Wall Worm Forums

More screenshots from the 3D Skybox as it is finished:




I can safely say that this was only achieveable with 3DS Max and Wall Worm Model Tools. The way I was able to match the 3D Skybox and Hammer in the most delicate and 'fragile' situations is blatantly mindblowing and I would never be able to optimize the map by nature in Hammer. I mean, I haven't yet applied a single optimization process (as the environments are in the works) and the map runs at a steady 280fps in and outside.

My initial idea of seperating the the cathedral in 2 (a clean cut to seperate left, right, front and back from each other when walking through the map) and still conserving the total picture as if you can see the whole cathedral from everywhere has become a reality whereas previously it was just a dream! And, even more, now when walking around the cathedral, it nicely culls away all inside geometry from the outside as well as the opposite side geometry (as I predicted). This means that even though the map currently consists of around 1.2 million polygons in total, at most only 300k get rendered at the same time excluding all of the incoming geometry as well.

That is to say, it runs at maximum speed for me so I have lots of extra reserve to add fancy stuff!

Now, I only have 8 days left, so 8 days are now going to be spend on finishing the map, making it playable and get it running for the CEVO contest. That means that new screens will only be added probably AFTER finishing the whole thing.

That being said, once the map is entered and polished, I will be starting all of the tutorials for WMMT that I wish to share with everyone, via Youtube and articles.

New picture of the finished outside, at this side of which most of the playground will take place.

Quote from: func_Mathias on May 24, 2014, 06:09:52 PM
Wow that's a pretty darn good job! Too bad the lighting doesn't keep up :-/

Thanks for your kind comment!

I have fixed most of these shadow problems by now. The problem was mainly the window frames just before the glass that casted shadows which where too complicated for the engines to cast on nearby static props (such as the ceilings). By disabling the shadows it looks much better. I'm also going to add lights especially on the lower level of the cathedral which should instantly deal with shadow problems (as the shadows will be corrected by the light rays).

About the low texture resolution. I think that has to do with the viewport rendering settings for performance. I read something about this not a long time ago. This should help you out I think: http://forum.cgpersia.com/f32/solved-3ds-max-2014-textures-appear-low-res-viewports-73444/

A few new pictures:


The inside (still has the shadow problems but they are largely solved by now)


Currently how it looks like in 3DS Max. It's cool that I actually could render the whole map from any given point which is also something you can't do in Hammer.


From above


The left front tower. The right one is there too by now.


From the back. Notice how some models are having their origin in the inside of the cathedral. I still have to fix this by setting the illumination origin outside of the cathedral.



With and without 3d skybox, showing how precise you can work with the 3D Skybox tools!

There is more to come but since I only have 18 days left, I really need to focus right now!

It's really great to see people opening to the Wall Worm Model Tools :) You are entirely right! Every Source level can now be ported to other engines!

Because this is the first time I ever saw someone using the level importer (which is really cool to see!) it's probably some errors that have been lingering around somewhere that Shawn hasn't been able to test. Although he'll notice this thread quickly I'll ping him so he can look into this :) just stay tuned!

I think I have had that a few times, refreshing the cache of the mod/game you're working with could help fix the issue.

Quote from: Circusbrain on May 07, 2014, 10:05:18 AM
I was wondering if a model in the source engine could have essentially 2 textures, 1 on top of the other and based on animation you show/hide the appropriate "skin" as a result. The goal was to have a decapitation animation with actual head removal while playing with the custom model as your default. I've gone so far as to replace a dead ragdoll on death with a headless ragdoll body and it's head but the ragdoll itself takes up a lot of network overhead. If the player were playing with the model and it's "custom" death animation played out for specific weapon deaths that would take out the need for killing the entity and replacing it with a prop_ragdoll. I just don't know that the source engine is robust enough to have a model that can detach a piece and maintain physics, etc. Or, if you'd have to play with a head that is already detached, but set to the body as a parent entity, then detach on specific death.

Just really spit-balling this at the moment.

Hello Circusbrain,

There are 2 main options for you to look at depending if it's in Singe Player or Multiplayer:

• If you are doing this in Multiplayer, as you said there's gicantic network overhead. Now this depends on how the server will handle the physics. The server I usually play on, which is called PlagueFest for zombie escape has written a plugin that nearly eliminates the overhead, however as a result the movements of the ragdoll are in packets like as if it is having lagg without causing the network overhead (the coder is a genius and has written tons of plugins. In fact he is working on a complete standalone Zombie Reloaded that won't use the initial SourceMOD so he writes it entirely from scratch for plenty of amazing effects and improvements!). The best solution in this case would be using an animated prop_dynamic and completely eliminate the physical simulation if your intention is for the map to be played on any server. That being said, there has to be a considerable amount of players playing before the network actually starts interfering, though nowadays most server do have a lot of players.
• In single player you should be able to achieve this with gibs. TF2 has loads of gibs on each of the playermodels so in any case Source is built to support this very well. The problem is that this is linked to playermodels so I don't know to which extent you can use this on a normal custom model. I know that prop_physics can have as many gibs as you want (you can in fact add the breakable model as a gib and endlessly spawn news gibs that will spawn that same gib again over and over again, until your computer crashes. It's fun to do but don't add something like this in the map!). If you could find somewhere if you can also use prop_ragdolls with gibs, then there should be your answer. https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Gibs has a description of how to code this but I don't think this is what you need (especially when half of it is in Russian).

So, when looking at this page: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Creating_custom_gibs it says that "By default, a model whose propdata allows it to break when its health reaches zero, will spawn a bunch of generic gibs according to its base_type material."

So far I only have experience with prop_physics that have $collisionmodel and as such move with one collision block inside the world when being shot (such as a barrel or a crate, or a window breaking in multiple parts). I don't know if you can actually use $collisionjoints (used for a ragdoll or prop_dynamic) on a model for a prop_physics with custom gibs, but I don't see why it couldn't. It's something that I'm going to have to test with a rather basic model. I'll let you know how it fares.

It's actually an interesting situation to look at as this could achieve even more interesting results in terms of ragdolls, but I'm sure there isn't a clear explanation on this subject for games like CS:S or multiplayers except TF2 so we're gonna have to find out!

Lastly, regarding your texture issue, this is no problem with gibs as any spawned gib that should appear after breaking the initial model can contain any texture they'd like (so no $basetexture2 necessary). So if you wanted the head to contain blood spots after being decapitated, you could do this with a new texture on what would be the headgib.

Useful links:

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Creating_custom_gibs
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Prop_ragdoll
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Prop_physics
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Propdata

Let me know if you can find something out of this!

When looking at the video, aside from the problem it looks like most joints are actually rotating too much, looking as if all of his ligaments are torn. I suggest to base yourself upon most of Valve's biped's to look at how the body parts and the collisions should rotate as opposed to each other. Feets won't turn that much so when he lies on his back on the ground, his feet shouldn't be able to touch the ground. In fact it may even help you solve the problem all together  :)

Don't worry! I'm already writing down most of the things I'm taking advantage of in 3DS Max over hammer. The list keeps growing every day ;)
Here is something new:



Small but shows the inside from the bottom. This is the big line inside, I will be adding extra cathedral-related items later on, and also finding an original way of making the whole area not a single-room but instead cut it up in different parts.

On the left you can see how I'm starting to go to the outside. I have deliberatly added 2 walls at the entrance on the front of the cathedral between the openings for cutting out the inside completely from the outside. This will be done with areaportals and skip/hint (the latter may be sufficient but having both could be necessary as sometimes hint/skip only does not tend to work properly on slight curves/corners, I truly do hope it does!).

I have decided by now how to divide the upper part from the cathedral (which is the roof) by looking a bit at de_mirage. At the bombsite with the big tower (can't remember the letter but it's not the market) you can clearly see from a mapper's point of view how Valve decided to merge both structures together as if they were one, yet there's a clean cut in the middle of the 2. The upper tower is 3D Skybox and as such will be visible anywhere, and as such makes it look as if the entire building is constantly present in the level. Yet, thanks to having cut those 2 bodies from each other, everything underneath the tower will be culled/hidden without having to sacrifice an otherwise ugly looking solution where either the whole thing would be removed (tower included) or instead having to place a ridicilously high skybox ceiling which would hinder the performance beyond useful.

This is what I want to achieve as well. The cathedral will be the highest building across the map, but I can't allow the cathedral to be rendered entirely at any point in the map or no one would be running my map (no matter if it is single player or multiplayer). So, I assume that the towers and the roof will be visible, whereas everything beneath it will not be rendered behind buildings or when being at either side of the cathedral. That makes a great solution for optimizing a structure that requires a lot of detail (gothic architecture) while still giving the PC a cool time running the map.

Of course, this would be impossible in Hammer. In 3DS Max with WWMT you can literally cut an object in 2, have the texture coördinates match up and still have both parts in the 3D Skybox and playlevel at the precise location, without texture coördinate inaccuracies! I can't wait to see this in action but I won't be waiting for too long by now ever since I can now start working on the towers, pillars, supports, windows, roof etc...

When I get to actually show something about this I will be posting new screens!

Not fully finished yet, but I though it looked like a abandoned cathedral-like ruin, so I decided to share anyways:



Achieved after a long road of WWMT versions with the aid of Anvil, proxies and the amazing skin system assigned to it!

I finally managed to mirror the right side and my first wing (at the bottom) is done. I have to proceed with the upper part and ceilings first, because I want to make the central ceiling square, so that each wing-corridor it connects (which logically are 4) is equally large and makes things much easier for modelling and then the proportions look correct. I'm deciding this based on the cathedral on which I'm referencing the models/geometry so it's the way it should be.

Once this very first wing is fully complete, I'll show a render and in-game representation of how it'll look like inside (only architecturally).

On a side note, just disabling shadows on all of the windows fixed considerably the lighting as the gap still casts light and will then bounce it off to the environment of each little chapel (so exactly like the way I want it: Light passing through and bouncing off light). However the shadows remains of course but that's not the biggest problem. I could see this and confirm it because when you go far away enough (400 inches) the cascade maps get removed, and you can clearly see the lightspot of the window. So all I'm left to do at the end is adding a kind of model that represent the reflection of the lightspot and window colors. Or, as Shawn suggested, Render-To-Texture.

Sorry for the big images but it's the only way to look at them in detail. So 2 of the 5 chapels of the crown from the cathedral are more or less done. I'm horrified of the lighting and the errornous shadow maps from the cascade maps that are yet unfixed in CS:GO, so I'll have to play with some settings later on for better shadows/lighting/normals.

I have already talked with Shawn about how I could project window lighting rays onto the surface provided I would know the final direction and lighting settings of the map and that would be Render-To-Texture. I will do this near the very end of my map so I don't waste time on eye-candy as that's currently the last I have to worry about.

When the full chapels are there, I'll post new pictures, after which I will proceed to the proxy system and start working on the other part of the cathedral (which shouldn't take much time anymore thanks to the proxies and having all assets being available by then). Then, I will proceed to the upper half of the cathedral which will be the big windows.

Quote from: wallworm on March 11, 2014, 11:24:00 PM
Excellent. I am enjoying seeing your progress! I may have to designate you an official ambassador! Keep it up!

At some point you will have to share a step-by-step for new users transitioning from Hammer to Max.  ;)

I definitly will! My virtual studio for doing reviews/tutorials/other is almost done so when I have all of the resources I will start working on a video explaining all of the reasons why I switched to 3DS Max, along with a step-by-step tutorial on the forums :)

Btw, this reminds of the long forgotten tutorial about low-polygon models that you once asked me on my earlier cathedral WIP, that's definitly something I also got to do yet (although it's not related to WWMT in specific). It will interest mappers in doing modelling after all and as such could also be a motivation to switch as well. I'll keep you in touch on this!

EDIT: Small note but the window texture in the above picture is not the final one, I just quickly grabbed an old material that I already had in CS:S and used it here.