[WIP]New Mombasa "Sector 7" Training Facility.

[Jean-Luc]

Also known as My Last CGI Scene in the Halo Universe Until Further Notice :saddowns:

Well, this is it ladies and gent's. For those of you who didn't know me on Halomods, I've been involved in the Halo community since 2004. I've been doing CGI renders of the series for the past 5 years, and this time is drawing to a close. I've been talking with many friends recently, and they all agree that by sticking so closely to Halo, my creative talents are being greatly inhibited. Therefore, this topic is for the last scene I will make in the universe of Halo for a long time, possibly ever.

The environment I am creating for this piece is a fictional UNSC training outpost in New Mombasa, known as "Sector 7." The name is an homage to Bungie, and you will see many tributes to prominent members and friends in this piece.

I am designing the environment as though I was designing a level for Halo CE, which is a considerable challenge for me, seeing as I never got into mapping, so I hope more experienced level designers can give me tips. The layout is moderately complex, but allows for good z-axis fighting. The area you see below is the WIP of the main roadway, which connects what will become the two "bases." Each base will be situated in a combat simulation room, and each will depict a different manufactured simulation of a real world combat situation.

I have very little to show right now; just this render of my current "sketch model."

http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/7372/boringy.jpg

I apologize for having such a shitty model right now, but I'm using this very low res base model to perfect the layout before I go in and model the high res assets.

Progress will be in this thread and this thread alone, and I'm hoping all of you will support me through this one, and give me tips and criticism on how to make this piece a memorable one.



*Note for Modacity. I will be staying here, but I am leaving all other Halo websites and this final piece is my farewell.

[TomClancy]

Looks good so far, and I love the idea!

[Limited]

:( Sad to see you hanging up your Halo boots, I still remember your cell shading mod for Halo PC, that was the bomb.

Looking forward to seeing the final result of this piece :)

[Siliconmaster]

Definitely looking forward to seeing how this will turn out. Sorry to see this will be your last render, but it is good to expand into new areas.

[Ki11a_FTW]

if this is going in ce, just make sure you make it so the z axis gameplay style is balanced, because people from above are going to find easy ways down :saddowns:

looks good so far though!

[Delta4907]

I'm positive its just for a render scene.

[=sw=warlord]

I was looking forward to that halo cutscene render as well:saddowns:
Well good luck in the future jean luc.

[Jean-Luc]

if this is going in ce, just make sure you make it so the z axis gameplay style is balanced, because people from above are going to find easy ways down :saddowns:

looks good so far though!

I don't have any plans to put it in CE, but if someone wants to give it a shot after I'm done, they're welcome to.

[Jean-Luc]

Double postin, sorry.

Not a whole lot of progress today. Lack of creativity and a busy schedule have led me to this.

http://i25.tinypic.com/33wl1cm.jpg

As you can see, the flat wall of the parking garage has been swapped out for what will become concrete pylons, and the top of the garage has three squares on it which will later become Hornet landings pads. I wanted a pelican landing pad, but I quickly found out that having a 120x80' landing pad made for the difficult times.

Anyways, I'll keep you all updated as I go.

[Horns]

I think it looks good. Can't wait to see the final outcome.

[Longshot]

Looks good, keep it up. Got any links to your other work? I'd love to see it.

[English Mobster]

Hey, when you're done with it, I would love to find a home for it on one of my Mombasa maps, if not have a completely separate map dedicated to it.

If you're going to be leaving soon, at the very least you should have your last piece of art be immortalized forever within a CE map.
If you're interested, get into contact with me via Xfire. Username: englishmobster

[Jean-Luc]

Hey, when you're done with it, I would love to find a home for it on one of my Mombasa maps, if not have a completely separate map dedicated to it.

If you're going to be leaving soon, at the very least you should have your last piece of art be immortalized forever within a CE map.
If you're interested, get into contact with me via Xfire. Username: englishmobster

We'll talk about it, but about the "If you're going to be leaving soon"


*Note for Modacity. I will be staying here, but I am leaving all other Halo websites and this final piece is my farewell.I'm still sticking around here guys, just moving on from Halo itself.

[Jean-Luc]

http://i25.tinypic.com/b7hncy.jpg

Righto, not a whole lot of progress. Been busy (and kinda lazy) the last couple of days. Still moving along though, and working out different ideas. Hard part is figuring out things to create that actually make sense.

[Jean-Luc]

Triple posting fffffff :saddowns:

http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/8523/hidingh.jpg

Right then ladies and gents, I'm done with the rough of the environment (some parts hidden for future surprise). Size of it is roughly 1000'x250'. Now comes the cool/fun/difficult part: modelling the entire thing in high res :awesome:

[Kornman00]

where're ya gonna stick it ;p?

can't wait to see the final :)

[ThePlague]

Me likey. Only thing is the bridge looks uneven from side to side, or is it supposed to be like that?

[Jean-Luc]

It's not uneven. It's just shitty modelling :downs:

[ThePlague]

Mmkay :p

[Jean-Luc]

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/5498/bridgel.jpg

Not quite finished with that bridge, but this should give you an idea of the detail I'll be putting into much of the scene.

[English Mobster]

Oh dear, the polygon count... :gonk:

I guess lots 'o portaling would help should it ever go into Halo...

[Jean-Luc]

Well, that bridge alone is 11,000 polygons (a little excessive, I know). Pretty much, if this were to go into Halo, either myself or someone else would have to model a lower res version of it.

[neuro]

or make a higher res version and bake it.

that's how everyone does it anyway.

[killer9856]

You should bake it, so when you render it it wont take as much time creating the render.

[Jean-Luc]

Truth be told, I don't mind high render times, especially when it means I can achieve a more detailed image. Baking high res models is great, but it tends to sacrifice a great deal of depth. Remember, it's the little touches like seeing an indent physically indent that lends believability to the model as a whole.

[neuro]

move to unreal3, and use parallax shaders.
halo has a hard coded limit on how many triangles in level-geometry it's willing to draw at any given time, which lies around 100k if i remember correctly (feel free to correct me), any over that, and random triangles will just start disappearing.

another downside on having all your small stuff modelled in, is anti-alias edges everyhere, on top of shitty fps.
CE supports normalmaps, and if you just bake a nice normalmap for your bridge, i'll guarantee you it'll look kick-ass ingame, and you won't be bothered by the no real depth of it, because it'll be properly lit with the normalmap applied. try it, and see for yourself.

[Jean-Luc]

Hang on a sec. This isn't going to be a map right off the bat, if at all. It is and always has been for rendering purposes. If it were ever to make it to map phase, then I'd have someone who actually knows what the hell they're doing in HEK or Unreal Editor 3 and I'd work with them to make it a map.

Also, sorry for the lack of updates guys. Been going through re-design after re-design on this environment and it wasn't until yesterday that I finally started getting something that worked. Hoping to have something to show later this evening.

[Jean-Luc]

double postin once more.
http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/1993/ughm.jpg

Yay! Progress pics. I've gone through 10 different designs and this is the one that's stuck. I'm less than 30% finished with the rough, and some of the stuff you see in there WILL change. The size is roughly 150-200 feet longer than Blood Gulch.

As far as what I'm designing it after, I'm using the style of Halo 3 ODST as a base, but I'm telling canon to go fuck itself. I'm gonna do what looks :cool:

[SnaFuBAR]

well i'm going to have to say that i like this a lot better than what you've done before.

[paladin]

Looks cool. I assume the blue is going to be a water feature?

[Jean-Luc]

That's the plan. I'll likely have to change some of it to fit the scene better though.

[Jean-Luc]

http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/4840/derpb.jpg

Bit of an update.

[Rob Oplawar]

So all this is for a single-frame render, huh? That's a rather large backdrop. I'm intrigued to see how the render turns out.

[Jean-Luc]

Actually, what I'm attempting to do here is a multipart deal.

1) Create an environment that could serve as a plausible multiplayer map.
2) Organize 16-32 Spartans in said multiplayer map (fuck the game constraints).
3) Render multiple frames in different areas of pocketed battles, including several overviews.

[paladin]

Animate a 2-3 minute clip :oshi:

[MetKiller Joe]

This is ambitious to say the least.

[Jean-Luc]

http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/7727/overhead.jpg

Updated the large "pool" and altered the stairs. Working on connecting the upper road to the lower, and did a little bit of work on the central building.

More to come. :neckbeard:

[SnaFuBAR]

Like I said on AIM, looks lots better.

[seanthelawn]

Animate a 2-3 minute clip :oshi:

Yes do this. You will become internet-famous like the maker of Haloid

[Jean-Luc]

Animate a 2-3 minute clip :oshi:
I don't have the patience or the drive to do something like this. All it would result in is weeks or even months extra of my life taken up working in a universe I don't want to work in anymore.

[Corndogman]

Maybe when you finish the scene, you could release all the assets so someone else could do an animation?

Although, I highly doubt someone would actually want to do that.

[Jean-Luc]

I would have no issue in releasing assets for someone to create a CE map out of this if they wanted to.

Anyways, FINALLY almost done with the low-res mesh, so here's a couple renders for ya.
http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/7198/overviewe.jpg
http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/2218/perspectivenb.jpg

For size reference, the pink rectangles are the approximate size of warthogs.

[Siliconmaster]

Looking really nice. Definitely has an ODST style to it.

[paladin]

I bet ODST is helping out. Looks good.

[Jean-Luc]

I bet ODST is helping out. Looks good.
I am using ODST as visual inspiration for much of this but I'm also putting personal choices in there (such as the waterfalls).

[Cortexian]

I'd love to see this as a CE map, if you could send me the model I might be able to fail at getting it in game...

[Ganon]

I'd love to see this as a CE map, if you could send me the model I might be able to fail at getting it in game...

have u even ever made a map?

[Cortexian]

have u even ever made a map?
I haven't been hanging around the community since the game was released doing nothing. Yes I've made a map, a few actually, just nothing good enough to release. I know my way around the editing kit, if that's what ur asking...

Posted from blackberry storm.

[SnaFuBAR]

this is all intersecting geometry, not sealed world.

[Advancebo]

this is all intersecting geometry, not sealed world.

Applies to BSP tags and model collision geometry tags. Of course, GBXmodels dont care about collision at all.
http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc292/Advancebo/thisbutnotthis.jpg

[English Mobster]

I've always had trouble with Advancebo's method; if the edges are not PERFECTLY perpendicular (say that 5 times fast), Tool will spit out a bunch of errors. Like the map FRain sent me where he did that.
It's best not to fuck with things and just have it all one sealed mesh.