Wall Worm Forums

I wanted to teach myself how to map in Source, and decided the best way to do that would be to replicate a map in familiar with to the best of my abilities. So I decided to recreate blood gulch in the newest version of Source-- CSGO.

I had some road blocks early on, but with the help of WWMT I've been able to do things I couldn't have thought of with Source alone.

Here's the map itself. It doesn't play fantastically but it looks really damn good imo.







http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=574515071

(PM appears not to be showing up unless I don't know how this forum works)

How do I apply the Clean Geometry button? Once I select my target geometry it generates a shape and all the options disappear.

Sorry for the late update! My sister graduated from college this weekend so I had to take a bit of a trip to get there.

I'm still having problems with shellvex, which I've been toying around with all day...

My current 3 complaints are this:

1: The vertices are still nowhere near the grid, although using snapvertices appears to have made them less bad-- there are still a few holes in the object, but not nearly as many as before. The inaccuracies with the vertices mean I can't add any new brushwork seamlessly to my map in Hammer, as dragging the shellvex-generated vertices causes invalid brushes.

2: the shellvex object is being generated WAY away from my model in 3ds max so importing often results in an object that's too far away from the origin for Hammer to display or save vertices of:


3: The brushes created by shellvex use an extrude modifier rather than something similar to the "shell" modifier built into 3ds max. The 3ds max shell modifier makes sure that the side faces of extruded shapes touch, which prevents issues caused by "T-junctions" (spots where edges, but not faces, touch) in Hammer, such as the poorly-named MAX_MAP_PLANES error.


I wish I could work entirely in 3ds max but from past experience my map has some quirks when I import it, and I haven't found a way to blend lightmapped_4wayblend textures with WWMT...

If you would like copies of my assets and maps, I'd be glad to send you them-- but I don't know a good way of sending such a large amount of data :(

I feel like a lot of these problems could be solved if there was some mode on snapvertices to apply that modifier from within 3ds max, so that all the vertices of the 3ds max model were on 3ds max grid points. Additionally, it would be nice if shellvex behaved more like the "shell" modifier in 3ds max, which creates a nearly-seamless "shell" around objects.

Once again thank you for your time and for wwmt, it's been a great help even if I'm having troubles with the final leg of this map (outside of entity population, which is the actual final step...)

I'm really enjoying it so far! Unfortunately I'm still running into issues. Here's some cave geometry I imported:



Admittedly this is probably one of the more difficult things to throw at Hammer. Here is what the brushwork looks like, imported into Hammer:

(I hid the floor for this one, linked because it's a large picture) http://puu.sh/imQsq.png

I'm not quite sure what to do about this. It seems like Hammer moved the verts around when I saved the file...

here's a closeup of some of those vertices. grid scale is 1 unit:


edit: From past experience I think Hammer would like this better if triangles could be extruded to a single plane (chosen based on the normal and some average distance) like so:


This is the most successful method I found, but it had serious problems with texture mapping that I wouldn't have if I used wall worm (as it allows for arbitrary texture mapping and UV wrapping that properly imports into Hammer)

Quote from: Joris Ceoen on June 12, 2015, 05:44:44 AM
I didn't see the image before I posted (as it didn't load at first). To turn that into brushwork is just incredibly tedious, both for performance and texturing. It would instead be logical to make it with displacements. One method I advise you to attempt is to create planar faces around the model and turn them into displacements through WW Anvil. Then, snap the vertices to the model itself. All additional vertices should be scattered on the planes/triangles of the model.

That's about the only way I can see this working. That, or you simply turn it into a model. With staticproplighting it could turn out just as well. The reason for this method is because displacements can rarely cause lighting problems if they're too wacky (however it only happens with overlapping displacements, which wouldn't happen with the first method I provided). Lemme know if it worked for you!

The smaller rocks on the model should absolutely be turned into a model, as it wouldn't fare well with either brushwork or displacements, at all.

Turning everything into prop_statics was actually the first thing I tried-- after splitting the object up a bit first. The problem was self-shadowing; not visible from that angle is a series of caves that did not light reallistically as a set of props. I also felt a little bad about 90% of my visible map being static props...even if they are low-poly.

Displacements were my second attempt but as this model is triangle-based I found I had tremendous difficulty with the fine detail on the object, as well as imitating the UV-wrapped texture.

My third attempt, by extruding brushwork, almost worked. There were too many "t-junctions" (edges, not faces, touching) and it seems that the compiler throws an error after a certain number of those.

Looking at ShellVex, it looks like exactly what I need. I'll post an update once I try it out.

Quote from: wallworm on June 12, 2015, 12:56:19 AM
:)

Take note of the Docs. Instancing the same instance of the modifier on multiple objects isn't currently supported. In other words, if you need it on 10 different objects, apply it separately to the ten nodes.

...Oh jeez. This thing's about 1000 different objects...Is there a way to just automate applying the modifier to everything?

I guess I should explain what I'm doing. I've got a model of the cliffs of Blood Gulch, which I've attempted to turn into brushwork using the "shell" modifier and a script that splits the model's elements into individual named objects.

This process turns it into about 1300 objects-- although I may be misunderstanding how wwmt works. Can it handle a single named object that's got a bunch of elements to it?

edit: for a bit of context, here's a screenshot of the "raw" model I'm attempting to turn into brushwork:

oh! Somehow I missed that. Thank you!

I'm having a bit of trouble with a map I'm working on, and a feature to round off coordinates of vertices from within 3ds max would be insanely useful. I noticed there's a similar feature already in the map exporter, where it truncates vertex coordinates--but upon loading the map in Hammer I notice it's still far off from something useable. If there was an additional option to round vertices enough that they'd be "on-grid" in Hammer, I'd be saving myself probably...about a month of moving vertices by hand.

Thanks!

I can't believe how quickly you not only responded but fixed my problem! I'm fine with not being able to use displacement alpha blending (my material's a 4wayblend and I'm not sure it'd be supported any way) but I can understand why it'd be of possible concern for other developers.

Regardless, I sent a donation your way, because you clearly are dedicated to this project and I really appreciate that.

Welcome to MAXScript.

doesFileExist (::wallworm_installation_path + "/WallWorm.com/WallWormSimpleDisplacement/maps/fx/blend_dxsas11_nitrous.fx")
true


Seems I don't have D11 Nitrous settings on! Weird.

Thank you for the incredibly quick response! Your patch worked like a charm!

It turns out, after some quick googling, that I do not have the dx11 card I thought I had-- instead I have two nvidia GTS 250 cards in SLI, which I guess can't handle some dx11 stuff.

Hello,

I've been tearing my hair out trying to figure out how to get around this error. Every time I start Anvil it immediately throws an exception as described in the title on nature/blendcliffgrass001a:DirectX_Shader.

Here's the MaxScript listener report:

-- Error occurred in wallworm_blend_to_DXBlend(); filename: C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2015\scripts\WallWorm.com\common\matfuncs1.ms; position: 53048; line: 1583
--  Frame:
--   VTFImporter: undefined
--   rev: false
--   useStandard: false
--   mat2: nature/blendcliffgrass001a:Blend
--   defaultBitmaps: #()
--   dxmat: nature/blendcliffgrass001a:DirectX_Shader
--   mat: undefined
--   bm1: BitMap:C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2015\scripts\WallWorm.com\WallWormSimpleDisplacement\maps\nature\dirtfloor002a.tga
--   fx11: "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2015\maps/fx/StandardFX11.fx"
--   om1: undefined
--   bm2: BitMap:C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2015\scripts\WallWorm.com\WallWormSimpleDisplacement\maps\nature\cliffface002a.tga
--   om2: undefined
--   tex2: nature:Bitmap
--   tex1: nature:Bitmap
--   called in anonymous codeblock; filename: C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2015\scripts\WallWorm.com\WallWormSimpleDisplacement\anvil_funcs.ms; position: 9868; line: 335
--  Frame:
-- Error occurred during fileIn in "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2015\scripts\WallWorm.com\common\matfuncs1.ms"; line number: 1583
-- Error occurred during fileIn in "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2015\scripts\WallWorm.com\common\matfuncs1.ms"; line number: 1583
-- Error occurred during fileIn in "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2015\scripts\WallWorm.com\common\matfuncs1.ms"; line number: 1583
--   called in execute(); filename: C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2015\scripts\WallWorm.com\WallWormSimpleDisplacement\anvil_funcs.ms; position: 9802; line: 334
--  Frame:
--   f: "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2015\scripts/WallWorm.com/WallWormSimpleDisplacement/anvil.ms"
--   called in anonymous codeblock
--  Frame:
--   closeAnvil: closeAnvil()
>> MAXScript MacroScript Error Exception:
-- Unknown property: "TextureTop" in nature/blendcliffgrass001a:DirectX_Shader <<


Any help would be appreciated. I really feel like 3ds max/WWMT/Anvil would speed up my mapmaking process greatly...if I could get it to work.