EGGs Prop Party

Yo yo, everyone!

You may have noticed in the latest Guard Duty Media Release that the warehouse in Captive Freight has some new props.
I figured I'd show some of those (as well as some others) off for you as an extra little bonus to the media release.

If you view the full size image of the warehouse you'll notice in the back left corner is a new addition to the room. I decided to add a small cold-storage section.

To give it the proper outer appearance I made one of those beefy looking freezer/refrigerator doors that you commonly find in cold storage warehouses and in the back of large grocery stores.
For the interior I made some plastic wrapped pallets of fruits and veggies - bananas, cabbage, apples, broccoli, etc. You know, all the stuff that Otis hates



For the main shelving in the warehouse I made a variety of pallets for sugary death drinks AKA soda pop.
There are 3 main plastic wrapped pallet variations, each having 4 possible skins to use; as well as the wooden pallet and a single case of soda being available as separate props.




Something that is not visible in the screenshots, but is now in the warehouse offices, is a new set of file cabinets I made to replace the low-def 8 year old models we had.

There are 3 model variations with 2 main skins.




Another new prop that I've been wanting to make for a while is a dry erase board.
With 7 different model variations and 10+ different skins, these will offer a lot of opportunity to display the crazy scribblings of the caffeine-jacked scientists of the BMRF.




That's all for now guys. Stay tuned for more shiz in the near(ish) future

Hey everyone, hope you're doing well!
And if you're one of my fellow Americans, I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving!

To show you guys that we are thankful for your continued support, here's a couple renders of some props that I've produced lately.

The Resonance Cascade is a relatively violent and destructive experience. So for the areas of the game that show the initial medical response after the chaos I created some small medical props to help detail some areas, such as a medical cart, various bandages, medical scissors, pill bottles + pills, and a syringe. These props are all separate items which can be used together or alone at a level designers discretion.

Also shown in the same render are safety goggles and a rubber floor mat, which will mostly be found in laboratory areas.



Spools! Spools as far as the eye can see!

I needed to create some spools specifically for use in the Captive Freight chapter of Guard Duty, so I went ahead and made a large assortment which our level designers can use throughout the game in appropriate areas.

I created 4 mesh variants, each having 3 separate sizes. So that's a total of 12 models.
Each model also has a total of 8 texture skins to choose from.

So if we want to use a bare wooden spool, black electrical cable, colored electrical cable, or steel cable, level designers are covered with quite a few choices.

Plus now we have a spool room, full of spools and nothing else, where we can banish a level designer to temporarily if he slacks on his work too much





That's gonna be it for this small prop update. Stay tuned for more updates in the future! ...or risk being banished to the spool room

Yo, peeps!

Since I'm always itching to show you guys more of the work I produce, I figured I might as well show you a couple more small props that I made about a year ago.

You probably spotted them already in the Guard Duty screenshots we released back in August. But just in case you missed 'em, I made a ceiling vent to replace the flat decals that are typically used.
I also made 2 variants of a ceiling sprinkler - one for offices/labs and another for more gritty industrial areas.

I had been wanting to make both of those for a while, and after seeing Valve made their own with their de_nuke revamp, it motivated me to actually go ahead and do it.

Hey guys! Hope you all are doing well.

It's been a while since I've posted anything here, but you can rest assured I've been working hard on the project nevertheless.
I have quite a few props I want to show off, but for this particular post I want to show off some that I did quite recently and that I'm fairly proud of.

Our level designers (myself included) have been in need of some proper counter tops with drawers and cabinets for use in laboratory and office areas. So I took it upon myself to create both the models, world textures, and major brushwork designs that we need.

Modular
Being obsessed with modularity and getting the most efficient use out of the props I make, I decided to make a set of cabinets and drawers, which are all individual models, rather than creating the entire counter as one single prop. The counter base and tops are all made out of brushwork.
This allows level designers to create their own unique counter/cabinets that are designed specifically for their environments. It also saves me a bit of time down the road because I won't need to convert/create a bunch of specific models every time a level designer needs one.

Tint-able
I also designed them to make use of a tint feature we have. If any of you are familiar with L4D2, Portal 2, and CSGO level design then you probably are aware they have a tint feature for models. Ours works the same way.
A level designer can apply any shade of color they want to a prop in order to alter it's appearance. To fine tune this feature, we can use a tint mask that controls which parts will be affected by the tint and by how much.
This feature is immensely useful for a number of reasons - it allows level designers to fine tune shades of a model to better match the environment and also allows for entirely new appearances without the need of creating new texture skins and wasting HDD space and time to create them.

You can see a screenshot from Hammer of the individual cabinets and drawer models, along with a blue and a green tint applied, below:



Design
One of the challenges to making these models look good, is that the world texture for the brushes they sit in front of does not have any outlines or fake shadows painted on where the models would be placed.
I want the level designers to have as much freedom with these as possible, so that means leaving the world brush textures absent of any outlines or shadows that pre-define where the cabinets and drawers should be.

To get around this problem, I added a flat plane mesh border around each model and used a translucent black gradient on it, to give the appearance of a shadow/border, which you can see below:



Along with the 7 cabinet/drawer models, I created 3 counter top textures and 3 counter base textures (to match the grey, blue, and green tints).

Implementation/Consistency
In addition to this I also put together a dev map, where I personally designed and displayed the proper use of the models+brushwork, as well as list the proper tint color values, for other level designers.

A screenshot from the dev map can be seen below:
note: not all models/assets seen in the dev map are made by me.



That's it for this post, guys!
Hope it satisfies you for a little while

edit:
Here's a couple fancy renders in case you are into that sorta thing

Yo yo guys!

Here's a look at some generic hatches I made recently. They are mostly intended for use in/on floors, but can also be used for walls when it's appropriate.

They have 3 different sizes:

• 32x32 (most common)
  
• 48x48
  
• 64x64
  

They have 2 variations as well:

• A version that is recessed into the floor, for a flush walking surface
  
• A version that sits on top of the floor
  

They technically have 4 skins:

• Diamond plate tread (tint feature affects entire model)
  
• Diamond plate tread w/tint mask (tint affects only certain parts of the model, producing a worn & torn look)
  
• Flat metal (tint feature affects entire model)
  
• Flat metal w/tint mask (tint affects only certain parts, which is nice if you want the hinges, bolts, etc, to remain untinted)
  

Sexy Marmoset Render:


Hammer Level Designer 3D Viewport screenshot (a few examples of tinting):




Also, in case you were wondering what kind of plunger the janitors use to unclog the toilets after Otis abuses them, here's a look:

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!

staryoshi06 wrote:

EvilGoodGuy wrote:

-snip-
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.

Wasn't the original MP5 and MP5SD? (meaning it was already integrally suppressed)

Our MP5 is a combination of a few different MP5s. So it isn't any specific real-world variant - the same goes for most of our weapons. I suppose someone could argue that the original game used an MP5SD, although the model in the original (along with everything else obviously) is so low definition that it could really be anything. Plus they certainly didn't attempt to make it sound suppressed.
Half-Life has never attempted to be a ultra realistic shooter in any regard and we don't plan to attempt it either

Hey everyone!


I've put together a few new prop updates for you to gander at.


First up are some metal crates that I made in order to replace some super old (like 8 year old) props that are very low-definition and are prop_physics instead of prop_static. As with most of my props, I designed them to heavily rely on the tint feature in order to obtain their color. So level designers can choose whatever color they prefer. Currently the 2 primary colors are green and black, as shown below.

One of the advantages of my new crates being prop_static is that they are much better on engine performance.
They also produce much better shadow projection onto the world. An additional advantage is that we can make use of the scaling feature, which allows level designers to uniformally scale any prop_static in hammer. This allows for a lot of versatility and requires we only have one version of the model, which we can scale to whatever size we want. Rather than wasting time and disk space creating multiple different sizes the traditional way.



Below is a render of the models un-tinted:





Below are the models in-game, utilizing the green and black tints, as well as the scaling feature:






Next up is a full set of props that I'm rather proud of.
I created a set of explosive and non-explosive gas cylinders, accompanied by a metal storage rack.


The props heavily use the tint feature, which I've provided quite a few tint examples for, so level designers can quickly pick and place them in their maps.


The explosive variants include:
-A mesh version with a metal cap
-A mesh version without a metal cap (valve wheel instead)
-A very rough and dirty texture version
-A slightly scratched and dirty texture version
-Valve wheels that change their color based on tint or independently
-Gibs for the models when they explode


The non-explosive variants include:
-A mesh version with a metal cap
-A mesh version without a metal cap (valve wheel instead)
-A slightly scratched and dirty texture version
-A chrome texture version


The best part about these is that they are not just physics props. They are actually their own entity which my team mate Chris Onorati coded into the game after I designed the prototype for the entities settings.
What they do is - they create thrust/velocity wherever they are shot, along with a particle effect and sound effect, that then propels them around until they either explode or deplete all their pressure.
This can provide some pretty crazy and wacky experiences!


Below you can see some renders of the props, as well as a video demonstrating them in-game:










Click HERE for youtube video :)