Hogwarts
I made this map for a mapping competition on Darkland Server Forum.
This map was heavily based off of the Hogwarts Castle from Harry Potter. There are no major magical elements like floating crap but the castle itself has a magical feel as it is high up on cliffs, lit by "candle light", and looks how a magical castle should look. Here are some progress shots along with screenshots of problems I encountered and solutions to them.
(Click here to skip to the finished pictures)
- This was about 5 days into the competition. I finished the main layout of the great hall, the large tower, and the custom skybox.
- Worked on lighting the great hall, Changed the middle spire on the great hall to an 8 sided spire and added some more elements. Also added front courtyard.
- Here's where I started encountering problems. I made some really cool looking windows which are shown in the first picture below. I than placed them around the
courtyard. When I launched the map in-game, many times the map wouldn't even load, and if it did, multiple chunks of the map would randomly disappear. You can see
this in the other shots below. Also hammer hated my windows as the brushes were too complex for hammer. So it just deleted them! I asked over on interlopers and
they said that the source engine just wasn't good enough to process all the polys and verts, so the best solution was to make them into models. Awhile back scotts
told me about a hammer add-on which took a .vmf and made it into a prop. The add-on was called propper and worked great. I turned all the windows into props and
pretty much any other "complex" objects.
- Map in-game with missing chunks
- In-Hammer shots. Left: Everything on. Right: Func_detail is off.
- Fixed window problem. Changed the light_environment color, brightness, and angle. Also a couple new buildings, towers, and a new bridge.
- Added windows and lighting and some detail to the new building
-Adding depth to the map and some new lighting. Had some issues with the tower models I made. If you look at the building on the right,
the towers don;t seem to light up at all. So I turned the towers (minus the roof and details) into brushes not models. Also the lighting was a
little too bright. Made another model as I was still having the "disappearing" problem in some spots. The new model is the small one in the
second model picture below. You can also see what pieces of the tower are models further down.
- Here are some of the models I made specific for this map. They were made mainly to reduce the number of polys in the map so the source engine can handle it.
- The map in hammer.
- Custom skybox I used.
*** FINISHED PRODUCT ***
-I have had nothing but problems for the final parts of my map. I kept on going over the t-junction AKA water indicies limit. So I tried reducing the number of func_details and also making models. Well most of my models had lighting problems as models light differently than props. So many of the models I made I had to convert back to world brushes. So then I was back at the t-junction problem. So the only solution was to reduce the complexity of some of the brushes. I did this by pretty much removing all the brushes that just provided detail only if you couldnt see them from the screenshots. Also I had about 15 windows around the tower in the middle of the map that I had to remove which is why that tower is so bare. Then when I went to take my screenshots I once again had problems with parts of the map disappearing so that is why my screenshots dont show the whole map at once and doesn't shot all the displacement work that I did. O well. Here are the screenshots.
I also have one more version after the one you see in the screenshots below in which I fixed a few things but I decided not to compile and redo all my screenshots as it wasn't worth it.
*** FINISHED PRODUCT ***
-I have had nothing but problems for the final parts of my map. I kept on going over the t-junction AKA water indicies limit. So I tried reducing the number of func_details and also making models. Well most of my models had lighting problems as models light differently than props. So many of the models I made I had to convert back to world brushes. So then I was back at the t-junction problem. So the only solution was to reduce the complexity of some of the brushes. I did this by pretty much removing all the brushes that just provided detail only if you couldnt see them from the screenshots. Also I had about 15 windows around the tower in the middle of the map that I had to remove which is why that tower is so bare. Then when I went to take my screenshots I once again had problems with parts of the map disappearing so that is why my screenshots dont show the whole map at once and doesn't shot all the displacement work that I did. O well. Here are the screenshots.
I also have one more version after the one you see in the screenshots below in which I fixed a few things but I decided not to compile and redo all my screenshots as it wasn't worth it.
Great Hall
-I decided to work on the interior of the great hall a little bit. I didn't spend too much time on it as it wasn't that major. I only have 2 progress pictures, the rest are in-game "finished" pictures.
-In hammer, pretty early on in the project.
-In hammer. Most of the supports and windows laid out.
-Finished Great hall. The Roof supports are finished to how I want them, same with the white columns on the side. The fireplace is OK but I would've still liked to
make it look a little better. The windows are how I like them. If I was motivated enough I would've added a lot more elements to the room to fill up the walls but like
I said it wasn't major as this was more so a side project of the map.
