGo is mentioned on that list, I've been using it instead of Google for over half a year now, works like it should.

https://youtu.be/kGm_xhu42tU?t=44m55s Very nice panel about environment design, I'm kind of using this technique, although I had to get into much more detail with first meshes and materials, to see whether I'm doing things right on this engine.

Now, this is an absolute must. If you're new to modeling and you're not sure about the ideas behind low-poly modeling or your approach to it, this guy got it right. It's consistent with everything I've learned so far.

Great talk and Q&A session about lightning, also bits about creative work in general, I love it

IMO you have to make players believe that lightning is "realistic" or "real-time" – how you do it is another story I did tests with soft shadows and similar technique for Thief 3, but it's much easier in TDM, because lightgem reacts correctly. I'd love to see what SteveL did with soft shadows cast by meshes and geometry, if that's what he did.

Actually dynamic lightning isn't much used in modern engines, maybe for moveable lights. Most lightning is static. Even stuff like flicker or pulsating is faked through materials, with textures and sine wave functions. At least that's how it works in Unreal Engines. Faking lightmaps is hard, but you don't have to draw shadows manually. If you use modeling software, you could use it to design lightning of your map, and render it to textures, room by room. Then you can put them as projection textures in spot lights. I already tried it and it works, but that's tons of work.

You gotta love the internets sometimes. The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band with lyrics rewritten for the Star Wars uniwerse. The whole album. Because reasons. https://youtu.be/NYD3QtyEGGM?list=PL8s6sSjUyaxUk3mCUqiNuJiMNxs9QdthO

Env is not a mandatory root folder. You can easily put your cubemaps in somewhere in the textures folder, and use them for anything you like, from skybox backgrounds to fake reflection on water, and for other materials. Cubemap sides split into textures with proper suffixes are mandatory though.

I'm not that experienced with DR yet, but you can have some freedom with folder structure and filenames, as long as you don't mess up paths in materials. E.g. I keep my mesh textures in fms\mapname\textures\mapname\mesh, not with models. I also keep my meshes in fms\mapname\models\mapname, so I can access them faster from the model library.

There are no magic "one-size-fits-all" tricks here. But you can design a map in such way. You need to use projection textures and non-shadow-casting lights to sort of "manually lightmap" your level, just like modern game engines would do. This requires a lot of work and design, but it can be done. And what is most important, the lightgem will react correctly, so you don't need any other special hacks to maintain that illusion.

I started using OBS for tutorials I'm about to make, but I found it far from intuitive. But, I got all the info I needed in the Help section, so it's not that bad. As for editing, I've been using sony vegas for years, so I can't be much of help here, sorry. DaVinci resolve should be free, but I know it only as a color grading software, a very powerful one. Edit: I started using Handbrake too, but I couldn't set it properly. I mean movies got compressed right, but YT couldn't recognize them.

Reminds me of those creepy stop-motion animations in Tool videos from the 90s, very promising.

FYI, no static meshes would ever seal anything, not in this generation of engines. As idtech4 shares basically the same building principles as UE2 and other subtractive geometry engines, the methods are similar, i.e. you can create a set of structural meshes, build a playable area with it, then surround it with invisible, non-shadow casting brushes (and then use visportals to optimise the map). The only difference between TDM and TDS for example, is that you just add walls in empty space, you don't carve anything out (there's no division distinction between additive and subtractive brushes). All other design principles are basically the same. The next generation of engines, like UE3, use additive mode only, and static meshes are there for distance culling and automatic optimisation of the map, along with LOD system and a few other things. There's no traditional skybox, everything is a giant open space. Everything is based on lightmaps though, and even some dynamic effects like pulsating or flickering are faked with shader definitions. I'm pretty sure that just a couple of true dynamic lights would make the framerate go down like crazy.

This guy's work is amazing: https://ognyan.artstation.com/projects/reGam Idtech4 would probably require more conservative option in terms of poly budget, but still, it's great modeling, sculpting, and fantastic material.

A some point, I was determined to learn 3dsmax just "by doing", but frankly it's almost impossible. It's a powerhouse, you can really make anything with it, from low-poly models to Pixar movies. But hardly anything is intuitive here, you really need to know what you're doing, in most cases. So I took classes on 3dsmax architectural rendering at local Academy of Fine Arts. Then bought a few courses on modeling and texturing workflow for video games, it was around UE3 era. There's no way in hell you can get e.g. how Mental Ray works just by fiddling with options. Also, that place you live in, it's definitely something else! It reminds me I should visit my friends in Ireland and Scotland, I haven't been to Dublin or Edinburgh for quite some time now.

I love the "my drunk kitchen" remark, that's the only proper way to go That said, the way of selecting wire-frame I'm talking about is exactly how you do it in modeling software, it's been in 3dsmax since I know it. I think Unreal engine had it right from the start too. In DR, I often use 3d view, mouselook and WASD keys, it's very fast and efficient. The ortho view in DR also has this thing, where it won't allow you to select a mesh if its faces are away from the camera, just like in 3d view.