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Video tutorials anyone ?


letran

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I'd be really interested to see any video tutorials where an experienced mapper takes us through say constructing a simple house but with lots of tips and tricks thrown in.

 

If anybody has seen the sort of tutorials on videocopilot.net then you'll know what i'm talking about.

Something for us who are new to mapping but are hungry to get doing more - quickly. I'd be really interested to see peoples approach's, what they do first, how they add detail what useful shortcuts and tips they use.

 

I've just started mapping and there's sooo much to know, unless you're happy with square blocks everywhere ! I learn best by watching others so video tuts are the best way to get my knowledge up to speed avoiding all the gotchas others had fallen into.

 

Would anybody like to make one ? ( I know there are a few on youtube and they're good but very slow ).

 

cheers

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This is a nice idea, but to make it really efficient, people should ask what they really would like to see.

 

For example:

an experienced mapper takes us through say constructing a simple house

is very roughly, thus meaning it's not clear what you really wanna know. Do you mean a house seen from the inside or outside? What kind of aspects are interesting? Should it look good, be done fast, be challenging gameplaywise, etc?

 

I think one of the best possibilities beneath this video thingy is to take a look at the missions in DR. You can than look how certain things were done. And if things stay unclear to you, you can ask for a specific topic for a video tutorial, where experienced mappers as you say may want to invest the time making a video about.

 

I would be happy contributing such videos, but I would need a specific topic.

 

Greetings and welcome to the community. :smile:

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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Komag has a few vids. This is the first DR one and he goes on to basic building: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_eiW15WiAI

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Also, there's a few links in this thread to other useful tutorials: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/12558-important-editing-links/

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Yes i've seen those. I was thinking of something a bit more involved.

So as i said, take a peasants house for example, something simple. Not all the rooms need to be done for the tut but the outside and say one, a bedroom or study. How soon do you start details and to what level.

 

I'm interested in what others do, so show us how you would construct a simple peasants house with the outside complete and perhaps one complete inner room. What level of trim do you add with brushes. When do you add patches, how many ?

 

I know there are endless possibilities to consider but at my stage its about constructing properties and making them look and feel good. All the AI and complex lighting can come later.

 

Also, there are so many textures. Which ones work well for you ?

 

Thanks for the links so far - i'll be sure to check them out. I'm also pretty interested in Blender so i'll install that and have a play.

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What kind of aspects are interesting? Should it look good, be done fast, be challenging gameplaywise, etc?

 

It should look good. I'm interested in learning what it takes to get a good looking map, specifically a house in this case.

 

EDIT - And i'll be sure to check out the maps in DR - thanks!

Edited by letran
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This is doable, but its would take multiple vids and a butt load of free time to do. I like the idea of doing this and one idea that springs to mind is the way I started my first mission "business as usual2 which I started by building the room in which you start the mission.

 

If I feel motivated enough and have the free time I will see if I can make something.

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Its a shame most all of Komag's videos are deleted. :\

 

I'd like to see a simple video on patch manipulation for creating terrain and adding bumps for garbage piles/sand/gravel/dirt on the sides of road. Something fast and efficient for workflow.

 

I'm working on an elevated street and taking a brush I already have that has been carved so the TOP of the brush is the angled and curved street section where a player can walk, and selecting that top face and saying "create patch" just creates some unaligned square patch that connects to nothing. One might think we need an option "create patch from..." or similar that would simply take the top (or which ever ortho view selected) view and turn that surface in its current configuration in to a patch with a subdivided surface.

 

Also, If I take a number of brush faces that are all curvy and elevate towards one end and select them all and select create simple patch, DR creates 1 enormous rectangular patch that covers the area of all the faces.

 

You can select just an angled brush face and use Brush > Create Decal Patch and it will create an aligned exact patch to the surface and then you can delete the brush but I don't know if this is then specified as a decal or if assigning a normal texture to it will make it walkable? ...testing that now.

Edited by Lux
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After attempting to select single faces or multiple faces and then "create decal patch" for top brush surfaces only, the results are mixed. Sometimes the patch mimics the surface exactly. Sometimes the patch has odd corners sticking out or does "its own thing".

 

selectedFace.JPG

 

createDecalPatch.JPG

 

multiFaceDecalPatch.JPG

 

1st picture is the selected brush face. 2nd picture is the "create decal patch" that was created from that face. And you can see in both pictures the 'black' corner sticking out of the brush face where the player start is. This is the patch created from that brush face. Not aligned and not a copy of the face.

 

The 3rd picture I've put all the terrain brushwork in to a separate layer and selected only the top faces and then "create decal patches" from those all at once. Kinda broken for doing this obviously though I'm sure that's not its intended use.

 

After the brushes are all selected and deleted, this is the patchwork that remains.

 

createdPatches.JPG

 

So a video on how to create terrain, manipulate patches (not in arches where menu options are prevalent and videos already exist) would be nice. I'll figure it out on my own but it would be appreciated.

Edited by Lux
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Although I sincerely (and I mean that) appreciate the offer, I'm not learning anything by having someone do it for me. I would however greatly appreciate the instruction. :) (I'm sure others would as well)

 

What am I missing?

Edited by Lux
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Create a patch, surface up. Size maybe 5x5 or 7x7. Select the outer vertices and drag them down a bit. With the patch selected go to patch->bulge patch. You can do this several times if you want to. You may have to move single vertices if things look odd.

 

Create several such patches, rotate them if you like to and put them beneath each other. You may have to move the boundary vertices.

 

Then put the textures on them. Create a brush with the texture you want to have on the patch, middle mouse click on the top surface, than ctrl+middle mouse click on all patch surfaces that should have those texture.

 

Repeat this until you're finished.

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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So what you're saying is to scrap this 6hrs of work and begin again. Yay. :( I think I'd rather just leave it all as brushwork if that's the case and optimize elsewhere to reduce triangle count.

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I'm not sure I understood what you are doing and I don't get why you are using brushes... But doing something like that with patches does not take 6 hours, but much lower amount of time. As a bonus, you learn how to do patchwork. The decal patches you can make simply by cloning the patch that makes the patch terrain and that's it.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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As Sotha said, doing terrain with patches only takes a couple of minutes. In addition, patches are rendered different. With brushes you will never reach the same quality of results. I will post a video today when I find the time.

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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I don't know about it taking a couple minutes but I understand what you guys are saying. No need for a video on that in particular as I'm aware how to do it. Others I'm sure would benefit from that though.

 

Top view, create a number of patches all grid aligned end to end in the paths that you want the map to take from the overhead perspective. Then V to change vertices and group select the vertices you want to move and move them down/up in the side view until it follows the general incline/decline you want the terrain. Then go back and select individual vertices to edit the patch in to the winding path that you want for terrain (side to side), and bulge patches to add noise and irregularity to the patch surface.

 

I was just generally looking for an easy way to use what I already have which I suppose there isn't. Oh well.

 

Sotha, didn't mean to confuse when I spoke of creating a decal patch. What I was looking for was a tool to take the TOP surface of the brush that has been clipped, using the clipper tool, and create a patch "out of it". I wasn't directly talking about making decals for the ground.

 

Sotha, I'm using brushes because:

 

The side buildings are going to follow the path I lay out exactly. So the bordering buildings will rise directly on the edge of the path.

 

Its easy with brushes because you can just create the brushes on the sides of the path overlapping and use the clipper tool to clip them exactly to the path. Then just go to side view and extrude the brush upward to get the building height.

 

If you use patches for the path, the edges of it are not snapped to the grid. They can't be clipped using the clipper tool. They are wavy or curved once the patch has been bent to the path shape. I guess I'll just use my current brush formed path to create my buildings on each side and then create a patch that intersects both sides and follows the incline that I want.

 

I've built some real things before, framing houses, etc., so starting with a "floorplan" is natural for me and it currently feels unintuitive doing it the way you guys are explaining it because I can use the path brushwork to aid in the side buildings' brush creation... but I'll adapt my workflow.

 

If I'm not explaining myself visually enough I can get some screenshots when I get home from work.

 

I do get DR crashes when selecting 11 or over on the subdivisions when creating a patch. 5 and 7 work fine though, I just have to use smaller patch sections.

Edited by Lux
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...create a number of patches all grid aligned end to end in the paths that you want...

Create one patch, give it it's roughly end form, copy it around, drag-resize, rotate etc... That's faster. Patches should overlap, too.

 

Don't choose too small subdivisions. In combination with shadowcasting lights this can get very resource hungry, and as outside areas don't tend to be too well lit, the player may not even notice the difference. If yu want more control over the shape of the patch, choose a higher vertex count.

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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The side buildings are going to follow the path I lay out exactly. So the bordering buildings will rise directly on the edge of the path.

 

Its easy with brushes because you can just create the brushes on the sides of the path overlapping and use the clipper tool to clip them exactly to the path. Then just go to side view and extrude the brush upward to get the building height.

 

If you use patches for the path, the edges of it are not snapped to the grid. They are wavy or curved once the patch has been bent to the path shape. I guess I'll just use my current brush formed path to create my buildings on each side and then create a patch that intersects both sides and follows the incline that I want.

This kind of *precision* is not deeded. Let the patches reach into the brushes a bit if neccessary, that doesn't do any harm. You are wasting a lot of time if you are trying to align everything perfectly.

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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I'm not trying to align everything perfectly. I'm using the brush alignment as a clipper tool guide to clip the edges of the building brushes. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

 

As an example if you have a rectangular brush 8 units thick, and you clipper tool it in two places in the top view so you have 3 sections, 1 2 3.

 

If you just take sections 1 and 3 in the side view and make them tall then you have created 2 buildings seperated by a center section, section 2 (the path in this case).

 

As you can see by my pictures above with the path that I've created I can clip the "path" out of the horizontal brushes and then raise the brushwork on both sides to create the "city scape" on either side of the path.

 

I was seeking to reduce the amount of work but it looks like that was counter-productive.

 

EDIT: oops, sorry, by the picture above you probably can't tell what I'm talking about but there are brushes within the fork, that layer is just turned off.

Edited by Lux
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EDIT: oops, sorry, by the picture above you probably can't tell what I'm talking about but there are brushes within the fork, that layer is just turned off.

I understood what you've meant and it is an interesting approach, although it doesn't seem very efficient to me as you've said.

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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Well I guess after my first map is done I will have learned what NOT to do...hehe :)

 

Also, sincere apologies if the thread is derailed.

 

Yes and Please, more tutorial videos.

Edited by Lux
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