Black Mesa Source V5 - "They're still working on Xen?" - Games

[QUOTE=Maestro Fenix;40602518]Isn´t the rocket launcher a bit oversized?[/QUOTE] We never see the RL up close in the hands of a Soldier, it's always in the distance for half a second, then discarded. The Romka's model is a bit on the slim side, while BM's are slightly bulkier, but it's not anything jarring. Anyway, this guy's my favourite, look at this badass: [img]http://puu.sh/2R3qw.jpg[/img]

Romka's textures still have that clean, slightly cartoony feel though.

[QUOTE=Ereunity;40602813]Romka's textures still have that clean, slightly cartoony feel though.[/QUOTE] I change that by darkening them and adding shading along the bottom of the necks, only did a couple and I need to redo them anyway because it turns out I suck at textures :v: Still gotta find out how a mask works, because I broke those. It's on my to-do list.

What do you mean how a mask works? bodygroup_data? Add details to the textures to make it less cartoony (not just a simple overlay). eg. leather texture to the gloves

Nah, mask, as in texture mask. Seems to be the thing that makes glowy bits, like the lenses on the NVG's. As for add details, I'm no expert, just the opposite, so I'm not sure if there's a lot I can do in that department. [editline]11th May 2013[/editline] Also it looks like, at least in Text's maps, a number of HECU use the HECU Grenadier model, even if they aren't using Rocket Launchers. It actually makes sense in a kinda weird way because most of them are encountered in the OAR where logically engineers might be needed to clear blast doors and such. [img]http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/848078830922282627/5DB940F0C721D0B97A265CD134DCB8A95C699945/[/img]

[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;40602973]Nah, mask, as in texture mask. Seems to be the thing that makes glowy bits, like the lenses on the NVG's.[/QUOTE] You mean self-illumination masks? That's done with the alpha channel of the texture, where white is fully illuminated. If you don't want to fiddle around with alpha channels you can also add $selfillummask to the vmt and point it to another texture to do the masking.

[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;40602784] Anyway, this guy's my favourite, look at this badass: *Photo*[/QUOTE] Taggart did a great job remaking the commander from Opposing Force. Also, you know if he finished the SAW soldier? I only saw photos of him along with the Enginner as a render.

[QUOTE=Tweevle;40604663]You mean self-illumination masks? That's done with the alpha channel of the texture, where white is fully illuminated. If you don't want to fiddle around with alpha channels you can also add $selfillummask to the vmt and point it to another texture to do the masking.[/QUOTE] Well the problem is, I have no idea how masks work, I just import my single-layer texture and save it as a vtf. I tried looking into it later but I couldn't find any info, mostly texture / paint.net (what I use) related stuff but nothing mask related. All I know is that the mask is a different sometimes transparent part of the texture that exist on another layer, and I have no idea how to create that other layer within .png or .vtf or wherever it's supposed to be. [QUOTE=Maestro Fenix;40604726]Taggart did a great job remaking the commander from Opposing Force. Also, you know if he finished the SAW soldier? I only saw photos of him along with the Enginner as a render.[/QUOTE] Yeah I think that's one of the grunts, this dude right? [img]http://puu.sh/2Rebi.jpg[/img]

It not longer uses a handkerchief, sunglasses and the ammo belt? awww.

[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;40604963]Well the problem is, I have no idea how masks work, I just import my single-layer texture and save it as a vtf. I tried looking into it later but I couldn't find any info, mostly texture / paint.net (what I use) related stuff but nothing mask related. All I know is that the mask is a different sometimes transparent part of the texture that exist on another layer, and I have no idea how to create that other layer within .png or .vtf or wherever it's supposed to be.[/QUOTE] The mask isn't in a different layer, it's the alpha channel, which is a part of the texture that usually controls how transparent each pixel of the texture is. If you open a glowing texture in VTFedit, and then click View>Channel>A, you'll see it. For example, here's the scanner's texture from HL2, with the basic texture on the left and alpha channel on the right: [img_thumb]http://i.imgur.com/6s0BSRz.png[/img_thumb] The black parts are fully transparent, the white parts are fully opaque, and anything in between is translucent. When a texture glows, Source uses this information to determine how it's illuminated instead of how transparent it is, so the fully opaque parts (like the eye) glow and the transparent parts (like the metal) don't. [URL="https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/$selfillum"]More info here[/URL]. I haven't used paint.net, but I assume there's some way you can view and edit the alpha channel in it.

Okay so I've been confusing Alpha for Mask, so what is [url=http://puu.sh/2Rket.jpg]mask[/url] then? I mistakenly assumed it was what made things glow, since I stumbled upon it first and noticed the lens was separate from the rest of the texture.

[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;40606627]Okay so I've been confusing Alpha for Mask, so what is [URL="http://puu.sh/2Rket.jpg"]mask[/URL] then?[/QUOTE] It's the same texture, but VTFedit is showing what happens when you apply the alpha channel to it, so the white bits are opaque and the black bits are transparent. This is useful when you're making transparent textures like fences, but not so much when the alpha channel is being used for something other than transparency. What it's used for depends on the things you put in the vmt file. A mask is basically any black and white texture that controls how much an effect is applied in what places (be that transparency, self-illumination/glowing, reflecting the environment, phong shading etc.) The alpha channel of other textures is often used for masks, but they can be their own file, depending on what you put in the vmt.

Like my futuristic Hev suit. I used another texture to make it an alpha channel. Black parts don't glow while the white one glow. How light the part is makes it glow more in-game. DX1 format is fine. or an alpha channel without creating another texture. example for this is the 357 texture with its glowing ironsights. This needs to be in DX5 format to store the alpha channel with the texture itself.

Okay, now how do I get an alpha channel into an image without replacing the image with a mask? I'm doing something wrong here- [img]http://puu.sh/2Rmmz.jpg[/img] [img]http://puu.sh/2Rml8.png[/img] Trying to make blue lens for my test here, using the alpha channel from the green lens, but adding the alpha channel just replaces the entire image with the mask instead of becoming a hidden part of it.

It looks like you're doing it right, it's just the image editor uses the alpha channel as transparency, like VTFedit does when Mask is on. Try saving it as a tga and see what it looks like it VTFedit.

Oh, I was doing it right. I just didn't realise it because even when I saved the image, it always showed the masked version, so I thought I was doing it wrong. Everything shows up when I import it into vtfedit though. Thanks for the help!

OAR Uncut progress snipped from BM forums: [quote=TextFAMGuy1]B2 Progress With regards to how I'm progressing on B2, this week I've actually got in a pretty good mix of revision work and mapping work. It's still been going slowly but stuff has been getting done. To put it bluntly, I'm terrible with displacements, and a perfectionist. Meaning I'm taking ages to get the displacements looking right. But they will be looking right. I've been cross examining, and checking out just how the displacement work is done in the rest of BM to try and reverse-engineer it and I've been learning an awful lot. Still got a ways to go, but the outdoor landscape is looking more and more natural every day. Once that's done, I can seal up the map and hopefully start lighting it![/quote]

This might have been posted a buttload of times, but why do I get this error when I try to launch Black Mesa? [img]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5733962/ShareX/2013-05/2013-05-11_22-03-34.png[/img]

I've seen that error before but I'm not sure what causes it. BM is buggy as fuck, I can hardly play 4 levels in a row without some sort of crash eventually. All I can say is try reinstalling. I've reinstalled twice now, each time is fixes it for awhile but eventually the crashes come back and start getting more and more frequent. Hopefully that's all nice and fixed in the full release.

[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;40613230] Hopefully that's all nice and fixed in the full release.[/QUOTE] Ahahahahaha! Good one!

[QUOTE=Maestro Fenix;40604726]Also, you know if he finished the SAW soldier? I only saw photos of him along with the Enginner as a render.[/QUOTE] I haven't yet. Partially stems from the fact that most of the stuff needed now has to be modelled from scratch or taken from valve games, which makes it that much harder to finish the remaining stuff needed and all that.

[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;40613230]I've seen that error before but I'm not sure what causes it. BM is buggy as fuck, I can hardly play 4 levels in a row without some sort of crash eventually. All I can say is try reinstalling. I've reinstalled twice now, each time is fixes it for awhile but eventually the crashes come back and start getting more and more frequent. Hopefully that's all nice and fixed in the full release.[/QUOTE] The only time BM crashes for me is when me and the apache kill each other at the same time in the cliffside battle.

Well aren't you extremely lucky then. My copy of BM gets less stable by the day. I keep having to reinstall it after several months or it'll get unplayable.

[QUOTE=lavacano;40613145]This might have been posted a buttload of times, but why do I get this error when I try to launch Black Mesa? [img]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5733962/ShareX/2013-05/2013-05-11_22-03-34.png[/img][/QUOTE] Its not just Black Mesa, I get this issue with Garry's Mod as well. My thought is that its caused by another source update or steam update.

Aaaaaa it looks just fine in 2D [img]http://puu.sh/2Swna.jpg[/img] But one I get it into 3D it's all [img]http://puu.sh/2Swmg.jpg[/img] I'm so bad at this :suicide: [editline]13th May 2013[/editline] At least they match their Black Mesa bretheren a bit more, all I did was B&W their clothes (which has a brown tint) after noticing that BM's grunt camo was completely B&W (applying the filter did not affect it). [img]http://puu.sh/2Swq6.jpg[/img][img]http://puu.sh/2Swx6.jpg[/img]

You are planning to increase the quality of the texture, right? Because now it's very blurry.

I noticed that when I put them side-by-side. Unfortunately I'm no artist, as you can see. Priority right now is just trying to make them stand out less from the other grunts (speaking of, I just noticed I forgot to darken the green). Maybe if I learn enough along the way, I'll be able to do something about it, but until then I'm very limited in my abilities. [editline]13th May 2013[/editline] I half-ass added an overlay on the clothing instead of going to bed like I should have. It's not greatly noticeable but it's a start. Trying to make it appear less 'flat', stole the idea from my friend who's an artist, I watch her draw sometimes :v: [img]http://puu.sh/2SyB4.jpg[/img] [editline]13th May 2013[/editline] Now I should really go to bed.

you should enable normal maps when doing stuff in HLMV

[QUOTE=Joazzz;40626380]you should enable normal maps when doing stuff in HLMV[/QUOTE] I didn't have the normal done for that anyway, I just wanted to see how it would look quickly. I still don't know how to get the best results from a Normal anyway, since yesterday was the first time I decided to try working with them. Although one of the reasons for the supposed cartooniness might be partially due to the Normals, this is those compared to Black Mesa's standard Grunts: [t]http://i.imgur.com/wiYjJlT.jpg[/t] I noticed the Grunts have the most detailed Normals, while Romka's Normals are more compared to object normals. While looking for other things to compare it to, I noticed that the Vort is apparently missing it's Normals? That or they're not stored in the same file as the Vort other textures. Not related but still interesting I guess.

More than detailed it looks like they made it more "intensive" (I don´t know the exact word for this). The result ends on most of the times with having better bumpmaps, although at the cost of raising their size (most of the times, even doubling in comparison with the diffuse texture). Just because is from Black Mesa doesn´t mean is high quality. For example, there are a bunch of props with wrong/missing collision models, like some crates and the escalator.