Hen's gm_desertdune

[Hennius]

Hen's
gm_desertdune

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Overview

- Designed for Garry's Mod.
- Sand dune style.
- Great for custom vehicle testing, Especially suspension.
- Medium size.
- Can be used for flying builds.

gm_desertdune is not a serious style map, it is more of a test to see if a desertdune could be recreated using the hammer editor in a reasonably realistic way. My personal verdict, yes but the concept needs alot of refining in order for it to prove viable usage of displacements and 3d_skyboxing.

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Screenshots

[ErikKiller]

Really?

[Hennius]

Really?

Yeh soz, its not a serious map to showcase but its the only one i have on "this" computer atm. It's more of a test which didn't fully meet my expectations.

[ErikKiller]

Nah, I was bitching about the lack of screens.
Like you said, it's decent for a test but it sure lacks "oomph". And the lighting is generally pretty odd, did you run -final HDR?

[Hennius]

Nah, I was bitching about the lack of screens.
Like you said, it's decent for a test but it sure lacks "oomph". And the lighting is generally pretty odd, did you run -final HDR?

Yeh i did, the lighting is something i gave up on towards the end because it's REALLY hard to get that haze heat effect without making everything look too bright and OTT. Im planning on a second release for this map on more of a slant so you will still have sand dunes but with a mix of worn away rock cliffs and slight vegetation.

[MaK]

I wouldn't really consider this reasonably realistic. The sand dunes aren't shaped properly at all, right now it looks like you just have a few bumps in the middle of an obvious 3d skybox. I know you said you weren't being totally serious, but like you had one job to do in this map. In the next release you should try shaping your displacements more what people would expect a desert to look like. It's a bit more work sure, but I would look better and imo it would be more fun. Also try getting the proportions in your 3d skybox to blend more in with the playable area.





Also your lighting doesn't seem hot enough. I get its a cloudy skybox but it just looks cold (also the light is facing the wrong direction of the sun). It could really benefit from more ambient lighting to eliminate those really dark, almost black spots. The blue ambient lighting in that last pic I think would be a nice touch. Either you have little to no ambient lighting or you have a leak in your map.

I hope you don't think I'm trying to rail on you, its just when I see maps as simple as these I really do like to see the bit of extra effort. Plus in this day and age you can make pretty detailed displacements and not really have any impact on performance

[Hennius]

I wouldn't really consider this reasonably realistic. The sand dunes aren't shaped properly at all, right now it looks like you just have a few bumps in the middle of an obvious 3d skybox. I know you said you weren't being totally serious, but like you had one job to do in this map. In the next release you should try shaping your displacements more what people would expect a desert to look like. It's a bit more work sure, but I would look better and imo it would be more fun. Also try getting the proportions in your 3d skybox to blend more in with the playable area.





Also your lighting doesn't seem hot enough. I get its a cloudy skybox but it just looks cold (also the light is facing the wrong direction of the sun). It could really benefit from more ambient lighting to eliminate those really dark, almost black spots. The blue ambient lighting in that last pic I think would be a nice touch. Either you have little to no ambient lighting or you have a leak in your map.

I hope you don't think I'm trying to rail on you, its just when I see maps as simple as these I really do like to see the bit of extra effort. Plus in this day and age you can make pretty detailed displacements and not really have any impact on performance

This is why i post this stuff
To get feedback. I do know it's not entirely shaped to how sand dunes are, please consider however it only took me 7 and abit hours to make this map.The immediate problem i came accross was the nature of the grids with displacement textures, once they have risen to a certain height, it looks *Too* sharp for a sand dune. If given the time then im sure i could work on making the dunes look more realistic but for now this was just a trial. The light i've already mentioned in my last post.

Yeh i did, the lighting is something i gave up on towards the end because it's REALLY hard to get that haze heat effect without making everything look too bright and OTT. Im planning on a second release for this map on more of a slant so you will still have sand dunes but with a mix of worn away rock cliffs and slight vegetation.

All things said though i do appreciate what your saying and it will help me for the next release

[Stormy]

Have a look at the desert map in Wolfires Overgrowth. That will set you straight.

[Hennius]

Some nice terrain work game. Something to use as a reference i guess.

[SM Sith Lord]

I definitely see a duney-look to the map, like the wind was always coming from 1 direction. Nice work on that. They do beg for a dune buggy to jump off of them.

[nub]

The potential is there, but the lighting REALLY hurts this map. You really need a better skybox first, preferably a custom one that isn't cloudy and is more mid-day. Maybe like a few hours before or after noon. Then you need to fix the lighting so it doesn't have that pukey, yellow-orange color. I understand that you want your map to have some color, but it's a desert...most deserts are pretty uniform in color unless there are cliffs and mountains around. I would definitely try and go for lighting similar to the references MaK posted. Honestly, if you need to abandon the heat haze effect to do so...then just do it. The tradeoff will be worth it.

Creating accurate dunes in Source using displacements would be a pain in the ass. Is it even possible? Maybe some triangular-prism brushes would work well, but terminating the ends of those brushes would be tough since triangular faces obviously can't be turned in to displacements. I guess you could just us vertex manipulation to taper the ends towards the ground, then just recede the displacements in to the ground or something.

[MaK]

If you want to be extra lazy I got a pretty decent effect using Twister and heightmaps. I did this in CS:GO in about 5 minutes (ep2 sdk is pretty broken) but you should get relatively the same effect and lighting in gmod. I used the default de_nuke skybox lighting with HDR. I really suggest you to use HDR for a desert, it helps a LOT. Here's what I got:

[nub]

That looks pretty decent, MaK. It doesn't have the super-distinct dune shape, but it looks more defined and less like "random bumps everywhere."

Just make sure you tweak the HDR using env_tonemap_control and such. And I'd highly suggest custom sand textures. The stock HL2 sand textures are so overused and ugly. If you cam find a really detailed 2048x2048 resolution texture, it would go a LONG way in making the terrain look less repetitive. You wouldn't get that super tiling effect that the stock textures give you.

[Armageddon]

Pretty much what everyone else said. Also the pure black shadows make me think you have a leak.

Here's some more reference: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=36506

[Hennius]

The harsh shadow is a definition tester for me so i can roughly determine the curvature of the sand dune. I hardest part from me was trying to construct a wavey form which is consistant and reasonabley natural... Bare in mind guys, i have already said, This ISNT a proper example and shouldn't be taken seriously.
If i had unlimited computing power then in practise i would of bumped the displacement scale to 4 in which case i could achieve a much more realistic display. This is impractical because not everyone's computer can cope with rendering highly detailed geometry. Once i have done abit more experimenting with it, especially using things like custom skyboxing (i completely forgot to do on this map) then hopefully version 2 will live up to expectations.