[FS Frankie V]

mogul, on 16 November 2011 - 04:21 PM, said:

Thank you for the vid Frankie, and everyone else who contributed.It's sure to take away some of the initial uncertainty from first-time 3rd party mappers

BINGO

That is exactly what we are tying to do by adding glitter and glamour to something that is other wise difficult for the first timer to become involved with. I had such a hard time even getting Radiant up and running that if not for BK and RC’s help I probably would have given up on the first day (not really) so I can only imagine the difficulties someone with a casual interest is going to have.

As for CMM I apologize if my word use was taken out of context and we are keeping a sideways eye on their efforts and are both encouraged and impressed with the effort to keep the art form going in the face of other, shale we say, more efficient alternatives.

Unfortunately our cornerstone application is 3ds Max but that does not mean that they are limited by a process of an X application when a chosen application can more or less do the same thing where pushing a different button is the only difference.

To counter though if anyone wishing to do a tutorial, video or written, I’ll be more than happy to present it to the team for approval and see if we can do something in the area community additions to our tutorial section.

[FS BladeKiller]

Frankie V, on 16 November 2011 - 01:44 PM, said:

Defiantly dealing with seems is the one thing VPC is very good at handling. Blade Killer is killer ;) with Photoshop but I believe that she uses VPC to get rid of those nasty seems. Couple of strokes with the clone brush gone.

Nope, I have found that Viewport Canvas only helps me mark my seams. It also destroys my groups in Photoshop so I don't like using it too much. I tend to use it to mark my seams and then I do the painting in PS and check in Max to see and if I'm out a pixel I fix it in PS. It is a lot of fiddling still but better than it was before I had viewport canvas.

For the rust patch on a crate I would uvw unwrap it so there wasn't a seam at that spot or if that wasn't possible I'd paint the seam with viewport canvas and then do the final painting in PS.

[spazzattack]

Looks interesting, but this is far too long a tutorial, with a hell of a lot of waffling in it! It's a shame because Frankie is obviously expert, but the presentation is just very long winded. Shorter, more concise videos in future please!!

[FS Frankie V]

spazzattack, on 11 December 2011 - 07:12 PM, said:

Looks interesting, but this is far too long a tutorial, with a hell of a lot of waffling in it! It's a shame because Frankie is obviously expert, but the presentation is just very long winded. Shorter, more concise videos in future please!!

That’s the plan and I could have covered this is important this and that important that in 15 minuets but since 3ds Max, or any 3d application in general, as a mapmaking tool is not used in general a bit of time is needed to explain some of the finer points that a lot of video tutorials either brush over or omit altogether.

Most of the tutorials I do though are intended for internal use only so they do tend to include a lot of information that directly relates to information that is useful to our team and not something that would be of interest to the general public.

In although it’s really about finding out what mapmakers in general would be interested in as far as tutorials go, as it’s something new to us as well, which we could do short how to videos and let them figure out the smaller details.

[spazzattack]

Fair enough, and it's a lot easier to criticise things, than create them as you have. I suppose I want to know the content, but feel frustrtated at not being able to commit the hour, when I'm not sure whether it'll answer questions I have: e.g. how the blended texturing you do towards the end in max translates out to .ase - at a glance I don't see you export the terrain, and import .ase into radiant. A text/image tutorial can be skimmed far quicker without fear of missing something vital, and can also give an idea of content - e.g. by searching for the key words you're interested in. This is why I feel videos need to be brief.

This post has been edited by spazzattack: 11 December 2011 - 11:18 PM

[Rayne]

Spaz that is exactly where you're wrong actually.
Short videos in general leave a viewer full of questions like "how the hell did he do that".
In longer videos there's not only a greater chance a topic will be covered properly but several other questions will be answered along the line.
If you watched Frankie's terrain video carefully you would know exactly what happens to the terrain texture.
I mean anyone that watched it and payed attention to what he's doing noticed that as soon as he started the VPC it asked him to create a new texture. Everything he painted is automatically saved into the texture he created at the beginning of the texturing process.
If he didn't he wouldn't be able to add textures to the terrain at all. Not through VPC that is.

[spazzattack]

I finally got time to look through this. Very interesting.

How large is the output terrain texture going to be? If it's all one big one then even 2048x2048 is going to look low res isn't it? Or do I miss something? I think you were hinting at the idea of tiling too. Can these techniques (tiling and viewport canvas) be combined in some way?

[Rayne]

spazzattack, on 19 April 2012 - 11:52 PM, said:

I finally got time to look through this. Very interesting.

How large is the output terrain texture going to be? If it's all one big one then even 2048x2048 is going to look low res isn't it? Or do I miss something? I think you were hinting at the idea of tiling too. Can these techniques (tiling and viewport canvas) be combined in some way?

Terrain Frankie showed is just...decorative. Something you'd use to cover the bottom of the skybox and add some depth to the background.
So even a low res texture will suffice. It's not something a player should be able to stick his nose in, and from a distance it will look good enough.
Now if you wanna make a map like Ryadh where terrain is actually a vital part of the map then you'd either split the terrain up into pieces or use a seamless texture and then add details through decals and alpha blending.

This post has been edited by Rayne: 20 April 2012 - 12:07 AM

[FS Frankie V]

Texture resolution are not as important over and about the memory foot print of the texture file being applied necessary to maintain the required texture budget. A 2048 X 2048 texture has more or less the same hit as four 1024 X 1024 if all things being equal.

In our case that budget is 350 megs and I’ve already made a test map using all 2048 X 2048 textures that was less than the 350 meg limit and with the exception of a little tearing, due to large texture in a small area it worked just fine.

As a general practice though it’s best to stick with nothing bigger than 1024 X 1024 unless proven during play testing that there are no hidden problems.

Here is some general information that maybe helpful.

http://www.katsbits....-or-brushes.php

[spazzattack]

Bookmarked.
Looks good. Thanks!