[WIP] Valhalla

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Originally Posted by Ã�4ÑØ â€*

:D and soccerbummer, in halo 2 vista, Bumps CAN make the cliffs look hi poly. Through halo 2's fully dynamic lighting and normal maps, you can get it within reason to look almost exactly the same as bungies, had you painted exat textures. He's got the general shape down.

Also Portalling doesn't work too well on maps that are this open. It just wouldn't work, so I think modelling low poly, and letting the material do the talking like bungie do, is a good move. If thats what con is planning, anyway. Frankly, I'd like to keep my fps nice and high :) Do whatever ya want con.

Btw, you making textures for it yet? CAN I HELP PLOX :?

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I was planning on doing the BSP textures myself, but since you're in H3V there's other things that you can work on >_> Random is going to need High Ground BSP textures.

>.>
fixed, I thought I had more, but maybe not.

About the portalling, I don't think theres any place that CAN be portalled that well, not even the caves. As seen in the beta, the caves are more like gaps behind boulders leaning against the cliff.

EDIT: Mind you, h2 doesn't need traditional portalling, though, does it? Someone told me once that it does it's own masking.

it's the pwnage conscars (looks like fun to play)

I'm pretty sure valhalla will be my fav map of halo 3, as its closely based on BG (the openess/a few hills) This and highground are probably best maps for halo 3 :D

Cant wait to play!

you make my jaw drop because of the amazing work and patients you put in thins project..i love the bases, and how you got everything exact..well to my eyes you did. Keep up the work.

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Originally Posted by Conscars

I purposely chose to model it low-poly until I was finished the general shape. The reason was that I had no completly accurate reference images to work from until today. I don't want to waste time and effort modeling in details when it could be all wrong. Don't mind the random poly's, they're 'artifacts' of my deleting rampage when I discovered a bunch of stuff was wrong. I was discussing my modeling method with Phopo on AIM, and I have come to the conclusion that it should not be used unless your reference point has more than 1 axis that you can use to align with your reference images. Valhalla is a bad map for this. The terrain is very ambiguous, I don't know anything for sure about it's shape and angles. I chose the bases as a reference point because they were the only things in the map that had straight lines and definite angles. The problem is, my base still ended up inaccurate from the lack of proper reference images from it. Besides modeling a map from an inaccurate reference object, the base itself does not extend along many axis except for the vertical one. This doesn't help me at all. To like up my cameras with it to model from, they need to be aligned to the base's rotation. It's hard to tell if your image in the background lines up with the base model because it doesn't extend close enough to the camera. This has lead to the map ending up a bit warped. I do not reccomend this method to anyone who wants to model an OUTDOOR map. Camera-triangulation modeling is great for any map that has perfect angles and flat surfaces to reference, but not outdoor ones where the base is all that you have. That being said, I have the layout comparison below.

(click to enlarge)
[wshot]http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/8216/accuracyeb1.jpg[/wshot]

As you can see, some parts of the map ended up quite accurate while others did not.

By the way, does anyone know how I'm going to get grass, stone, AND snow detail maps into my ground bitmap? Or is there something in H2 that will let me do that.

edit: thought of a solution already; since these 3 surfaces don't all meet together anywhere, I can just have 2 ground bitmaps. One will have grass/stone for the center, the other can have grass/snow for the edges/cliffs.

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personally with outdoor maps when i have an over head shot like that, i make a plane, put the image on it
scale it to what i want
put it at the origin
and then i go to the top view and create a bunch of vertices's outlining the polygons and different geometry that i need, then i connect everything (create polygons between the verts, you need to use triangle creation for this.)and move the groups of polygons up or down to do the elevation changes. It takes some practice to get the technique to work right, and youl learn a good bit about how to place verts for certain outcomes pretty quick. :) hope that helps a lil.


here is an example that i did real quick for what im talking about. some areas you will create polygons, and others, you leave strips of them not made, then make the elevation changes and connect the gaps with more geometry ( think you may understand. a good example is the semi tiered rock on the north side of the stream in the middle

I like your tactic alot soccerbummer its very useful

If I had an overhead shot at the time, I would have done it differently (not exactly in the same way as yourself), but modeling from an overhead is definitely much easier. What I'm going to do now is just move around my vertices to match up, then adjust the vertical position with my existing cameras. The rest of the terrain I basicly build up using poly split and moving verts. I know some people prefer plane modeling and extruding edges, but I use what works for me. I sometimes use other methods where they work well, like the beach behind the base. I just selected a few edges and extruded them around in a curve to make it faster, then merged some verts to chop poly count.

I think one of the reasons I like my poly splitting/moving method as opposed to your vert placement is that I can easily control my level of detail, and I can place edges and define surfaces as I go, instead of once I've finished placing points everywhere. It's more like scultping something from a block. Jahrain prefers this style as well.

jw, is that cut polly under edit mesh or edit polly?