I assume the model is the pillars?

They look nice, what they are attached to is awful.

It might, in the long run, pay to illustrate their purpose in a more favorable setting. It looks odd to have hours invested in a model, and moments invested in a setting/atmosphere.

Either way, even if the pillars are not the model, they look nice.

---

The best things in life, aren't things.

The model is the archway in the wall..

what they are attached to is awful.

What they are attached to, is crap. It's not even serious.. It was just a test :razz:

It's still not entirely clear to me where the model ends here and where the world brushes start. Is the large flat area above the pillars - the surface with the dual arch indents - part of the model or not? I'm guessing the large outside arch is made of world brushes, but the inside bit I'm not so sure about.

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

I wasn't trying to be mean, or funny. The only thing that looks good is the pillars.

The rest looks awful.

My point was simply to encourage you to invest enough time into your area to not detract from the goal, which is to promote your models.

Sorry if that sounded cruel.

---

The best things in life, aren't things.

making pillars of various lengths, and arches of various spans, and leaving them as seperate models, would give more mapping options than having the pillars and arches tied together. it would also let some people use only the bits they liked/wanted. :rolleyes:

the tricky bit with that, is getting the models to have origins that will let them easily line up with each other.

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i eat paint

Some images in this post have been automatically down-sized, click on them to view the full sized versions:

<span style="color: white;">I see... You should be able to see it now.. I hope.. :sad:
</span>

The rest looks awful.

Would you like to help me out here, and maybe, give me some suggestions?

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting nooba</DIV>
<div class="quotetext">

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quote:</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>The rest looks awful.</DIV></DIV>

Would you like to help me out here, and maybe, give me some suggestions?

</DIV></DIV>

Dude, I already gave you top notch advice on "Presentation"

Fishy gave superb advice on "flexibility"

I dunno how to say this any clearer, but "everything" above the pillars is yucky.

Not the idea of the arch, but the construction of the one you have made.

/giggles

hold on a sec, I just saw something funny...

BRB



Looks like a stone helmet, or something Greek.

</div>

---

The best things in life, aren't things.

Alright, so.. there is no way of unyuckifying it?

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting nooba</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>Alright, so.. there is no way of unyuckifying it?
</DIV></DIV>

Arches tend to be made up from pieces. Yours looks like someone chiseled it out from one block of stone.

You need a transition so to speak. and that should pretty it up a bit.

I cannot really search for screens on arches because not everyone is aware that I am on 56k and the whole internet is full of oversized screens.

here is one small picture.

Notice, the arch is only the one small band above the pillars. The rest is wall.. Wall from whatever needs an arch. Don't attach a wall, unless you want to restrict your arches usability to the theme you picked FOR THE USER.

---

The best things in life, aren't things.

nooba, if i may, the thing that throws me about it, is the singularity of it....as jon said, theres nothing to make it look as if its "built up" as a real arch would be....now, thats not to say that there is no such thing as a single facad arch, but they are much more modern in design, (stucco in south cali comes to mind)...and the visual is almost amplified by the shading....it gives it a convex look, like a rounded stone helmet...i dont know if the skinning is the problem in that context, but i think it well worth looking into....

btw sir.....yer tenacity is admirable, as i see an excellent modeller emerging in the future.....keep it up dude, gj.... :wink:

Doc B... :dodgy:

I hope it is better, because, I can't keep UV Mapping this thing.. :razz:



If it ain't better, thanks for the help anyway..

That is better. I can see a nice application of bumpmap textures here.

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Dark_Kilauea
DVS Administration
http://www.dvstudio-production.com/

this is the model that i'm working on atm;

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i eat paint

@nooba. As I said before, you are restricting the users to what you decided was best. You need to make your arch in such a way as to allow the user to incorporate it how "THEY" want to use it. You will limit your users by adding walls/upper areas.

Make your arch with nothing above it.

@ Fisheye... Nice. I like planes. I like ships more but planes are sweet.

---

The best things in life, aren't things.

I assume by above you mean like this.. And would you like me to remove the sides too?

<br style="color: white;">

Yes/No.

Its your model, so its your choice. I would never tell you what you need to release or not.

Release a version that you worked so hard on to complete. That way, you have it out there. The problem is, now someone will have to build architecture that you picked out. It should be the other way around. Models should compliment the architecture, not dictate its pattern. Remember, people cannot retexture your model to fit.

Then edit the model so that you have something more similar to the tiny screen I posted. You want arches... Upside down "U" above the pillars.. Narrow pieces of rock forming the "U"

---

The best things in life, aren't things.

Some of my recent tests with Indigo. Models and materials(although they
aren't working for some reason on those empty casings) done in Blender.

[img=http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/4090/im1146413321tonemapped21wm.th.jpg]

[img=http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/9116/im1146244347tonemapped2xx.th.jpg]

[img=http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/7607/im1146421140tonemapped4zo.th.jpg]

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''Everyone wades in s**t until they're competent enough to walk on it. Jesus style.''
Dystopia - Empires

I think that the material used on the bullet casings is a little too reflective - they look mirror finished, like they are made of chrome or something.

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

ReNo said:
I think that the material used on the bullet casings is a little too reflective - they look mirror finished, like they are made of chrome or something.

First, there are chrome bullets. I see them on occasion.

but, I think the shiny is just fine of you could get the color closer to the more common brass shading. New bullets, even those made of brass are pretty shiny. Not mirror shiny but polished shiny for sure. Dull up the mirror finish and make them brass and you got it licked.

---

The best things in life, aren't things.

They were brass when I exported
them, but somehow everything else except the reflection went MIA during
the export. That's why I said that the materials aren't working on the
casings. But thanks on the comments anyway. I'll try to get those
materials working. If everything else fails I'll UV-map those casings.

As for the rendering times, each picture took somewhere between 2 to 3
hours to render. Indigo is a bit slow, but you gotta love that GI at
work.

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''Everyone wades in s**t until they're competent enough to walk on it. Jesus style.''
Dystopia - Empires

agreed.. goes to find it XP

---

.else /me ~kill you
www.arclan.net

Look no further:

http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/nickamy/indigo.html

Gotta remember to link these things next time...

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''Everyone wades in s**t until they're competent enough to walk on it. Jesus style.''
Dystopia - Empires

rawr my first model ;D



Made in Max. 433 vertices 886 faces, I don't know if thats a good poly count. I made it to be a source engine v_model.

---

o

That's very good for a first model :smile:

Agreed. Great job: very clean, accurate modelling. And stylish too :smile:

Thanks :biggrin:

I'm working on the skin and reflect map, I did the UV map really sloppy and noobish, so it's not the easiest thing to skin... I'm gonna redo that now I think. I'll post in-game screens with the pretty reflections later :smile:

Now if only I could animate it properly... so far I've spent more than 5 hours on just animating, and I have nothing that looks even remotely good :\

---

o

Yeah very very nice for a first model, very ambitous too. My first model was a baseball bat :smile:

Wow, nice job Baron! Nice to see a original design too, rather than the standard approach of using reference pics extensively. You've clearly got a talent for this. I look forward to seeing it animated :smile:

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

This took 3.5 hours o.O

So yeah, my UV mapping may not be fast... or great... but hey, I'm a noob :wink: At least now there can be some continuity in the texture, before just about everything was seperate, and there were stretching issues.

Anyway, thanks for the encouraging words :smile: I just took a few days to get (re)used to the Max interface by following a few tutorials, then drew up a concept in PS and modeled it. It's actually not my very first model ever, but it's my first complete model and the first attempt I've made in about 5 years. I had Gmax around the time I was 13, and I made a piece of the shell of a car and a crappy head among other things, before I lost interest and moved on to other things. One site that's been really helpful is the cdg.net forums, there are a lot of practical modelling, UV mapping, and skinning tutorials.

I'll post later today with some renders and/or screenshots.

---

o

After spending about half an hour on the skin:

The bottom of the handle looks horrible, I'm thinking I might just do that part in a brass color.

---

o

Awesome job dude, looks great.

---

Ham and Jam Contributor
http://www.hamandjam.org

'Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!'

Got bored, opened up Cinema4D, made this in about an hour. (I made sure to reduce the filesize as much as possible without loosing quality)

---

You know, I've actually got nothing to say

@ Baron. Try adding scratches or somethin on the metal, and maybe some text showin somethin rather, the blade just looks rather bland right now.

glad to see stuff still getting posted here. Right now I'm
working on The House People,
http://housepeople.docglass.net/home.html

no html yet but I've started the flash part, I'll add more in the next few weeks

go to the flash page and check out CorpseGold

A little something I did in terms of testing the new complex IOR
materials in the upcoming Indigo v.0.5 The swords are supposed to be
gold and the coins silver... A two hour render, still a bit noisy, but
I didn't have more time to give for the rendering process. Models were
a bit of a quickie. I did them in 15 minutes. :razz: You have to love
subsurfs.

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''Everyone wades in s**t until they're competent enough to walk on it. Jesus style.''
Dystopia - Empires

my max to indigo exporter never.. worked T_T :/

i guess i can drop some stuff off here tho :razz:




Message submitted 2 minutes after original post:
darn my images aren't showing up T_T

---

.else /me ~kill you
www.arclan.net

looks nice pvt scythe, almost real

---

These words are my diaries screaming out loud

Oh, I remember whipping this up in about 1-2 hours or so, quite a while
back. Background stuff primarily came from googled images, but
that dude in the front is a model I made. If you play Sven-Coop, you
may have seen it running around a map. Not very l337 looking, but
I think it counts.

@Y2K_Ben: I like that vase thing. No idea what it is, but it's something I'd like to have decorating my room.

---

Breaking the laws of mapping since 2003 and doing a damn fine job at it

Well, FrenchToast got bored, and this is what happens when Frenchy gets bored and remembers he's got 3ds max on his computer.

(Image is s**tty for filesize reducing purposes)



So I just kinda whipped this up randomly. I think I'm gonna extend this and add arms and legs coming off the body, so he's like a ball with arms and legs. And of course I'll add eyes/sharp teeth/badass tongue. Also note this is minus smoothing, so those mohawk things are gonna be smooth and not so jittery.

Looks kinda like an evil version of pac-man :razz:

---

Breaking the laws of mapping since 2003 and doing a damn fine job at it

looks nice pvt scythe, almost real

That's what unbiased GI renderers are for. Realistic lighting. Great
for architectural visualization(or would be if it wouldn't take so
goddamn long for the scenes to render).

---

''Everyone wades in s**t until they're competent enough to walk on it. Jesus style.''
Dystopia - Empires

more pictures
massive painting thing

Some prop model art I cooked up in 5 minutes after seeing Horny Rabbits
prop models at Empires forums. Yeah, got struck by the inspirational
lightning.

UV-maps done, modeling done, collision models and compiling is till undone. :sad:

I hate doing it all "by hand" from command line over and over and over
again, when you just can't get it right for the first time. I bet
there's a compiling GUI somewhere for Source models...



DrGlass... That image makes me confused. :sad:

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''Everyone wades in s**t until they're competent enough to walk on it. Jesus style.''
Dystopia - Empires

@DocGlass: Did you paint that? That is really cool!

@Pvt.Scythe: Are those like the metal things that the soldiers used for cover on the beach during D-Day??

As for myself, I am currently working on this:

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http://maze5.net

Looks great, although there is something about his lips (and the squarishness of his nose) that looks slightly odd. I think that will probably change when you skin it though.

Mazemaster: Yes, they're tank barricades. :smile: I have had some nasty
thoughts about making a Empires map. Are you doing that head for a game
or just for fun? I must agree with AtM about the lips. The upper lip
seems somewhat odd.

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''Everyone wades in s**t until they're competent enough to walk on it. Jesus style.''
Dystopia - Empires

Hahah, this is almost silly but I'm posting it anyway.

Being in China without a scanner, photoshop, or an upload for my digital camera, if I want to draw something to share with other people I only have one option, MSPaint. Also, its in Chinese so I have to guess what I need to select to resize, crop etc. It's pretty funny. Well not really, its god damn annoying.

Anywho, I made a suggestion to Imbrifer about his attrition map, where I thought it'd be cool just to have his map floating in midair instead of in the middle of an ocean. He wanted to keep his island, so I decided I'd use the floating idea in a map of mine.

It's not the most original idea (seeing as I ripped the windmill straight out of the Gorillaz video for Feel Good Inc.) but I like it nonetheless. It's basically like bits of farmland got ripped from the ground and are now floating weightless in the stratosphere. I'm calling dibs on dm_stratos for a title.

I'll make it for HL2DM and then port it to anything else that would make sense (CS maybe? Would have to be a stupid aim map then), and it shouldn't be too big so I think I can finish it. It'll help me practice displacements.

Anyway, here's my glorious MS-Paint creation, with jpg artifacts and s**tty MSPaint compression (ok ok, it looks crap regardless).



P.S. That's a fence by the house, not train tracks. And there's an overturned boat near the lake, and players need to hop from floating chunk to floating chunk to get around, although adding boost pads is a possibility (although how I'm gonna make that fit with the rest of the map is a problem I'll have to solve).

The people who visit mapcore will be familiar with Postman's sweet 8bit avatars. Seeing as all I have to work with here is Paint, I figured I'd give it a try. This is what I came up with:



People with similar music tastes (ReNo?) may recognize it.

I wanted to start with something simple / symetrical for my first go.

Now, the stuff Postman put out had a transparent background so that no matter what color the page was, the icons would blend in.

How can I make the outside parts of my icon transparent with Paint? I've saved it as a .gif but I can't decipher any of the drop down menus because they're all in Chinese characters. At this point in my Chinese education I can only read enough characters to talk about my family or the weather, so I'm helpless.

If you could give me a screenshot of the right menu selection, I'd love it.

Wow, never noticed this thread before. :biggrin: Thought I'd post a few things... lots of cool stuff here, let's not have this thread die! :smile:

I've been into 3d art/animation for quite a while, and I've been using 3dsmax for several years (though mapping has certainly taken over my attention recently).

Here are some things I've done recently; I'm less interesting in modeling and more in effects (e.g. explosions, particle systems) and scenery (sky/clouds/seas)...

Earth (note - 400kb or so). Was screwing around one day and came up with something I liked, and tweaked it in photoshop. Not "accurate", just for fun. :smile:

Some kind of explosion (also ~400kb). I enjoy explosions. :smile:

Also several different seascapes, eacih with its own mood/colors (one, two, three, four, and five.

And, finally, the iPod! Probably what I'd consider my best work to date, I had a lot of fun making this from scratch. Kinda-WIP since I'll probably make a v2 (already done a bit of work on it but I don't have any renders of the new version).

Some more of my work is at my deviantart profile which I haven't updated in quite a while.

---

-- midkay

Your Earth piece looks amazing. Seriously. Did you do it all from scratch? I'm not familiar with the program you're using so I don't know how hard it was to create it, but jeez it looks good. Why not combine your passions and edit the earth to show simultaneous nuclear explosions or something? :smile:

Explosion: I think the fire and the smoke look great, but the ground/dirt looks fake, and the particles look strange. I would think the explosion would look better without the metal scraps flying around. I dunno, maybe.

Seascape 1 looks pretty good, but for some reason the slight trough in the bottom right corner looks a little weird, considering the rest of the ocean doesn't seem to feature symmetrical troughs and crests. I dunno, just looks like there's a dent in the ocean in that one spot.

Seascape 2: The swells look better here I think, but it doesn't seem like the rain is really part of the image. It just looks like a layer on top of everything else. The ocean isn't frothy for one, and I'd expect at least some indication that rain was striking the surface of the ocean.

3: This looks nice, although I wish there wasn't the bottom part of the lens flare. The top part works fine as the sun, but the bottom is kind of distracting. It just struck me... would you be able to turn these types of scenes into skyboxes for use in game? If so, I'd want to use 'em :wink:

4: I'm not really a fan of the white horizon or the bright sun on this one. The blood red also doesn't please my eye, but that could just be my tastes. I like the way the waves near the bottom look, the close ones.

5: I really like the color and angle of this one. The water looks like the HL2 shaders. I don't particularly like your sig in the bottom right corner though :smile: The others were very subtle, but this one, not so much.

I like the short focus on the iPod.

All in all, great stuff, thanks for sharing. I know you're probably done with all the stuff I critiqued, but I felt I had to respond to them somehow :smile: