My first map – questions & work in progress

[nbohr1more 1887]

I'm not quite sure that this is really correct. By default, the projection image should be the image you actually see the light casting on a surface (in all six directions), and the falloff is either an image (which normally only need one row of pixels) or a function. I think most lights are using the latter and a linear function for the falloff.

 

 

Well, time to argue with Rich_is_Bored then:

 

This has been the conventional wisdom at Doom3world.org and other Doom 3 mod sites for over a decade now.

[Springheel 4399]

When I put a single light with a basic round falloff inside a room, the same round falloff is visible on every surface, walls, ceilings and floors. But when you use a different texture you can see it's not quite the case:

 

 

 

[Obsttorte 1440]

Most light materials doesn't even define a falloff image, allthough I've read that there is a default one used then. I have to take a close look to see how it works, but the interaction shader does not obviously reflect one of both possibilities.

 

EDIT: Nbohr is right. Almost five years of mapping and finally I understood how lighting works Will spend the rest of the evening crushing my head against the wall

[peter_spy 1355]

 

 

Wow, I'm speechless right now that's tons of useful information, Biker! I kinda wish I had sent you something better than this crappy stuff, but you managed to make so much out of it anyway! Thanks for your time, and congrats on the map, it looks very promising. Quality wise it's the the level I'm aiming at in the future.

 

As for the doorway and room sizes, I used what I typically apply to T3/UT3 mapping: 64 x 128 is a size of typical doorway there, as the player collision model is around 48x 48 x 96. I don't know typical measurements in DR yet, but I'll find that out eventually.

 

Edit: Re: lights:

 

In my case a default light with biground1 texture looks like this:

 

While the same light using falloff_exp1 looks as it should:

Edited January 9, 2017 by Judith

[VanishedOne 479]

As for the doorway and room sizes, I used what I typically apply to T3/UT3 mapping: 64 x 128 is a size of typical doorway there, as the player collision model is around 48x 48 x 96. I don't know typical measurements in DR yet, but I'll find that out eventually.

http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Conversion_of_Game_Units

http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Limits,_Max,_Min,_Stats,_etc

[rich_is_bored 281]

The reason something like big_round looks the same on all 6 sides of a room is because the center of the walls are closer to the source of the light than the corners. It's very hard to convey what is ultimately volumetric data in a 2D illustration.

[demagogue 1121]

Re: positive geometry and approaches to building, especially outdoor city and nature areas, after studying a lot of maps in DR, I find the best approach is to make large 5-10 sided boxes (fitting maybe 3-6 building facades. Something in the order of 20'-30' high and 30'x60' wide or whatever, plus or minus. 4 sides is ok but boxy) with bottleneck kiss points opening into other boxes which avoid long lines of sight through both boxes (so e.g. tunnels or right angles are useful to close the connecting portal quickly when you pass through. Or just have them at good angles so you never see through 2 of them).

 

One easy way to make such a box BTW is to draw out a large rectangular box in DR, then hit cntl+n, where n is the number of sides while it's selected. Then stretch out the box to the shape you want, and push the "make room" button to hollow it out so you can build inside. Then copy and paste walls to allow you to separate skybox, make "doorways" between boxes, etc. A slower way is just making angled walls for each side by hand.

 

You can make big detailed areas if you plan well. It's all about containing geometry and strategic placement of portals to close off areas efficiently.

[peter_spy 1355]

I tried making my first custom material, I'm getting the hang of it. I'll probably create one .mtr file per material, because debugging anything with more than a few definitions in one file would be a pain for a GL code newbie like me. I could probably paste it all into one file later?

 

Since I'm using all those for myself, I kinda skipped the folder structure and used the naming convention I'm used to (_d, _n, _s), and it was nice that DR didn't complain about that at all. Having everything in textures/myfolder is also nice and quick. Putting textures into .pk4 every time I change something is not But, I can either use MindTex, as Biker suggested (Crazybump is still 100 bucks ), or just preview textures in 3dsmax or Blender first.

 

By the way, since .pk4s are basically zip files, have you thought about supporting other compression formats? .7z was pretty efficient with Deadly Shadows maps, and I see that it handles Darkmod missions pretty well too. Volta and the Stone is a 100 mb zip file vs. 80 mb when compressed with 7zip, IMO that might be worth looking into.

Edited January 10, 2017 by Judith

[Obsttorte 1440]

You do not need to compress your files during mapping. Compression is only applied when shipping the files/mission.

 

Having a higher compression would be nice. But as most coding things, it will take its time to find its way into the code (if ever).

[Melan 1792]

Why not use NJob instead of Crazybump? It is free, fast, and functional. Makes great normals most of the time.

[peter_spy 1355]

You're absolutely right Melan, and I'm using njob most of the time. It's the material preview I need, so I don't have to jump into the game every time I tweak something.

 

Also, I must be doing something wrong, because I have my .pk4 package in the main TDM folder, so I can see my textures and materials in the DR.

 

Edit: Oh, now I get it, I had to set up a path in a Mod (fs_game) to maps/myfolder for my stuff to appear in media browser. Whew, that will speed things up a bit.

Edited January 10, 2017 by Judith

[nbohr1more 1887]

Yep:

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/15152-darkradiant-and-darkmod-shortcut-folder-settings/

 

Not sure why this isn't stickied.

 

Also, if you want realtime previews of your changes:

 

1) Open The Dark Mod in Windowed Mode

2) Make a placeholder material

3) Edit images that this placeholder points to

4) invoke reloadDecls in the console

5) invoke r_materialOverride "textures/darkmod/<your_material_name>"

6) When you make changes to the images, invoke reloadDecls to update

 

7) invoke r_materialOverride "" when you're done to disable the override

[peter_spy 1355]

Now that will speed things up, thank you! I couldn't update textures with the game running before, because of the .pk4 package (write protected by the system itself when used by the game). Well, this thread has a "duh" tag for a reason

Edited January 10, 2017 by Judith

[Springheel 4399]

reloaddecls will reload material files in real time. reloadimages will be needed to see any changes to image files (and doesn't work with .dds, unfortunately).

 

And yes, TDM doesn't care about how many files there are for materialshaders...you can dump them all in one file once you're sure they're the way you want, or leave them in dozens.

[Bikerdude 3737]

• I tried making my first custom material, I'm getting the hang of it. I'll probably create one .mtr file per material, I could probably paste it all into one file later?

Since I'm using all those for myself, I kinda skipped the folder structure and used the naming convention I'm used to (_d, _n, _s), and it was nice that DR didn't complain about that at all. Having everything in textures/myfolder is also nice and quick. Putting textures into .pk4 every time I change something is not But, I can either use MindTex, as Biker suggested (Crazybump is still 100 bucks ), or just preview textures in 3dsmax or Blender first.

• Thats how I started doing it, and yes

Its actually not that hard and I can help you with the folder structure as you go. The startpack that you get from the wiki contains a number of the std/required folders - http://www.bloodgate.com/mirrors/tdm/pub/pk4/fms/startmap.pk4

[Bikerdude 3737]

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/15152-darkradiant-and-darkmod-shortcut-folder-settings/

 

Not sure why this isn't stickied.

Good point, pinned!

[nbohr1more 1887]

reloaddecls will reload material files in real time. reloadimages will be needed to see any changes to image files (and doesn't work with .dds, unfortunately).

 

And yes, TDM doesn't care about how many files there are for materialshaders...you can dump them all in one file once you're sure they're the way you want, or leave them in dozens.

 

If I'm reading the code correctly:

 

https://github.com/svn2github/TheDarkMod_SVN_Unofficial/blob/master/framework/DeclManager.cpp

 

reloadDecls is a master reload command that calls the root "reload" command for all other reload types and should

cover images too.

 

I know I fiddled with this here:

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/14394-apples-and-peaches-obsttortes-mapping-and-scripting-thread/page-14?do=findComment&comment=395194

 

I never tested DDS so perhaps it will work better with reloadDecls?

[Springheel 4399]

I can't speak to what the code says, but I know how it works in practice. reloaddecls does not reload .tga files. reloadimages does. Neither will reload .dds files.

[peter_spy 1355]

I spent a lot of time dealing with .dds textures in T3Ed, I'll gladly stick to .tga this time.

[Obsttorte 1440]

From the performance point of view dds should be the better choice, although I can't say how much the performance benefits from it. Using tga is more convenient, though.

[peter_spy 1355]

I might do the conversion later, if it helps with performance. I have an older laptop with 2,5 GHz CPU and GF 740M, that should be enough for initial tests. I generally assume that should have 60 fps everywhere, on both desktop PC and laptop, and any drops bigger than 5 fps need troubleshooting.

Edited January 11, 2017 by Judith

[Bikerdude 3737]

As you have an nVidia cpu you will be fine, you will only start seeing a slow down on the very largest maps.

 

Regarding .DDS and .TGA files, your better getting into the habit of working with them from the get go. So from a workflow perspective, when it comes time to alpha or beta test the map you can copy and convert the textures folder into .DDS - I can help you with that.

[peter_spy 1355]

After some headache (the game didn't detect my textures, only editor did) I managed to get it right. reloadimages indeed works with TGAs and it's faster than texture tweaks in external software.

[Bikerdude 3737]

You will need to convert to .DDS before you release the map though.

[Springheel 4399]

Regarding .DDS and .TGA files, your better getting into the habit of working with them from the get go

 

 

Why?