Blend textures to add subtle wear and tear

I want to talk about tiles. Tiles are a nice texture to use because they have a lot of innate detail. They have grout, which provides opportunities for nice normal maps and variations in phong/envmap specularity, they can have cracks on them which looks cool, and the tiles themselves can have cool designs or just alternating colours. The problem with tiles though is that this inherent detail is misinterpreted for ease of use. As nice as it is to slap a tile texture down and give yourself a pat on the back as you sip you freshly prepared congratulatory cognac on the rocks, it's not at all that simple - as usual, como siempre.

Tiles are actually a pain in the ass to lay down in real life. I tiled my toilet and bathroom once. It was horrible. You have to cut here, lay there, measure this, and it's all such work. This experience led me to look at game tiles in a different light. No longer can I drop a tile texture down, rotate it 45 degrees and think no one will look twice.

Simple hallways aren't at all simple

Gameplay in DA is poised to be liquified awesome, as are the environments. Looking at some professionally made maps helps put your own environment art in perspective. I have taken a screenshot of a simple random hallway in CS:GO and analyzed why it is the standard people expect in modern games. I thought it would be nice to point out what makes a simple scene awesome, and hopefully our loyal readers will gain a bit of an insight into how to look at an environment as more than just an environment. If you can quantify what makes something look good and then replicate that, you'll progress in your skill faster than the average noob

Here's a simple screenshot I took, and the resulting revelations:

Doors: Map design principles for Double Action pt 2

Doors are a bit of an 'in joke' for game designers. For something so simple there are a million variables to consider. In DA we have a similar situaion. Considering what we already know about DA's gameplay mechanics, we find that we need to use doors in order to enhance the probability of an uninterrupted boogaloo, which is contrary to the very idea of a door: to stop people.

Multiple .qc compile at once - Blender SMD tools

I knew there was a way to batch compile .qc files with this plugin. I have been making multiple models and modular sets that require a lot of tweaking and it sucks to compile the .qc files one by one. I finally recovered how to do multiple compiles straight out of blender (by looking at the SMD tools page on the VDC durr...).

All you do is select your qc directory, and then append the first few letters of your .qc files, followed by an asterisk (*) onto the filepath in the "QC file path" box. Observe:

You're welcome.

Blackford Stormington's Canine Pedestrial Assistolumundus!

Not enough time in the day to take your best friend for a rigorous constitutional? Stresses of ultra-modern life weighing you down? Overweight and lazy? Then look no further than the latest in Assistolumundus™ technology!

From the brains behind the Terry Toilsworth Tarry-no-more and the Automatronic Runcible Spoon comes the finest in modern lifestyle-augmentation design! A brand new approach to canine walking, the CPA ensures that old Rover gets the exercise he needs. With the newest Assistolumundus apparatus you'll find more hours in the day for your scholarly pursuits! The finest machining guarantees longevity of service and minimal parts-replacment, as you can see in the following demonstratory motion image reel:

Order yours today!

Blender to UDK: How I do it - Static Meshes

I have finally got a handle on making base-featured models. That is, a model with accurate collision and LOD data. When exporting from blender to UDK, you have a few options for format. I have been using the ASE exporter made by MCampagnini, one of the UDK community members, and up till today it had been going ok. My main issue with it was that the error messages were vague and unpredictable. In a fit of frustration today I decided to switch to the FBX exporter, which ships with blender 2.62. After a few hiccups here and there I found out how it works, and I gotta say I like it. However, it does have some very nearly fatal quirks for the uninitiated. Before I forget what they are, I thought I had better write them down.

New York Garbage Truck

So I'm pretty proud of this

Another model made for ModelsfortheMasses. This one is supposed to be for a L4D map so it had to have a bit of detail in the underside and man was it a mission.

UDK's inverted normal maps, and how to fix them

I have been modelling for UDK

For a little while now and I came across a hitch. The normal maps on my models were apparently inverted. This was odd because they looked fine in blender. As you can see in the picture, it looks like my bricks are concave, rather than convex.

The bricks are accepting light opposite to the direction from which it is being cast.

A short jaunt in google brought me to this thread. A bit of fiddling and I have found a workaround. The short version: invert the green channel of your normal map. The long version? Read on...

The Character Model Milestone

Okay first off,

And secondly,

Get the picture?

An Itty Bitty Combine Soldier

Rawr! After a suggestion from PlanetPhillip for a combine-manufactured headcrab, I couldn't stop myself. It was originally meant to be a reskin, but I am a little girl who has lost her mummy at Cronulla beach when it comes to texturing (that means I cry), so I modelled instead. Luckily I have been fiddling with compiling animations onto existing rigs with custom meshes over the last few weeks and it was all fresh in my mind. This was also designed to slip straight onto the headcrab rig, so it was pretty smooth sailing in general. I think I might do a tutorial on this sometime soon.

Overall the model took me about four or five hours, the texture took maybe 12 hours and the source-related stuff took under two hours. It took me three days from first vert to finish, and that was working in my spare time between other more important models (more on them later perhaps). If anyone happens to read this and has any idea about how to package it so anyone can download it and plonk it in their map without overwriting the old headcrab, please leave a comment, I am really struggling to code this in.

Models? On my modelling blog?

That's right!

I finally have something to put up here! I have recently started up Modelsforthemasses.com, a prop modelling on-demand commission site dealy for source engine props. I was actually still coding the backend of the site when I got my first job request! Since then they have been coming through steadily, and I am on my way to being a self made freelance artist! That makes me so happy in warm fuzzy ways! Anyway, onto the pictures!

The first one is a Makarov pistol, a Russian weapon designed to propel balls of metal at high speeds with intent to harm, using a system of sliding metal parts and small amounts of pre-packaged explosives, all set off right in the palm of the wielders hand. It's an out there concept I know, probably won't catch on. Anyway I made it all from scratch and handpainted all the textures. It's the first ever weapon model I have made from start to finish, and I gotta say it was a bit of fun. As usual, loops and poles swung into action, even on this very inorganic model.

After the model was handed over to the dude, I needed to make some pictures to showcase it for the site so I quickly replaced the existing pistola in HL2 and recompiled. After some very quick adjustments and minimal changes, it used the existing pistol animations seamlessly, like it was made for it. Faaaaantastic. here's a picture of it reloading:

The next one was an SKS rifle, another russian weapon, but this time the dude had a highpoly model already made. After adjusting it to suit blender a bit I modelled the lowpoly out and baked the details on then textured it. Again, I compiled it just to showcase:

So, after making these and getting them to work in engine, I see now that I baked out way too many details. There are a lot of parts that I could have left on with no detriment to budget, since I could have deleted all the backfaces. You don't see the backfaces on viewmodels, but the engine renders them anyway, so you're better off baleting them. If I were to do it again I would leave a whole lot more poly details in since source is where normal maps go to die.

I have more requests coming in and I am currently working on one that I am excited to show here. Soon... very soon...

Prop modelling

Well this was supposed to be a modelling blog

And so far all I've done is waffle on about coding, games dev and "the industry" So I figure it's about time I actually showed some models. BUT not without waffling on a bit more, after all "blog" stands for "Batman lingers overhead gruesomely", and that means you have to type stuff AND things. In that order.

I have been spending most of my modelling time lately modelling props for a few mods, and it's ok I guess. I think I have the workflow down pat, the last models I made (the wooden pillars) only took me about two hours each from concept to finito. Which is a nice turnaround I guess. But the problem with prop modelling is it really gives you no portfolio pieces. Sure nice props can really help make a games visuals pop, and custom props seem to be in short supply for source mods, but no one is immediately impressed by a bunch of chairs and boxes. Portfolio pieces have to show really detailed intense models. Characters are portfolio killers for sure, and all of my current forays into organic character modelling are... short of the mark.

So for lack of anything worth portfolio entry

I give you "allmyprops.vmf". Well, I give you pictures of it. Luckily, this isn't literally all the props I have made, just all the ones for the current two mods I am modelling for. Without further ado:

These mods are unannounced, so consider this a sneak preview, and expect to see them in a mod soon!

Wood textures, by george!

Wood textures are a pain in the

Pooper to make look any good. They have long been the bane of the budding texturer, and are the basis of many a specialized program or photoshop plugin. They haunted my dreams for quite some time. But I think I might have found the key concept of wood texture creation.

The key to creating wood textures

Is to stop trying to make it look like wood. Hear me out.

Wood has so many intricacies and details that we don't register seeing. The more we try to make a wood texture look like its real world counterpart, the more it slips into the uncanny valley. Google it. So to combat that unfortunate inevitability just forget about making it look so real.

For starters, forget about woodgrain. That is freakin impossible to paint unless you're some sort of superhero painter. Some base colour variation is ok, but the woodiness all comes from the rest of the texture.

So I guess you want a tutorial or something

We start with a base color, some kind of brown, any shade will do, we'll have to adjust it later anyway. Then we grab a random grungy texture and dump it into the next layer and change it to overlay mode. We up the contrast of the new layer until we have a bit of stark texture variation. Then we go grab a different picture amd do it all again. And that's almost it.

The trick is in the pictures you choose and the modes you use. Have a look how it comes out when set to soft light or value mode, fiddle with the opacity and contrast and saturation. I find the best results come from photo textures that are desaturated and with the contrast hiked a touch. For better base colour variation try blurring the guts out of a texture and setting it to overlay mode.

As you can see, the texture doesn't particularly look like wood, but it doesn't look like it's not wood. At least not as much as a texture designed to be wood would. But when you apply it to a model, all the viewer sees is brown and noise, and assuming it's not a major set piece, that's all they'll need to see to see wood.

Now that's not all you need to know. Your texture may be passable as wood, but you don't want to let the viewer see a whole mess of your unconvincing wood texture. Otherwise they might notice that they have been duped. Try to populate your model with other texture materials and avoid having gigantic panels of wood.

It also helps to know the renderer you will be using, and to add some specular highlights in what would be the high spots. This model is in the HLMV (source engine for the uninitiated) and I have used a greyscale version of the diffuse with the contrast cranked and the brightness down. It is using a cubemap specular reflection and it just helps with suspension of disbelief a little. I may or may not do an actual tutorial on this later. See if the mood takes me.