[FTE][in production] Scout's Journey

[motorsep]

Interesting project. I read your blog every now and again

So you model entire level in Blender and basically don't use too many brushes?

[goldenboy]

Yeah, I started doing that this year. Especially since FTE got mesh collision.

Build the environment in Blender, ideally from modules because it saves work in the long run. Re-use tiling textures wherever possible; this allows you to keep the apparent texture resolution high (by making the UV space bigger than the image, thus using the tiling to your advantage) and to reduce the number of surfaces for the engine. I use decals, meshes and shadows to break up surfaces.

Then seal the level and do basic Vis with a caulk hull. Disable blocksize and build your portals by hand using hint brushes. Use areaportals and antiportals wherever it makes sense. The goal is to have working occlusion with a minimal amount of portals.

The main reason is that Blender is a better modeling tool than Radiant (though Radiant is very good to create a greybox layout.) The reason for the simplified Vis is to increase performance (it seems counter-intuitive, but it does work.) The amount of vis leaves in a typical Quake / Quake 3 map is ridiculous - it was meant to improve performance in a corridor shooter of the late 90s. The situation today is different. id Software and Infinity Ward understood this when they made Doom 3 and Call of Duty, where you have fewer, larger cells. What I'm doing is an approximation of that.

This was all a gradual process, but it only takes things that have always been done in Quake 3 mapping and uses them consequently.

[motorsep]

You know you can turn brush work into "detail" or into func_wall and would functionally become a "model" that doesn't affect vis ?

I was pondering the idea of making levels in Blender, but it seems like a double amount of work making caulk hull afterward.

Doom 3 relies on manually placed portals that can not split meshes (you still have to use brushes; you can't have solid mesh crossing a portal) and PVS culling (per surface; not per entity). So it's kinda all manually optimized. I wish it had occlusion culling, like UE3/UE4.

Anyhow, I was just mostly wondering because I tried that and found making mesh levels to be a painfully slow process, especially that brush-made caulk hull had to be a tad smaller than the walls (or walls larger than brush-made caulk hull; especially if brushes are on the grid).

[goldenboy]

[motorsep]

Caulk blocks light, so if these is slight precision loss, you will get artifacts on the walls (slotches, spotting, etc.) because mesh ends up slightly inside caulk wall. That's the experience I had with q3map2.

The way I make maps is blocking layout with brushes, using base texturing on them and adding decorative models if I need complexity.

Currently I have Doom 3 map exporter for Blender, which I would like to extend to use booleans, lights, and entities. This way level can be modeled in Blender, but exported as a map with brushes and models (can do it now, but it's not a one-click operation). Not sure if it worth turning Blender into fully featured level editor or if it's just better to use Radiant for texturing brushes, placing/linking entities, tweaking lights.

[goldenboy]

[motorsep]

Have you tried making modular pieces?

[goldenboy]

Yeah. In February I made a level which used a combination of brushes and modules. Currently I'm using a modular wall set to rebuild one of my older brush-based levels. In the future, I plan to build the remaining levels using largely modules.

I also have stuff like modular wall supports, sets of stairs, etc.

I'm trying to use modules more and more. The only thing I won't use modules for is setpieces.

[motorsep]

What are "setpieces" ?

Do you have screenshots of parts of your levels made with modular pieces?

I wonder if you stumbled upon any art dump from games that use modular geometry for level design (except UT3) ?

[Spike]

the focal point of the map. for example some big spire that you can see from any part of it that says _THIS IS E?M?_ at a mere glance.
or something like that.

[goldenboy]

A setpiece is a unique piece of environment, often a large one, that the player will remember and that lends a sense of place to the level.

In Marcher Fortress for example, the famous outdoor part of the fortress that's set into the mountain is a setpiece. It's iconic and it's how people remember the level.

I use unique geometry for these memorable pieces. I'm more likely to use modules for a bunch of corridors, for example.

Polycount has a lot of info about modular environment art. Mapcore has some as well. It basically means to build a level from re-usable parts that will snap together on the grid. The more different parts you have, the more interesting your level will look.

I'll see if I can post a few screenshots tomorrow.

[Spiney]

Last two blog items:
There's a place for photosourcing, but hand painted usually looks better, esp for normals. Good job.
For the crate, if you can do LODs I think you should try modelling on the handle. It looks a bit weird now imo.

[goldenboy]

Thanks. You're right about the handle, I'll see if I can spare a few polies for it. Not sure if we can do LODs for baked-in meshes.

Motorsep, I'm pretty busy but module shots will be forthcoming.

[goldenboy]

Scout's Journey will likely no longer use a Quake engine in the future.

[motorsep]

I feel your pain! That's why I switched to Doom 3 BFG engine. Although if I knew UE4 will be such a sweet deal (although it's not that sweet at this moment due to engine being _raw_), I'd probably learned Kismet nd general workflow and tools of UDK.