Seeing this makes me want to load up Halo 3 and run around.

*loads Halo 3*

jesse, is this an ongoing project or an old H3MT one? also i think i'm in love.

It's more of a side project. I'm not too active on the CE stuff, I'm mostly fixing this up to improve my model and unwrapping skills. It may or may not become something real, but in the event that it does, it won't be alone...

It looks quite nice actually, with a few problems. Overall level (including grass) should be brighter, so probably up some values in the sky tag for radiosity. The metal that forms the barrier around the map should be brighter and a bit more shinier. The rest of the metal that's part of the center of the map should have less shine and a bit more rusty look to it.

I can't quite model a decent metal barrier (the giant ring). This one was made by extending the levels edges upward and extruding every other polygon from that creation.

More small Halo 3 maps? Hmmm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7qN0UrAyb0

Heyyyy
First animation in like 3 years, actually mostly tweaking some animations I already had.
They're pretty bouncy, which I don't really like, but yeah, I think they're decent.

Nicely done! It transitions smoothly from one action to the next.
Edited by Dumb AI on Sep 20, 2013 at 10:21 PM

The transition from draw to firing seems a bit odd...

Yeah I'm still trying to recapture that sense of movement I used to have. The whole thing feels just a tad too fast and 'wild' imo.

Agreed. The stock shouldnt be in your face when you're drawing the weapon. what you could do is have a rotation frame that has the gun tilt up so the stock faces down. The reload also looks a bit messy in terms of positioning, but otherwise it works out nicely.

Trying a forerunner MP map, reminiscent of Narrows to me a bit


EDIT: Nice pic, mukihyena.
Edited by Flipyap on Sep 22, 2013 at 09:28 PM

That is pretty narrow.

^That might be a joke, not sure, but either way, he's sorta right. A good rule of thumb is to make sure stuff is about 3x as big as it needs to be. Chief is 30 max units wide, so the minimum width I would make a sidewalk is 90 max units. It gives people room to maneuver and it makes movement easier when dealing with lag and such.

Remember that thing I promised you?


You'll get a variant of this (minus the blood of course.)

I found a pretty cool way to start making HUDs. It's nothing new, but I never really tried it until today, and I must say I have some interesting results that may change the way I make things:



The flat plane off to the left is a static image I had made using Photoshop. It's okay, but I created an even better one by rendering a series of circular planes in color sequence to create the same thing, albeit in a much better and preserved form that allows me to technically render out at infinite resolutions.

Here's a comparison pic that places the bitmap (PS element) against the 3DS elements:


The half on the left is the 3DS render output, the half on the right is the plane with the PS element overlayed on it. You can see a significant upgrade to the edge sharpness, especially at higher resolutions. (The size difference is due to an error on my part where I moved the camera height by accident between renders.)

Also, in the earlier pic, the alpha elements can easily be created. I used a simple vertical gradient to create both the sweeper, and the alpha elements:




I used a UVwrap method that allowed me to use smaller bitmaps that can be tiled horizontally to circle around the... circles.



If it wasn't obvious before, here's what I mean about potentially infinite resolutions (or at least, edge sharpness)

3DS render:


PS element render:


I suppose a person COULD draw the elements in Photoshop at higher resolutions, but that takes up significantly more data, where as the 3ds version does not.

You can choose to output at any resolution, or even change your mind and downscale, all without the loss of any quality.
Edited by Jesse on Oct 9, 2013 at 02:28 AM

I told you I'd give you the source of the HUD dsigned for Bigass :3
The one I made there was integrally made in 3ds max and you can adjust the gradients with the white levels tools by simply using a gradient shader

Edit : Try out the "bend" modifier, I bet you will enjoy it
Edited by bourrin33 on Oct 9, 2013 at 08:42 AM

@Jesse: I think I actually did a tutorial on that a long time ago. Not so in-depth as you're taking it but I did model out my HUD outline in 3ds max and then render it out for the HUD. Nice job though.

Just out of curiosity, is there any advantage to doing it in 3DS rather than in vector formats, like in Illustrator?

Edit
Just as an afterthought, I assume its the tools/modifiers available in max?
Edited by Diaboy on Oct 9, 2013 at 11:00 PM

Vectors > 3ds max, so much easier.

What would/do you use?

Vector's are just as good as max I suppose. I think he just means using max to make a HUD instead of PhotoShop is better.

Photoshop < 3ds max < Vector software

Or you could just simply create the Photoshop image at a stupid resolution and then scale down which will give a similar effect as the 3ds max way.

Well, if you read Jesse's post, he did say that photoshop can achieve similar results with higher resolution, but it would take up too much memory and would be hard to operate when zoomed in.

Ah, didnt see that bit. But yea, that is true.

I have never successfully used any vectoring software before. The one time I had Illustrator installed on my computer, things did not go well. I equate it to a caveman trying to drive a car.

Vectors would probably be better, but I like the fact that I can have ALL of the HUD elements in one 3ds file. I am also much more familiar with 3ds itself, than with any other vector program.

It's all preference I suppose.

No, I'm not working on a Halo 3 UI. I am however, working on multiple projects of my own. Some announced, some not.

I made an UI with animated scenery.

http://youtu.be/FEmWVXL_eHg

modified the elite's idle animation slightly. Made it kinda heretic themed for my project Heretic Hunt.
I learned that UI's crash when a biped is placed, I had to use animated scenery as the elite.



Google found that for me. Thanks Kirby.


Music: "First Dawn" by 'P3PP3RM4N'
http://youtu.be/Mdg5bVzxZzE

Halo OWaW a cancelled fan created game.
http://www.moddb.com/games/olympus/news/halo-owaw-update
Edited by spiral on Oct 14, 2013 at 02:12 AM

Dang, music is actually half decent. I like it! :)

i'd love to see somebody do that for the universal ui [wink wink, nudge nudge]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0o3bqoM0Qg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCtjt1qudfQ

Watch these tutorials, whether you are trying to do landscape or just basic props it will help you.

unwrap in max, if you are using a version v9 or newer also use textools plugin

You don't? Try and make a hieghtmap terrain like explained in the video - i did it a while ago and it works wonders. Then just make your rocks HP, make a low poly in max and unwrap and bake and create your texture...

Heres some things I did today to once again get familiar with hard surface and texturing... done alot of nature stuff recently and not much hard surface, so:





Texture for the above panel:

What I am saying is to MAKE a hieghtmap. I know that it won't work. If you still dont want to, just break everything down into manageable chunks with low polys of each. Unwrap the low polys and bake everything and down and make your textures that way.

Would it be possible to model the Reach Forgeworld this way? I mean, how would everything be unwrapped :o

The real question is : How to make heightmaps for this ?

If you'd be willing to use OS so the map could be WAAAAAAAAAY over the limit, then sure. The problem is that these are made for hieghtmaps, not regular normal geometry you see like BSP. Nowadays, terrain in engines like Cryengine, UDK, etc all use plenty of things to keep them working efficiently, like terrain LODing and frustum culling. While portals could do similar things like frustum culling does, its still going to be very hard to get it to work right without being properly implemented through the engine.

To answer your question more directly though, heightmaps only modify things on the Z (or Y because some programs use that!), becuase they cannot overlap on the baked map. You could model alot of the Forgeworld, but you would still need alot of other things to finish it, for example for the cave you would need to use either voxel geometry (ala Cryengine makes fantastic use of this) or something else that would allow you to delete the gomety and put the cave geometry inside of it. All of that could be done in max, but if your going to make Forgeworld, the best bet is to make it using standard BSP.