Developer Journal: Defrag
Posted 2 decades ago Lead Map Design
Christmas time, mistletoe and whine.
I was hoping to do some serious mapping over the last couple of weeks (as opposed to insincere mapping), but hammer problems have blighted me (and pretty much every other Steam SDK user) over the Christmas period. Hammer has been broken about three times for different reasons over the holiday period and Valve has yet to offer a conclusive fix. It's understandable that it's not getting resolved in a timescale most people consider appropriate (who wants to work long hours for the majority of the year, then have their holidays cut short to fix an SDK blunder? Not me for sure) but I can't help but think this could've been avoided had any non-essential updates been staggered until after the holiday season.
A lot of mod-makers are rather upset, as the holiday period is an excellent time to sit down and get a lot of work done, and it hasn't happened. I'm not hugely upset, but it has been a touch annoying to say the least.
Instead, I spent quite a few days running through tutorials on texturing & modeling, texturing in particular because for my Christmas I got part of a Wacom Intuos 3 tablet :D.
Anyway, I don't have much else to say, so I'll just link some sites that I found useful and may be of worth to others. As level design gravitates towards being a well-rounded environment artist (with experience in texturing and modeling) and the shift to using 3d packages to model complex details, it is worth having a look.
Penguin's skinning tutorial.
A very fast and useful overview for getting into skinning. Primarily deals with use dodge/burn a lot so it's not particularly broad, but it does impart some useful tips and show how to make skin in a small amount of time.
More skinning tutorials.
Some of these are a bit so-so, some of them are good. You'll just have to pick through them and find the useful content.
MereKat Creations
Some great tutorials on digital art, particularly the ones involving the overview of creation rather than any specific technique. This site's been around for a while and I consistently see it recommended -- with good reason :)
Finally, Modeling Joan of Arc.
Quite simply the best non-video modeling tutorial I've seen. Easy to follow. There's various ways people use to create models (box, spline, plane, spherical etc.) and none is "correct" (though some are more suitable than others when it comes to specific shapes / subjects) so just experiment and check out how others do it.
I haven't got many environment modeling tutorials to hand, but hey. Not a particularly level design based journal update, but it's better than nothing.
In other news, we're happy to say that we've picked up two new level designers in Zazi and CrackerJack. During the last six months, we were humming and hawing over whether to recruit a single level designer to work on some extra stuff, but these guys are both very, very good, and they were, collectively, an offer that was too good to refuse. So, welcome aboard to the new dudes. :)
View all developer journals I was hoping to do some serious mapping over the last couple of weeks (as opposed to insincere mapping), but hammer problems have blighted me (and pretty much every other Steam SDK user) over the Christmas period. Hammer has been broken about three times for different reasons over the holiday period and Valve has yet to offer a conclusive fix. It's understandable that it's not getting resolved in a timescale most people consider appropriate (who wants to work long hours for the majority of the year, then have their holidays cut short to fix an SDK blunder? Not me for sure) but I can't help but think this could've been avoided had any non-essential updates been staggered until after the holiday season.
A lot of mod-makers are rather upset, as the holiday period is an excellent time to sit down and get a lot of work done, and it hasn't happened. I'm not hugely upset, but it has been a touch annoying to say the least.
Instead, I spent quite a few days running through tutorials on texturing & modeling, texturing in particular because for my Christmas I got part of a Wacom Intuos 3 tablet :D.
Anyway, I don't have much else to say, so I'll just link some sites that I found useful and may be of worth to others. As level design gravitates towards being a well-rounded environment artist (with experience in texturing and modeling) and the shift to using 3d packages to model complex details, it is worth having a look.
Penguin's skinning tutorial.
A very fast and useful overview for getting into skinning. Primarily deals with use dodge/burn a lot so it's not particularly broad, but it does impart some useful tips and show how to make skin in a small amount of time.
More skinning tutorials.
Some of these are a bit so-so, some of them are good. You'll just have to pick through them and find the useful content.
MereKat Creations
Some great tutorials on digital art, particularly the ones involving the overview of creation rather than any specific technique. This site's been around for a while and I consistently see it recommended -- with good reason :)
Finally, Modeling Joan of Arc.
Quite simply the best non-video modeling tutorial I've seen. Easy to follow. There's various ways people use to create models (box, spline, plane, spherical etc.) and none is "correct" (though some are more suitable than others when it comes to specific shapes / subjects) so just experiment and check out how others do it.
I haven't got many environment modeling tutorials to hand, but hey. Not a particularly level design based journal update, but it's better than nothing.
In other news, we're happy to say that we've picked up two new level designers in Zazi and CrackerJack. During the last six months, we were humming and hawing over whether to recruit a single level designer to work on some extra stuff, but these guys are both very, very good, and they were, collectively, an offer that was too good to refuse. So, welcome aboard to the new dudes. :)