Slappy, Did you fix the bases yet where you can walk up the front of it? As shown by qwertyuiop in the 3rd picture.

Kind of annoying how everyone it mentioning the shaders over and over again. It will never look exactly like Halo 3 screenshots.
edit: qwerty, I forgot, and I just closed max after compiling my last build for today.
Edited by SlappyThePirate on Jul 6, 2011 at 07:29 PM

Well then will you fix it?

Uh, that dosen't mean you can't at least try to make them semi-decent looking then. If alot of people are complaining = fix it.

He already addressed that multiple times man, check the last couple pages of posts.

Calm down, the base is done like I've stated multiple times, I just never got to send it to slappy or anything. lul
Everything else looks bad because of the lightmaps and also, the ground looks meh because its a shader transparent "seam map"

I usually don't remove the gametype icon until just before the final build, just ignore it for now. Also, did you take that valhalla base pic yourself? I think we could use a person for high res reference screenshots. I'd do it myself but my xbox live ran out a week ago and I don't want to renew it until I finish summer school.

The ground map could been created into 3 ground shaders with the same diffuse, but different properties and detail maps. Would have been a bit easier then using a shader transparent...

The lightmaps do take a roll also, but then again even without them you can still tell that some things will still look pretty odd in the final build if you dont change them.

We were talking about the splitting the ground shaders up. You wanna halp?

It isn't hard at all, I can explain you the process:

first, make a diffuse of the entire ground texture, including your dirt, water, snow, rock, etc.

The diffuse will include an alpha... the grass will be normal, the rock, dirt, snow, etc will be the alpha.

Basically, each shader will use the same ground bitmap, but depending on what ID it is on in max the properties and detail maps will vary. For example, I could make a new material in max with a different name, but the same ground texture, and then apply it to were my stream bed is. The new shader would have the properties of water, but the detail maps (if kept at the same scaling), will still line up exactly, but you will be given the freedom of a different detail map for the dirt (or wherever the alpha dosen't line up).

So basically, you could cut out around the edges of where all your rocks are, (keep an outline of grass around it), apply the new material to it, and then then make the new shader.

Do you get the idea? If not I can probably show you through team viewer how to do it. I did it on Lumoria's shaders as well if you want to look there. (ex: ground_a; ground_a_water)

I figured that the rule of thumb with BSPs was too keep only one shader with the ground map, but obviously you proved that idea wrong. I do understand what you're saying though.

You're doing that. Jesse said to give you the bsp to take care of ground mapping.

If your going to give me the BSP for that, I might as well fix the cliffs if you want?

Also, I can't do textures well, so don't rely on me to make anything texture wise.

Never mind, then. I have had the cliffs remodeled for a long time, and I assumed you could do ground textures better than me at, like, coloring the ground map or detail maps or something. I guess that falls under texturing?
So, everyone, I've got a ground unwrap and river unwrap already, but the colors are off, as usual, and I'll have to see what I can do about that....
Edited by SlappyThePirate on Jul 6, 2011 at 08:45 PM

I almost wanna cry, you guys working together? There is hope for this community after all :D

I would feel happy, but due to the fact that I slept 3 hours today, I find myself incapable of pretty much any emotion, even excitement (I slept at two and woke up at 5 to get ready for summer school's first day).


Slappy, you can either send me the stuff via PM or send it directly to Higuy, although I'd prefer the former because I can send it to Higuy over xfire and help with whatever needs to be done (not that he really needs me).

Oops, jesse, you posted just about when I did.
Kind of a bad moment...
Edited by SlappyThePirate on Jul 6, 2011 at 08:46 PM

Yeah but it's ok, the modeling on the cliffs may be fine now, but Higuy can still help by editing the ground and it's related shaders :D

No harm done. What I said still applies.

Slappy, I think you have to reuvw one of the walls (that huge forerunner structure at the side of the mountain) because I'm using the halo 3 bitmap instead, and it looks weird with the current uvs.

You mean the end of the wall, basically in the lake? Or some other part of the wall? I thought all the metal on the main wall was fine, but which part needs to be changed?

Hahaha.

Oh Slappy, what do you think about the In Amber Clad in the water? If not we can just remove it but if you do, know that it only takes up about 0.1 of a megabyte in tagspace.



sendy sendy!
Edited by jesse on Jul 6, 2011 at 08:58 PM

Make it a crashed pillar of autumn, nobody has done that yet so it should seem fresh and original.
Sendy wat? The bsp as a .max? I can do the ground mapping, but who can do all the work to make a good ground shader?

Maybe with a little help/work I can get it to look a little less gay.
Edited by SlappyThePirate on Jul 6, 2011 at 09:05 PM

Can you please get someone who knows photoshop?

your ground texture should look more along the lines of this:


not what it looks like, but the detail is what is important.
oh and btw, your unwrap is stretched.
Edited by Higuy on Jul 6, 2011 at 09:13 PM

Nooooo... no way! Where? I don't see it. It looks perfect!
Seriously, though, can you photoshop the ground map?
Edited by SlappyThePirate on Jul 6, 2011 at 09:15 PM

I can give it a whirl, but like I said, I'm not that great when it comes to photoshop. Just send me the whole max file (if its not max 8, get it to a format that I can use), that way I can just do the whole process for you guys.

Whole process sounds good.
I predict you'll want to change other stuff, too. I won't be here at all next week, so whatever you want to fix during then you can go ahead and change. Don't put too much on your plate, perhaps not everything you would like to get to can be completed. Just try your very best with the ground map and we/you/I can tackle anything else later.



edit: my upload speed sucks, give me a little while.
Edited by SlappyThePirate on Jul 6, 2011 at 09:34 PM

awaiting da file and then i'll get to work...

Sent. Wish xfire was working on this computer, then not so much space would be taken up on this topic.

Hey Slappy, I see the max file you send is in 2010. Do you have it in 8? I don't want to get rid of all your materials for you, and I dont really use anything above 9. I can use the 3ds file, but like I said, materials will be bye-bye from whatever changes I do.
Edited by Higuy on Jul 6, 2011 at 10:17 PM

No, I don't, sorry... I have max 2011, and for some reason Save As only goes down to 2010. Maybe someone else can convert it, if 2010 allows saving down to 2008. If not, oops, sorry bout those materials.
I also have a bitmap Higuy, or Qwerty might want to add in, to save the sake of sending it to both I'll just post it here for anyone to use.

It's panels-3. For some reason I can't find it in any halo 3 map files. The custom one I made is not too good.
Edited by SlappyThePirate on Jul 6, 2011 at 10:39 PM

I'm not going to be messing with any of the Forerunner stuff, unless you want me too (personally don't like doing it, but I can).

I'm mainly focusing on fixing all these ground errors, smoothing it up, getting the cliffs more accurate from Halo 3 (just finished doing the back ones, holy crap they were nothing like my reference..), and then I'll focus on getting all the ground bitmaps sorted out and completed.

So, whats your problem with Xfire? just the program itself not running? Have you tried Pidgin with the gfire plugin?
http://www.pidgin.im/
http://gfireproject.org/

no, not complaining, we dont have the right, just suggestions and ideas.

loving the collaboration between u guys

Don't forget our goals:
1) Slappy (attempts) to model the cliffs, then we send to Higuy for revision (In progress).
2) Figure out which bipeds to use and what perms (In progress).
3) we reduce tagspace (Done).
4) fix missile pod(eeeehhhh).
5) work on BSP shaders and determine which textures to use.(In progress).
6) Add particles to the waterfall (Done).
7) Edit groundmap appropriately (In progress).

What's the resolution of the groundmap texture?