Blender 2.61 - export to .map

[Nosslak]

Learning Blender is a chore man, Im sorry to say, so its probably going to be a while before I can give this any use. I can think of ways that building a detailed house interior with a polygon modeler and than exporting it as brushes would be a lot faster and more confortable than doing it with the rigid pieces inside DR; but I also agree with Arcturus that there is great potential in just modeling free-style, organic shapes to be used as architecture models, and using the original shape as base for a quick and accurate double to be used as de facto underlying map geometry.

 

Now if only I had the brains to learn the program... (Im actually learning two other 3d modelers right now (Rhino and Revit Architecture, that's the main problem, your memory is psread to thin... 3 with DR, if you think about it...)

Here's a guide to starting out with Blender:

http://cgcookie.com/blender/get-started-with-blender/

I haven't watched these tutorials but most of their tutorials are very good so I trust them.

[Arcturus]

Blender can be overwhelming with the amount of features. Most of them are not needed when you make models for game. Also modeling in Darkradiant and in Blender are different philosophies. In one you build with blocks and in the other with quads and tris.

 

I put a guard in map and tried to dmap. It crashed trying to generate aas. Apparently geomtry is to complicated So a monsterclip is needed:

 

 

I reexported the tower this time with face width 2. It will be easier to hide it inside the monsterclip. It will not serve as a collision model so it doesn't have to be the same width as tower's wall:

 

 

This caused a leak. Exporting this part with width 3 fixed the leak:

 

 

The map has compiled.

[Arcturus]

I added floors with visportals:

 

[Baddcog]

Wow, not only am I surprised you got the visportals to seal, I,m surprised that they came out half round. Didn't even think that was possible.

 

Now the fun part, aligning texture on 20 pieces all the way around.

[Arcturus]

That yellow texture will be swapped with textures/common/caulk. On top of that I'll put .ase. You can see that outside of the tower is not rendered:

 

[HMart]

I Have a problem with this, i made my geometry on Modo 501 using a grid of 8, imported to blender and exported to .map with a face width 8 to match the grid and a size of 1.0, converted the Quake 3 .map to Doom 3 .map, it gave me errors on the textures and on the Quake 3 path but worked, DR opened the converted .map nicely and applied the caulk texture to all the faces and a player start at 0.0.0, then i textured and lighted the level and all looked fine in DR saved, used the doom 3 console to dmap saw no errors, started the map but it is totally black, even if i use the flash light i can't see a thing.

 

I then decided to try DoomEditor (i really hate the navigation on the 3d view on it) to open the .map, the brush geom came totally black and when i used the real time render (F3) they became invisible, i can select and apply textures and they show again but even with the DEditor the ingame version is totally black!?

[Baddcog]

Did you add any lights? There are no lights by default.

 

Best to start is the world ambient (right click>entity>darkmod>lights>ambient>world ambient I believe).it will be a low light leverl, but it even lights everything. You cn bump that up by changing the level (0.05 0.05 0.05 to 0.10 .1 0.1) (rgb)

[HMart]

Yes i added lights, a parallel light and a light with the doom3 default texture ambient. On the editor the light works but ingame the map is all black.

 

Here is it if some one want to test it.

 

http://www.filesonic.com/file/frWiQ5o

 

Is a small arena kind multiplayer test map so don't mind the looks for now

[Arcturus]

I can't download the file. It failed the first time and now it tells me I can download only file one at a time (even though I didn't even start).

[HMart]

Holly macarrony!!! I found why it didn't worked.

 

It was because i was open the WRONG map file, i thought it was named temple.map but it was saved has temple2.map!

 

I was opening the map with no lights so baddcog was right. Sorry if i wasted your guys time.

Edited January 16, 2012 by HMart

[Arcturus]

I opened the map in Darkradiant and everything was textured with caulk. Caulk is solid but will not render in game so everything has to be black. There was no light indeed, but even when you put it caulk will be black.

[HMart]

Ok thanks for the info.

[Arcturus]

Small update: I finished brush stairs. They will probably be used only by NPCs. I will cover them with monsterclip. Steps unfortunately have to be straight, otherwise NPCs have problems navigating. There are plenty of errors in the console saying that brush this and this is unbounded, but the map works fine so far.

 

[Arcturus]

I have been working on the windows:

 

[Springheel]

Nice!

[Nosslak]

Looks awesome! I'm not sure how you're going to make the bars going across the window but if you were plannng t just use a texture for them I'd recommend doing away with the 90 degree angles on them as normal- and AO-baking doesn't like those (it'd probably look a bit better with ~70 degree angles).

[Arcturus]

Thanks! I should note that it will be non-transparent window, sort of small iron gate which player will be able to open. I plan to make higher-poly model with bars (and probably rivets too) as polygons and lower-poly model with bars baked into texture. They will be swapped with distance.

[Baddcog]

You should just bake out 2 textures. An arch and a window, then the window text could be used on regular terrain brushes as well (different sizes, etc... not limited to that specific window frame)

[Arcturus]

Yes, I made 2 textures, 1 for metal and one for stone part. The window is split into 3 parts. One part is entirely inside the tower:

 

 

This way when player is outside it will not be rendered.

Second is partially inside and outside. This part will be rendered unless you are inside the tower in a "leaf" below or above the one in which the window is:

 

 

Third part is a wing. I took one brush from the tower exported from Blender and used as a visportal:

 

 

I had to extend it on the inside so it touches the window. As we know windows and doors need to touch visportals in order to close them (in order to close visportals, not doors).

 

 

What I learned is that wing needs to protrude on both sides, otherwise it will not be rendered on one side when visportal is closed. I didn't want to rethink the whole design I just added a plane. This way wing sticks out a bit. The plane has nodraw texture:

 

 

In game shots:

 

 

 

 

[RPGista]

Sweet window man, I really like the stone texture and the metal plates... The whole process is very interesting!

[Bikerdude]

very very nice Artc, all we need now is a machine bricke abd cobble textures as we can build a castle from it..

[Arcturus]

Thanks, here's a less detailed version:

 

[Bikerdude]

Still monsta looking!

[Springheel]

1. 
   

[Nosslak]

Thanks, here's a less detailed version:

 

Looking good, but the metal parts don't really read well as metal. I think you should add some specularity to them (not too much though) and maybe also try to differentiate the metal strips from the underlying plate (you could do that with added grunge, changing the colors of either one, adding rust, etc), Also I think you can afford an additional loop for both of the top stones as it looks a little bit too lowpoly.