Radiant Domed Arches

[MadGypsy]

I was looking at various cathedral pictures and I notice that many cathedrals have the feature of arches also creating a doming effect. I wanted to see how hard it would be to recreate this effect, to some degree, in Radiant.



The below images highlight my geometry. Primarily it's just a bunch of 3 sided brushes. However, the trick is to convince the brush to maintain the angles you are giving it without popping out a corner. These coordinates seem to be at zen. I only built one side, then I duplicated and rotated the next piece into position. This is very telling of the integrity of the geometry. Usually questionable geometry will reveal itself after a rotation. All the brushes kept their form after rotation. So this is probably a solid prefab.

[MadGypsy]

Of course with a little work and crafty texture placement, we can add more drama without adding any shapes.





below is the geometry for the corner. Unlike the above post, I didn't keep the doming flush with the arches. I went more with the actual cathedral picture look and let the arches have a reveal.


This work isn't meant to be considered the beginning of a map, it isn't even meant to be considered good. It's just "brush practice". I find complicated shapes and attempt to recreate them in radiant often.

[Sza]

i will give you plus

[MadGypsy]

Why, thank you! I will accept your plus and raise you a multiplier.

[sock]

Wow, really nice brushwork. I like the fact you even put textures on the shapes, always tricky with awkward angles.

Next step build a small island of rock for it to stand on with a cave structure below ... or practice creating a destroyed version, again can be tricky depending on how broken you want the final shape to be.

You should post on func with stuff like this, there are more level designers there who can suggest ideas or help what you are constructing.

[JDSTONE]

you can make some of the coolest map peaces! i have herd the structure you made be referred to as a demon hole. i think you need to make a map for us to play cose the only thing your map parts are missing to make them grate is some blood and gibs splashed on them! or if you don't want to make a map and never plan to consider making you map parts available for dl for use by other mappers. i have played around trying to make something like this and it did not turn out near as good. you got hella skill!

[MadGypsy]

@sock.. thank you for the compliment.

you should post on func

It's not in me. I don't know about the rest of you but, aside from some seasonal participation issues, I'm cool with the people that I have right here. I never came here for Quake. I came here cause google said I could make 3d FPS games if I came here. I met a lot of people that are similar to myself in many regards. Especially when it comes to having a project and sharing your work. That's why I'm here. I met people that kept me here, but I'm not really trying to meet more people. One day I will make something so cool, that all of Func will be coming here.


@JD - You need some money or somethin'? You don't have to butter me up. You can just say "Gimme some money." and of course I will tell you no, but that's beside the point. Weeellll maybe I'd give ya a couple bucks if you really needed it, especially if you were honest and said it was for beer.

[MadGypsy]

Hey, nobody noticed my awesome sky?! It was professionally made and everything. I drew like 20 swooshes, cranked up the blur and dropped the alpha to practical non existence. Then I played with the color thingy til I found "Stormy Day" (thas what Imma call it) and voila - awesome, incredibly subtle sky texture.

I'll make a better pic..of just sky

[MadGypsy]

Heres a better pic of my sky


I know it looks blobby but DP saves in jpg format. It looks cleaner in game.



there is the actual texture. Name it sky4.png and drop it in Quake/textures/ and have fun. Note: It doesn't look "Quake" at all, I know. I made Stormy Day in like 1 minute.

[JDSTONE]

lol no money needed just some map help
http://quakeone.com/forums/quake-tal...ix-my-map.html

but this is not the first time i have seen little test that you have made that were very impressive.

[golden_boy]

Good stuff.

It inspired me to go and try doing the cathedral shape with patch meshes.







The shapes are very easy to do with patches, however there are serious drawbacks to using patches. It's hard to texture and light them correctly - they only have a few preset texture alignments available, and the one you need is typically not among them. Lighting and ambient occlusion also crap out on patch meshes. Finally, they're easy to make simple shapes with, but hard to subdivide eg for making those rows of windows.

That's the point where Blender or some other modeling software would take the cookie and come out on top.

Anyway.

Edit: OK I did hack some light emitting window strips in there. It's quite interesting how the light behaves in those shapes (I enabled radiosity in q3map2).



Must resist taking this into Blender.

[MadGypsy]

Cathedral Wars

You trying to have cathedral wars or summin? OK, I got summin for ya'
[[thumbs nose and shadow boxes for a minute]]

I have been practicing inventing textures from existing textures. Up til now my metal texture on the doming details was a good example. Everything is way bigger than 64, yet, where is the tile lines? I'll tell you where they are, they are blended out due to rotations and align.

I took the concept much further and used one of the stained glass window textures to create a new stained glass window texture using rotation and align




My concept is to take existing textures and treat them like paint. "Apply" strokes in various directions and usually isolate only a small portion of the texture. The long straight parts of my metal corners is 96 units tall. By breaking it into 2 48 unit sections I can move the texture around quite a bit without ever hitting its 64 unit edge. The same goes for the window panes. They are much smaller than the texture and recurring in a loop. This allows for double modification as:

1) the brush is too small for the texture so i can "paint" without hitting edges
2) one texture is actually 2 halfs of seemingly 2 textures

Here's the stained glass window texture I used. As you can see it looks nothing like my final results.

[Sza]

@MG the stained glass looks not so good



@GB nice work, but so much details will kill the gameplay (quake)

amen

[MadGypsy]

@stained glass doesn't look good

Your opinion is noted. However, you have to consider what I was doing and what I had to work with. One thing I noticed is people attempt a map and they either:

1: make "something"
2: get frustrated and give up

In both of these cases there is generally much to be desired. I have a different approach. I don't make maps. I make chunks of maps and it is never with the intention of "finishing". The intention is to become a brush and texture pro, constantly pushing the status quo and even the limitations of q1 mapping. You could go over every texture in my map with a fine tooth comb and you won't find a mis-aligned one. Well, let me rephrase that. You wont find a spot where the texture abruptly misaligns. I misalign them on purpose. Those brick arches have handmade caps on them. Each little piece of that cap was "repainted", not to follow some perfect brick texture conformity, but in a way that screws up the brick conformity without screwing up the look. They are also all unique. None of that is copy and paste and none of it followed the same rotation and align of the pieces as the one before it. In short, maybe my stained glass windows don't look good, but they are amazing in consideration.

[Sza]

I meaned only that those stained glass pieces are to small.