Gmax VT's out!

[afecelis]

Hi guys, just found out how to avoid the leak error message.

Create 6 brushes surrounding your level as if resembling a hollowed box for the skybox. YES, it needs to be created by separate boxes, otherwise if you try to do it thru a boolean operation (subtract) you'll get non-convex geometry errors when exporting. Create a material for it but in the material editor-name field, don't type the path and material, simply type in a name like "sky", if you're planning to use a texture for it pick a nice blue texture or anything you want.
Export your map and when editing it in text mode, don't replace the your material name for its path, in other words, we want that texture to get lost so don't type its path in.

Compile and rejoice! no leaking errors, and since Irrlicht won't find any textures for those brushes, they won't show up, letting our nice skybox expose itself!

final note: if you open that same map with Gtkradiant, now the 6 sorrounding brushes will show up with a "missing shader" warning texture on them; so this is what does the trick. If you want to compile it in Q3, simply assign a Q3 sky texture over them and compile. So, leak problem solved!!!

ps. Just added 2 more lights above my level and tinted them blue to simulate a skylight that creates shadows on the floor when hitting the structure, and the glass is an Irrlicht shader.........kidding!!!! I'm not that smart, its a 3ds imported as a separate model, and assigned a transparent-emmisive material.

[Tyn]

The way the blue tinted light hits the floor looks very nice, good job

[Guest]

first:
great work afecelis ! as ever you know ... i really like your work and your tutorials!

second:

i have a few questions:
1. i just have learned how to use blender, but it does not export with light maps and texturing is very hard, so would you suggest using blender further or switch to gmax?

2. is the gmax way completely legal and can i use it in commercial apps? if so, i would use it immediately !

thanks in advance

[Guest]

and another quick question: are the textures tiled? like in real q3 maps? or do i have to use one REALLY DAMN BIG texture for the level?

[bal]

I suppose they are tiled, if you check out some of afecelis textures . Great work btw, I think I'll use this from now on. Model and texture in Blender, export to something GMax understands (3ds, obj?) and then create my lightmaps. What are exactly the limits of the Q3-license?

[vermeer]

GFXstyLER:

Blender can't do multiples uv textures yet,(neither lightmaps) needed for lightmap generation.
It can do with a trick that requires quite a knowledge and is slow, baking radiosity to vertex colors, requiring this subdividing the mesh and further more steps.

Some ppl at game engine that is inside bledner what they do is render the lightmap in the texture chanel1, but is really long workflow, and imho not totally accurate. I've seen rendering paralell each wall, and asigning the render as a texture to it...

IMHO, if going that way, is better to use Trancos tools, or Slim Shady. They may not work for curved surfaces, but hey.


Gmax is legal in this use...it's been such an unclear thing over the years...

But yep, seems using the way he does, he -I have read the related stuff in the glb tut he made in glb site- just grab chunk per chunk from Maxscript listener, so, doing this way he does not break nothing, other than maybe his fingers with the mouse...

yep, is legal. But the main issue would be anyway for coemrcial, and as I have read in many places where someone of discreet replied, it's ok. Just the need is not to use any kind of exploit.

So, this way, and for example, like other people do, export the md3, and mount the think by chunks of 8.192 triangles in Milkshape (there u can easily weld em) , or any other modeller (there's in faq a pair of other tools(free) than can convert md3 to other formats, look in tools sticky thread) is also correct. (using mojo.gmaxsupport.com md3 plugin.)

The textures...in Afe workflow, I dunno. In general, in a game, you can do both ways...we used to be asked to do in one single big one and just sharing the uv space in each object to match all in a single 1024 texture...but I suspect can be doen in other ways....a lot of textures and a lot of objects, I'd expect to kill any engine, though....


You still can use Blender for building the geometry (though gmax is really great, too) as it does not have any kind of vertex count limit , and many exports.

and lightmap in other tool.... (i'd recommend the comercial Gile[s])

[vermeer]

bal answered while I was posting

@GFXSTYLER
well, tiled..i see what u mean now.

Yup, it use to be tiled....

the tiling thing allows the use of much slower textures, but..in th eother hand, making a seamless texture that tiles well and don't look repetitive is an art itself....


can be done with some practice though.Something ppl don't realize...is real photos can be used, and u edit in 2d to make em seamless (means that once tiling u don't notice the border cuts, neither see a pattern, but a whole walll)

A tip we used in comapny is use very close qauds or single tris , of a decent size, with alpha mapped textures, so to add random dirty over the wall...it was almost coincident to wall but not concident...the effect was great. Also on the floor...i did smoking a lot of floor dirt , so...

As it feathers in the contours, it doesn't look like an stamp. It kills the boring feeling of a tiled wall. yet though, multitexturing -essential in outdoor terrains- is the way to go. But many engines don't support it.(irrlicht doesn't) so this trick may be useful for more than one, I dunno.

In bsps I think only convex geometry, so is more like this trick is not possible...

Yep, u can model in Blender (I think is great ur learning it...that one is not only free, it's BSD open source! ...is a tool without thos eproblems, and very complete) ...It's just not of the taste of many, but if u already can deal with it, managing two packages is not a scene, I handle no less than 5 just doing a character, in my workflow!


@BAL

It depends. md3, and BSP are free to use formats. The formats are not limited in use. (mor ethan their format specs limits) What u can't do is use Id tools for comercial projects. (Hammer or Wordcraft can't be even used for anything not half life -maybe yes its mods, but I think I read that neither- )
So, q2map or however it's called is -actually, I run towards Ydnar's forums when I saw that readme, to discover there it is indeed based in id's tools, and not allowed comercial use-

Same goes with md3. If u use any of the tools (qdata?) from Id, ur in same problem.

(BTW, md3 has that problem, for characters u'd better hide uv seams in non seen places.For levels, it's the same, as anyway you'd be able to weld geometry in milkshape or whatever...But then again, if have Milkshape..u may model stuff there directly...I mean, not too good for character, but yes for levels, objects...Still, imo Gmax is more powerful in what is modelling tools.)

basicly, for non comercial projects, AFE path is good way.

You can also model wherever and use the -a bit complex - Trancos workflow with fsrad modified , adn other utilities.

You can do like I did and buy Giles and ultimate unwrap.

hehe ..getting into wild imagination, while irrlicht aquires *.x import with second uv channel so to load lightmaps in multiply mode or something, you could go and do something like...generate your indoor level duplicated, scale down some minimal amount the whole level, and apply to it a single texture in th eonly one yet to be channel 1...that is, u load the lightmap with transparency provided u made the TGA very subtle, very smooth...so to load very softly over the other mesh.

If it were all over a non tiled, big huge texture like GFX asked, then, no need to duplicate som much tris, just as all is one texture, heck, merge in your 2d tool (Gimp, PSP, adobe PS, etc) both a lightmap and the texture. Asign it all in irllicht as chanel 1 normal texture.You're done.

This final way is probably the most clever if a whole huge texture is ok way to go... which I doubt. You'd still have to generate the lightmap. You could use for example the blender trick to bake lighting into a texture, and do as I said...

the tiling thing is why I sugested that duplicate/scalling level down almost nothing with just a transparent texture lightmap all over it.

If the level is just 3k tris, wont be a problem...would it be seen OK? I doubt it looks just as nice as a real lightmap. Really doubt it. It even looks like..very bad, I dunno...

[afecelis]

Hey guys! sorry for the delay but I was at work.

I'm glad for the interest everyone is putting into this thread.

@GFX: about blender or Gmax: the experience I've had when Importing geometry created in another 3d package into Gmax, and then try to do the GLB map export thingie will result in non-convex geometry errors. The best thing is to create everything with Gmax's native tools, this way when exporting them to map everything will be properly understood by the script. So my advice would be: try to use Gmax from the start to the end. And do a lot of trial and error. The more you check your map in text mode, the more you learn from it. On the other hand (and as you know), I also started playing around with Blender and it has given me a big surprise. It's the best free 3d package I've ever seen and it rivals expensive commercial 3dpackages. In no time I had it completely personalized and resembling 3dsmax. BTW, here's my first semi-serious blender render (and I still havent used Yafray with has been seamlessly integrated!):




and here's a shot of my config:
http://www.danielpatton.com/afecelis/sc ... ershot.jpg

Blender has got a bright future. I found this link called "blender features proposal" and they're already talking about lightmapping. Check the link:
http://www.neeneenee.de/blender/features/

@Tyn: thnx for the comments pal, I hope you can use these tools!

@Bal: I'm glad you also find it useful. But be careful when importing geom because of what I mentioned above. Try to create everything within Gmax and you'll have no problems.

@GFX, again: about tiling: u got 2 choices; 1. use an extra huge 1024x1024 tiled image that quickly covers your space, or 2. Get UV tiling within the map, it's possible thru the last series of numbers in each mesh. My advice would be , try downloading an existing Quake3 map and use it as template(check it in text mode in order to get ideas to improve your map-text editing). This exercise will sharp your map creation abilities up. If you want to see it in real time then download radiant and install it to our Irrq3 folder. Since the directory structure is the same as Quake3's it will be fooled, so you can open the exported map in radiant, apply some tiling coords, resave, and chek in text mode, then you'll see the 0 0 0 1 1 1 will star changing. But I'd rather try to do things without touching other tools but the free ones we have.

About legal concerns: I must thank Vermeer for being my moderator and support!!! Vamos tio, que eres una maquina de respuestas!!! Many many thanks for sharing all your experience and knowledge. I'm aware that this is not 100% free. The day we get a free-opensource bsp compiler (perhaps after Carmack releases Q3's source), it will be another story.

ok, ok many many thnx and keep on Gmaxing!

[vermeer]

hehe, the max geek....look what he did to Blender interface...

yup, I get too much my head in threads...

A way to be sure to output convex geometry is use Wings3d. It is winged edge extrudture. Simply it can't export bad non convex geometry by design, unless u export in the OBJ parts with the HOLE material.

Anyway, Gmax is quite better for level building for games, imho. No splines or snap functions in Wings.

Yet though, my greatest hopes are in Blender...no cookie based register need...if u download the blender, and save into a cd, u'll allways have it, no matter u have a inet connection or not in the future...

The feature proposal...One thing I don't like in blender comunity is quite less interest in character animation features...But for that I bought xsi..U see how in that list they don't appear.


i din't know you had made that such hardworked tutorial or GLB and CADE...

hehe..nice blender render...well, I'm more fan of the empower the internal render. There's ambient oclussion, ramp shader, area lights, and other stuff, that well tweaked, give u a much more yafray like render, but still yafray is way superior, imho.

Baking yafray lighting into a texture map, even in channel one, to assign in another external tool, would be plainly sweet

Both Gmax and Blender are very nice tools for indies, imo.

[Guest]

ok thanks for the information about tiling and blender!
afecelis, your voice sounds very cool man the tutorials are just like professional ones. i formatted my notebook and setup an development environment with all of your tools and tricks, so i can develop programs without problems and quick.
now i use:
DirectX SDK
Windows SDK
Nvidia SDK
CG SDK
Irrlicht SDK
Relo + MVSC Toolkit 2003 with afecelis files and modifications
Gmax + q3 bsp compiler with the afecelis way
blender + directx X exporter

and i got a hell of a lot tutorials about c++,gameprogramming, modelling and such. i want to thank you again for creating these cool and easy tutorials, now we can develop everything completely free (ok, we still have the q3 bsp compiler problem... but not so serious at the moment).

well, your tutorials take quite some disk space (1,5gb relo + gmax)
i also wanted to try gmax, but i had to register online for that, and my notebook got no internet then, so i will try again in a few minutes. i hope that i can create some cool looking levels for irrlicht

your blender render looks very cool! are these "pac mans" animated or something? would be cool if they would do a little small talk just kidding!

you sure have put much time in the tutorials, did you made them on the fly or did you write everything that you said on a paper and read it? i guess i couldnt do it without paper!

ps: would id notice if you use a bsp map compiled with their compiler and use it commercially ? not that i may would ever have the chance to go commercial, its always a nice option that you _could_

sorry for my little bad english!

[firefly2442]

Thanks for the help. Looking forward to more tutorials and screenshots from your work.

[heyman]

how do i compile the map, without having a game exe...?

[afecelis]

with the frontend. (map2build)

simply input the .map and it will output the bsp. You can then use it in any engine compatible with Q3 bsps (like Irrlicht!)

[asdf]

************ ERROR ************
Entity 0, Brush 15: MAX_BUILD_SIDES

i keep getting this, what does this mean...?

[afecelis]

Google for the error, I found this:

http://www.wolfensteinx.com/surface/tut ... rrors.html

Q.

MAX_BUILD_SIDES

A. Usually means you have a really complicated complex brush in your map, thats not allowed! you need to make it less complex!