Screenshots

[seremtan]

speaking of competitions, there ought to be one to see who can come up with an entirely new way of visually breaking up a floor area without resorting to the old broken tile routine. no offence, but that shit is about as fresh as christ's ball sweat

other than that, there's some good stuff ITT

[Kaz]

...without resorting to the old broken tile routine. no offence, but that shit is about as fresh as christ's ball sweat...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

[Eraser]

Did some additional work on the front of the chapel but I'm getting some unwanted lighting results.

There's a jagged shadow under the lip of the roof:
[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/shot0024.jpg[/lvlshot]

And a closeup of one of the windows shows a clear difference between lighting on the brush and the patch (a square cylinder) above it:

[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/shot0025.jpg[/lvlshot]

[Eraser]

Oh also, I added a barrel:
[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/barrel_0.jpg[/lvlshot]

Which we can shoot at
[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/barrel_1.jpg[/lvlshot]

But be careful, it explodes! And that, as you can see, hurts.
[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/barrel_2.jpg[/lvlshot]

There's debris flying all over the place:
[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/barrel_3.jpg[/lvlshot]

And that leaves a bit of a crater:
[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/barrel_4.jpg[/lvlshot]

[themuffinman]

There's a jagged shadow under the lip of the roof:

A higher lightmap resolution might fix that. worldspawn _lightmapscale = 0.125

And a closeup of one of the windows shows a clear difference between lighting on the brush and the patch (a square cylinder) above it:

Why not make the whole thing a patch?

[Bliccer]

You could add some more barrels, some explode, some include monsters/bots, and some have a nice treasury (Diablo1 ftw \o/)
As for the window: I think you shouldn't align it with the wall. Maybe extend them, like obsidian proposed for the inside.

[CZghost]

Oh also, I added a barrel:
[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/barrel_0.jpg[/lvlshot]

Mmm, beer

Which we can shoot at
[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/barrel_1.jpg[/lvlshot]

Realistic Keep on...

But be careful, it explodes! And that, as you can see, hurts.
[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/barrel_2.jpg[/lvlshot]

Oh, that's not a beer... There was a dynamite

There's debris flying all over the place:
[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/barrel_3.jpg[/lvlshot]

Realistic Keep on...

And that leaves a bit of a crater:
[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/barrel_4.jpg[/lvlshot]

Wow, fantastic

[Kaz]

Eraser: I'd construct the top of the window out of separate patches - square cylinders get lit such that corners aren't sharp-looking. Cool barrel!

[dONKEY]

@Eraser,
See this is why I thought the square cylinder idea was wrong. Then again, I'm just old and like to shake my walking stick at those young sloppy brush monkies
Either make the entire thing from the cylinder and bury the surrounding brushes inside it, or make the top part from patch mesh, if you get LOD cracks, just ase the thing.
Like I said, am old an senile, so probably best ignore me
Oh the jaggy shadow....higher res lightmapscale will pronably give you higher res jaggies. External lightmaps for the win, everytime.

[obsidian]

There's a jagged shadow under the lip of the roof:

A higher lightmap resolution might fix that. worldspawn _lightmapscale = 0.125

I really wouldn't toss lightmapscale at every single problem, it creates a bunch of other issues for every issue it solves that are even more complicated to fix. The main takeaway from this situation is this: increasing lightmap scale when you have jagged shadows just creates higher resolution jagged shadows. It doesn't actually solve the problem.

Jagged shadows are best solved by tweaking the light source with a combination of radiosity, better sampling, and filtering. Ambient occlusion (-dirty switch) can also help a bit with small corner bits too. The light source that Eraser is using is almost certainly the sky shader, so fix the lighting there. Scrap the old Q3 style skies and replace with Q3Map2 skies, you get more options and better control. As reference, I wrote a bunch of notes for Q3Map2 sky shaders which can significantly increase quality, remove the ugly jagged shadows, and maybe even compile faster too:

http://q3map2.robotrenegade.com/docs/sh ... aders.html

Oh the jaggy shadow....higher res lightmapscale will pronably give you higher res jaggies. External lightmaps for the win, everytime.

Oh, so close.

If you had stopped with the first sentence I would have agreed with you. External lightmaps are going to give the same results unless you want to sit there with Photoshop and manually soften the edges of every single luxel.

[obsidian]

Map file (right-click, save link as):
http://zero.robotrenegade.com/imgdump/eraser-arch.map

[dONKEY]

@obs, lol, yep correct of course. I was just bored by the _lightmapscale nonsense, so only gave half an answer.

[seremtan]

...without resorting to the old broken tile routine. no offence, but that shit is about as fresh as christ's ball sweat...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerve

[Eraser]

Ok, so I built the window frames out of patches now just like obsidian described Thanks for taking the time to build an example map, but I didn't look at it. I wanted to see if I could figure it out on my own first.

Now it all looks perfect! So that's the last time I'm using Radiant's shortcuts to build things out of patches

One thing though, GtkRadiant (1.6.2) wouldn't do anything if I selected the simple patch mesh that made up the sides of the frames and then selected "inverted bevel" in the "cap selection" menu. Can't it generate caps for simple patch meshes? I solved it by manually manipulating a 3x3 patch mesh into the shape I needed. It doesn't show sparklies either so I'm happy.

Final result:
[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/shot0026.jpg[/lvlshot]

oh as you can see, I also made the window frame extrude out of the wall a slight bit.

[dONKEY]

If by side you mean the flat face on side, no, you wont be able to do an inverted bevel cap. You have to cap the inner aspect of the arch and vertex edit the cap into size and place. If that's what you meant you were doing then something must be broke in 1.6

[nbohr1more]

One of The Dark Mod's most visually exceptional mappers, Johannes Burock, made a panorama
screen of his enormous WIP. Enjoy:

http://minus.com/m3NarQriV/1f

[lvlshot]http://i.minus.com/jYsptK3lExQiy.jpg[/lvlshot]

(Click the link to see the full resolution panorama.)

[Kaz]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerve

nbohr1more: omgah!

[Eraser]

One of The Dark Mod's most visually exceptional mappers, Johannes Burock, made a panorama
screen of his enormous WIP. Enjoy:

http://minus.com/m3NarQriV/1f


(Click the link to see the full resolution panorama.)

Very nice. Shame the resolution isn't a bit higher.
Also, not sure if you talk to this guy, but I wonder if it wouldn't be a tad more realistic to have some windows that aren't lit up there. I'm sure someone must be at sleep or away from home?

[Fjoggs]

? Plenty of windows look black to me.

[Eraser]

On second glance, seems like you're right. I noticed there were some unlit windows but I thought they all had shutters in front of them.

[o'dium]

You know, if Johannes Burock makes a small quad in front of those windows and applies a very faint, but very wide flare to it, the windows will "glow" much nicer with it being dark. A subtle glow works amazingly at night in these scenes.

[nbohr1more]

I passed the thread link to Johaness so he can view or even sign-up

[TruthfulLiar]

candles in the windows would be purty najs

[Bliccer]

Some first architectural details for my map as well as my first game model ze icecave
If you have time maybe you could test my map?
http://maverickservers.com/forums/viewt ... cf98fece42

[Noruen]

This is my WIP for Maverick's mapping competition #4:





It is based on theme I presented about year before "Scrap Brain".