So you’re putting in lights and you find the perfect settings to light the room, but there’s a problem: the ceiling is almost pitch black! A surprisingly common problem, so what do you do? increase the light’s brightness and suffer a blinding floor? Nope. Read more ...
Just a quick one today to clear up something that possibly isn’t experimented with much when considering lighting, the spread angle from the light_environment. The entity itself recommends a value of 5 degrees to start with however, as my attention was drawn recently to, this is actually quite a large angle. You’ll see on a sunny day, the shadow from a tall building is incredibly crisp. Read more ...
One of the most fundamental aspects of level design is proper scale and dimensions. A door way that is few units too large or too small will ruin the illusion of your environment.A building set to improper scale will destroy the immersion of the player in your environment.Hammer Source has few key aspects of keeping your world on scale and proper proportions.
The tutorial covers:Read more ...
How to keep your map to proper scale and dimensions
Hammer Source character scale, wall height, door dimensions, stairs
Developer textures
Grid values
Hammer Source Map Construction Breakdown takes a look at what elements levels are made up of in Hammer Source. Knowing how a map is constructed inside Source helps you to understand your own process and what you need to do with your own maps.
The tutorial covers:
How the map constructed?
What elements are used?
How everything comes together in Hammer Source.
Today I’m going to discuss the lighting conventions of source. Source has been evolving steadily since Half Life 2, with the introduction of HDR with Episode 1 and then per-vertex lighting for static props and shadowing textures with the Orange Box. These new methods for calculating lighting at compile time have become the standard for source, everything produced since the Orange Box uses them.
Unfortunately the improved lighting introduced with the Orange Box was not added to hammer’s default compile settings, even as options, so we must add them ourselves. That means we need to know what they are and what they do. There are three options that we’re going to look at today, texture shadows, per vertex lighting for static props, and exact outline shadow casting for static props. So what exactly do they do? Read more ...
Hammer Source Interface Crash Course in 15 minutes. The tutorial covers the entire interface to get you started mapping in Hammer Source. Most commonly used functions are covered.After watching the 15 minute video you will be comfortable navigating around the viewports in Hammer Source and you'll be ready to start mapping.
Learn how to install the Source SDK correctly and how to use Valve’s Hammer Editor. Read more ...
Back when I was trying to learn Source mapping, I ran into several issues, most of which involved lighting or water. While I have not mastered Source lighting, I can offer some help to those having issues with water. Read more...
Like any engine, after a bit of love and attention it can run much better, spend some time setting hammer up how you like it, get something that you like and get it to work for you, it’s your workflow. Read more ...
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Material proxies are a neat little feature of the Source engine that let you alter various properties of a material dynamically. This can produce some neat effects, as the texture position, scale, rotation, transparency and much more can be changed continuously, or even in response to game events.
Take Half-life 2, for example. You know those combine force-fields, that ripple with energy, and fade out as you move away from it? Or in Team Fortress 2, you’ll have seen the rotating radar screen in the 2fort basement. Both those effects are done with material proxies. Read more ...
There are a few things you can do to greatly improve the speed at which you map. I’ll be going through a few of these things, point by point, but you must use them in practice in order to get faster!
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Optimization is one of the least understood parts of mapping in source; there is a lot of hearsay on the matter and generally the topic can appear overwhelming to new mappers. Today we’re going to discuss how optimization in source works, not from a theoretical approach, but from an example-by-example method that will hopefully bring us around to understanding the underlying theory. When implemented correctly, good optimization can be more beautiful than the aesthetics of a map itself. Read more ...
Once you have began on your journey to acquiring artistic skills it is now time to apply what you learned into a 3d digital package and a level editor.I am going to cover the basics of what level editor to choose, which 2d package to work with, as well as 3d package.All of these are based on my own experience and my opinion. You may want to try different things out and decide for yourself. It is ultimately up to you which one you choose and become a master at it. All I can tell you is to pick a few as opposed to many. Become really good at one or two. Read more ...
How do you become an environment artist and level designer? Where do you start? What do you learn first? Should you purchase a 3d package? What about Photoshop? Drawing? Painting?There are a lot of decisions to make and too many choices. As a matter of fact, there are so many choices that we don't make any decision at all.It is paralysis by analysis.Before I begin, there is a difference between an environment artist and level designer.Environment artist is someone who builds the assets that go into the environment. They model, often texture and sometimes light their environments.Level designers are responsible for taking the assets that environment artist have created and assemble them into an environment that we can all play in. They design gameplay elements, create scripted events and test gameplay.Depending which studio you work for or what mod team you are apart of, you may do one or both of the title descriptions. Read more ...
In diesem Tutorial werde ich euch erklären, wie man in TF2 (=Team Fortress 2) per Hammer-Editor ganz leicht ein Portal, einen Beamer oder auch genannt "Teleporter" setzt.
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Heute befassen wir uns mal damit, wie man Commands, also Befehle, die am Server ausgeführt werden in die map integriert.
Wir wollen in diesem Tutorial einfach mal die Schwerkraft ändern, damit die Spieler lustig in der Gegend rumhüpfen können. Es ist natürlich nur ein Beispiel! Man kann natürlich alle Parameter, die man in die Serverconsole eingibt verändern. Read more ...
Heute wollen wir uns damit beschäftigen unsere Map so zu beleuchten wie es auch die Profis machen! Read more ...
Nachdem das Level nun soweit funktioniert, bietet es sich an einen zweiten Raum anzubauen. Dieser sollte von der Größe her identisch mit dem Ersten sein und neben diesen gesetzt werden.
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Speicher die Map in dem vorgegeben Verzeichnis mapsrc und gib als Dateinamen testmap ein. Die Speicheroption findest du im Menü File/Save As...
Um das Level nun endlich testen zu können, musst du es vorher noch kompilieren lassen. Bei diesem Rechenvorgang wird das Level auf Fehler überprüft und Dinge wie das Licht berechnet. Drück dazu F9. Belasse die Einstellungen wie sie sind und drück dann OK. Read more ...
