That looks great as always :D Keep it up ;)

i think i already said that i'm gonna use a custom sky box for this map, but i don't have any good idea :(
could anyone plz give me some ideas for that?

wow, this map looks great ingame.

for the skybox i can picture large clouds, plenty of sunlight (godrays mb? like h2 skys?) ring ofc, mix in some stars/planets.

like revelations?
hmm, it'd be a good idea but i want to use something different.
i want something beautiful but custom, no halo (ring) related that you CAN see from the map, in other words, something on the top part of the sky (as you cant see the horizon)

After a long break from this community, I look at this map and all I can say is..

wow.

Keep this up. I haven't seen stuff this good in a long time.

A ship or maybe a local cluster? kinda like the ark in h3 where you can see a nearby galaxy. i still say big fluffy clouds is a must since the horizon is blocked completely.

yeah, in fact, i was going to take your idea of the clouds and godrays.
however, i'm not sure about the rest... like planets, ships, part of a bigger installation, a combination of those things or maybe just the clouds alone :o

This map is for your enjoyment, so it's your choice ;)

I like that idea.

hmm i like that idea :)
well let me think about it, ohh and btw... i dont have any progress in my map because im not at home (im at cancun!!) so im getting back to work next saturday, feel free to give ideas for my map, suggestions, etc.
sorry for taking this long to make this map lol
Edited by ChBgt909 on Jul 13, 2012 at 11:23 PM

that artist's brother is a total butt-munch on xbox live

got nothing against her though

well, guess what guys?
im done with bsp, i finished it today as im taking a break at the hotel from everthing i did this last 10 days lol im gonna get home by friday so i can post some pics, i added some details to the base, and some other changes, well... now i have to make the skybox and think about the vehicles and weapons im gonna use
you can help me with that, this friday im gonna post some pictures with ALL the COOL vehicles and weapons i already have so you can choose which ones you want, but you can also choose any other weapon/vehicle so i can download them :)









well, i WONT change this model, in any case i can edit things like lighting, objects, etc, but believe me, i got a LOT of errors when i attached this structures to the terrain (pro-boolean ftw yay :-/), and it took me around 4 hours to fix them all, so... i don't feel like making more changes to the structures... sorry :D
Edited by ChBgt909 on Jul 19, 2012 at 02:00 AM
Edited by ChBgt909 on Jul 19, 2012 at 02:05 AM

well i like it :)

Beautiful environment. The grass looks a little bright, but all around it seems spectacular.

I understand you won't be changing the model anymore, but for future projects:
- I can tell on like the 4th pic that some of the terrain is rather "sharp", a smooth sloping hill appears to be more or a jaggy edge.
- On another pic the line of sight is basically completely across the map. This is something you should work to avoid in your map layout, as you'll see snipers and tanks ruining other people their days from afar constantly. You could add more natural features to break it up more, or even just place more large rocks as scenery.
- While your forerunner looks good from some angles, on other angles the two main bases look very flat. Try and add more definition and volume to them.

I still like your overall style though. Keep it up.

well, the terrain looks a bit sharp but i did it because i didn't want to use a lot of polys but believe me it's not THAT noticeable, once you see it yourself you wont care about it :p
you can see across the map, however the vehicles, weapons, natural cover and teleporters can help you against campers so the advantage can go to any team/player at any moment (blood gulch has the same layout), and there wont be tanks in this map
i know that the top of the bases look flat if you look at them from the front, that's something that i noticed AFTER i attached the structures and knew that i made a mistake and ppl was going to tell me about it (and i was right lol)... i always keep backup of my progress, which means that i have a backup where the bases are not attached (so, if more ppl RLY wants me to correct that problem i can)

i'm glad you like it and i will be more careful with what i do next time, thx :)

Edited by ChBgt909 on Jul 19, 2012 at 04:17 AM

Well there's a few subtleties to Blood Gulch as it has pretty high sloping hills across it's landscape. You can only see from one base to another if you're on the top and you jump. But both sides are broken up from eachother more. As for the terrain, I guess I'll see in the release, but I can still notice it. You shouldn't worry too much about using enough polies to make something look smooth enough, at least not for stuff like sloping hills that should look nice and natural.

You don't have to change anything imo, just learn and carry that experience with you to the next project. Being able to wrap up something is also an important quality after all :-)

Awesome. Beautiful job, my friend, beautiful.

Omg am so speechless...



This map looks like halo 3ish

And you should make open world map.

Looks pretty good so far, I'm really liking what I see.

As Lodex said however, you should try to smooth out the hills a tad, in some of the pictures it is pretty noticeable that they arent as natural as they could be. You could fix this by adding "rings" around the hills circumference and then using the soft selection tool to smooth them out.

Another thing that could be improved upon is the Forerunner structures UV and texture work. While the models are mostly fine (they could use a tad more volume like Lodex selected and could also use some chamfered edges here and there), the texture work could vastly be improved. As seen in your last map, you definitely know how to unwrap so I'm going to assume that is the textures themselves. Overall, they look very flat and monotone. They are a very dismal and repeating gray and have almost no color variation. You could improve this by breaking up the color pattern by using other colors like Brown and yellow, and even lights that are bright white, orange, red, or blue. If you look at the original Halo, alot of the 'colors' are still gray, but they use different shades and help contrast alot of the architecture work. The original also makes use of strip textures which can vastly improve the quality of the work by also breaking up textures.

ex:



Lastly, like Lodex said, make sure the enviroment is broken up. I've also had past experiences with not listening to other members when working on a map similar with a wide open environment and teleporters, and, while it was fun for the most part, it could have been greatly improved by not having the bases being seen from one end to the other. Just a word of advice.

Besides from those things though, you've come a very long way and you are really getting good. The first picture is very impressive with the large spire sticking up out of the ground and its nice to also see some background geometry as well. The effect with the beam in the middle was also a nice touch, perhaps add some kind of holo panel (just scenery) to help add even more immersion there.

hey that looks kinda like my tiles lol

well, reading all that from you guys, i decided to take back my words and make some changes in the structures and make the hills smoother, thank you guys :)
i'm gonna post some pics as soon as i have some progress on that

Yay, more updates to come!!

That forerunner looks like from orginial halo the one caboose posted.

wha?

how am liek hahlo 3ish?

Holy sausage! you must reveal to me how you do your lightmaps sometime Lol...But seriously how did you do it? XD

?

Looks like standard radiosity to me, not much of anything special you can do with tool's radiosity to get anything "different" or "special". He probably did final lightmaps at a high stop value (0.1)...

here it is... the secret!!!

radiosity_quality 1 (wait... i used 0 for those pics lol)
radiosity_start
*wait for few minutes* (i only waited 1 minute for this result tho xD)
radiosity_save




oh... and i may use aether for this map, not sure if it's worth it tho...
Edited by ChBgt909 on Jul 21, 2012 at 12:51 PM

oh wow, xD he does them in sapien.

You should totally do them in tool, 5000000X faster.

"tool lightmaps levels\test\testmap\testmap testmap 1 0.1"

ofc the scenario directory would be yours instead of my example, and the lower the final value is (0.1) the better quality the shadows get.

yeah i know
"tool lightmaps levels\map folder\map_scenario map_bsp quality 0.000001"

but, it didn't take too long, i just wanted to see the map, thats it xD i may use aether as i mentioned :p not sure tho
Edited by ChBgt909 on Jul 21, 2012 at 12:54 PM

Aether is fantastic if you know how to setup lights and render settings in 3dsmax, but its not without its flaws, halo's radiosity uvw's are horrid, and on most occasions you need to flatout redo the uv's. I've had my outings with it a while back, and you can do some pretty neat stuff, like baking normals into lightmaps (*￣▽￣*)

Well thank you, your advice was very.. Insightful. I will document it for future reference.

there, more volume to the structure


and yeah... it's not part of the bsp lol xD


Read this please:

as i said before, i got some errors, i managed to fix them all without problems, the model (bsp) as it is now, doesnt have any problems (didnt get any error when i managed to export the model in game) the problem is 3ds max, for some reason it crashes from time to time, not sure why though because, as i already said, the model didnt have any problem when i exported it to halo
anyways, 3dsmax is what is annoying me atm, im sure that the problem is the model itself but i'm not sure what it is and why it happens, atm it doesnt have that problem (opened the model many times yesterday) but i don't want to mess with the bsp anymore because of that(all this happened after i merged the bases with the terrain using pro-boolean)
i hope you understand why i don't want to edit the bsp now, sry...
Edited by ChBgt909 on Jul 23, 2012 at 03:44 PM

ooooooh, i likes it very much!

i just made a bsp to test something, and yep, just as i said in my previous post... the issues were not because of the model, it's the program itself... it's very unstable atm, the bsp model i'm making as sandbox it a friking box, and just moving some faces in the model is making the program freeze... -.-'

a few of the times i fixed errors on rambos map, i had the exact same problems.
at that point i had a crap vid card and low ram. basically your pc can't handle the polygons in your map model at this stage.
you can use (F2 or F3 can't remember which it was) while you do stuff, that's what i had to do before i got my pc upgraded.