Prop Party Blog Post #14 - EvilGoodGuy

This is update #14 from my running dev blog that can be viewed on the official public forums here: Tripminestudios.com

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Hey everyone!

With the recent Summer Update I figured I'd add a little bit more for you guys to gander at.

First up is my most recent prop work, which is a fully modular set of trusses, intended mostly for use on ceilings. You might have noticed a render of these in the summer update.



I have created 3 separate fully modular sets, to be used in various locations.

Set 1: Small sized design with no vertical center joints. Set contains a total of 10 different models, offering various lengths and the option of a sloped or straight end piece.
Set 2: Medium sized design with vertical center joints. Set contains a total of 12 different models, offering various lengths and the option of a sloped or straight end piece. As well as 7 miscellaneous lengths.
Set 3: Large sized design with vertical center joints. Set contains a total of 11 different models, offering various lengths and the option of a sloped or straight end piece. As well as 4 miscellaneous lengths.

The models were designed with the tint-feature in mind from the very beginning, heavily relying on it in fact.
The base texture color is a bright grey, allowing for tints to be applied evenly to the model.
As I do with most models that I create, I made a dev map for my fellow level designers, which displays the proper usage of the models, as well as suggested tint values. I try to design my dev maps in a way that will also help potential community mappers after the projects release.

Screenshots of the dev map can be seen below:



The tint feature is also great for highlighting certain models that level designers need to pay attention to using properly, as seen below.








The next couple of props are portable office dividers.

These are somewhat modular, because they don't connect together directly, but can be placed side by side to create a wall.
There are 2 versions:
-A 90 unit wider variant
-And a 46 unit wide variant

They are both fully gibbable by explosive or energy based weapons only (controlled via a damage filter entity assigned by the level designer). So I'm sure players will have a lot of fun lobbing grenades around the offices and seeing these things break into lots of pieces.





The next few props.... aren't actually props. But are indeed weapons!

Now it's important to note that I did not make these weapons, but rather made some large changes. It's also important to note that I don't consider myself a weapon artist, but I am quite useful in the sense that I know my way around the modeling process.

First up is the frag grenade.

This models bump map was quite blurry and undefined and it was also lacking a specularity map entirely. It's phong highlights were also quite out of control, resulting in a plastic toy appearance.
So I completely remade the bump map from scratch, as well as a specularity map, then proceeded to tweak it's material settings until I achieved a fairly (in my opinion) realistic look.

Check out the before and afters and don't forget to click on the images and view them in full screen mode:

note: The players hands were not part of this improvement, although they may look slightly different because I was experimenting with saturation levels temporarily.






The first weapon that I remember making improvements upon is the TAU cannon.

The Tau Cannon is one of our older weapons, so portions of it are not quite on par with some of our newer weapons, but all in all it holds up pretty decently. We can't afford to remake it completely at this point in time, although it may happen after our initial release. So until then, I made the following improvements:

-I completely remade it's bump map to be vastly more detailed: Before and After image
-I overhauled it's specularity map and phong reflections
-Added self-illuminating cyan colored light to appropriate parts (shines in the dark)
-Fixed a lot of UV errors
-properly mirrored the UVs on to both sides of the weapon
-Fixed various mesh problems
-colored the carrying handle and top rail black
-made the batteries orange instead of yellow, so they don't stand out as much
-touched up the texture for the small blue canister
-added metal bolts to texture
-touched up the metal edge wear
-retextured side vents
-remade warning labels
-various brightness/contrast adjustments

Check out the before and after screenshots below:

note: For anyone curious, these screenshots were taken a long time ago (years) for dev purposes, in a random dev map I was using for testing things.

Viewmodel Before:



Viewmodel After:





World Model Comparison:




Next up is the MP5.

This has always been a rather strange weapon, particularly because the original games model was very undefined and unrealistic.
Based on my personal preferences, the teams decisions, and feedback, I made the following changes in order to achieve a bit more of a realistic look, which is also a bit more reminiscent of the original game:
-Completely remade the buttstock (new mesh, new UV maps, new textures, etc)
-Fixed a ton of bad smoothing groups
-Fixed a ton of bad UVs on various portions of the model
-Reduced the size of the grenade launcher, because it was vastly oversized and half as large as the weapon itself. This meant heavily modifying its mesh as well as its UVs and texture maps.
-Added a few more polys to various rounded portions of the model
-Removed unnecessary edge loops
-Fixed floating geometry/portions of the mesh that did not connect properly
-Sloped front hand guard, and tightened it up to get rid of a weird gap allowing you to see through parts of the gun
-Added symmetry to the "Flash Hider" portion of the barrel
-Various material tweaks
-Resized charging handle a little bit
-symmetrized mesh details that were previously only on the left portion of the gun

The current version can be seen in the in-game weapons demo video seen in the summer update.
Below are also some renders in Marmoset, as well as a screenshot comparison from modelviewer, which better represents what it actually looks like in-game.
I'm still pretty amateur when it comes to getting fancy looking renders in Marmoset, but they get the idea across

Modelviewer before and After:



Marmoset renders:







And of course we can't forget about the world model used by the Black Ops soldiers!
Theirs comes with a silencer instead of a grenade launcher.




That's gonna be it for this dev blog update, guys.
I hope you enjoyed the extra little bit of weapons content.

See you next time!