Wall Worm Displacement Tool

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Re: Wall Worm Displacement Tool

Postby shawnolson on Sat Jul 30, 2011 2:20 am

DillonBarba wrote:nice example shawn, got a screenshot of it imported into source?

I wish! No... that is the test grounds that I am using to try and send into Source. That's really the whole point... I am trying to build a tool that lets you model your landscape arbitrarily... so when I can figure a formula to export that landscape into Source with the click of a button, then I'll feel that I've succeeded. The current public beta of the tool is poorly equiped for this... and it's really just a placeholder for the real displacement tool that I'm trying to build.
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Re: Wall Worm Displacement Tool

Postby DillonBarba on Sat Jul 30, 2011 5:45 am

ah I'm sorry i must have overlooked that in your post, big fan of you tools though kudos on the model importer.
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Re: Wall Worm Displacement Tool

Postby [Steve] on Sat Jul 30, 2011 1:33 pm

This tool is a really good idea , ive always thought displacements in hammer were not as user-friendly as they could have been, and if you want to create some thing complex it can get really confusing and time consuming.
If you could eventually get your tool working as described it would be fantastic, sculpting terrain is so much easier in a package like max than hammer!
have you ever thought about making a tool for full map building in max?
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Re: Wall Worm Displacement Tool

Postby shawnolson on Sat Jul 30, 2011 3:20 pm

DillonBarba wrote:ah I'm sorry i must have overlooked that in your post, big fan of you tools though kudos on the model importer.


No problem Dillon. And thanks for the compliment! I'm eager to continue seeing more of your work!

greenglow2004 wrote:This tool is a really good idea ... have you ever thought about making a tool for full map building in max?


I think a lot of people agree that it would be better.

As for making a full level design plugin for Max... there is no need. My favorite plugin is Convexity--a level design plugin for 3ds Max. It does 98% of the things you need for level design. The fact that it doesn't handle any concave geometry (like models and displacements) is really why I even built the Wall Worm Model Tools and have tipped my toes into the displacement issue. I have actually been campaigning for Michael Little (the genuis behind Convexity) to do the dirty work and add displacements... as he is much smarter than I am and could probably breeze past the mental roadblock I've come to. (I do have a short wishlist of features for Convexity, which I believe some are already on the TODO list... but as it stands, Convexity is one of the coolest tools for Max level designers... and I honestly cannot understand why more people aren't using it!)
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Re: Wall Worm Displacement Tool

Postby [Steve] on Sat Jul 30, 2011 4:46 pm

Well i did take a look at Convexity before, and i do agree it does look pretty awesome, but i was put off by the price and i couldn't see a trial version or anything. :cry:
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Re: Wall Worm Displacement Tool

Postby shawnolson on Sat Jul 30, 2011 5:20 pm

greenglow2004 wrote:Well i did take a look at Convexity before, and i do agree it does look pretty awesome, but i was put off by the price and i couldn't see a trial version or anything. :cry:

There is an educational version for only $90. It is identical to the pro version except it has a pop-up when you load... and the license prohibits commercial work. I highly recommend it to everyone! I have bought several pro licenses just so I can use it one any machine I'm working on here... and I feel every penny was well worth it. Seriously... $90 is a steal if this is a serious hobby... and the pro price is fair if you are making a career out of this.

$90 for a hobby is pretty cheap. You can blow that in a day paying for paintball supplies; in a few hours of renting a gym for basketball; one night at the bar.

The difference is that its something you get to keep and use forever.

So go buy it! And tell Michael that Shawn sent you! (I'm campaigning for a couple features... so the more people that buy it, the more work we can see in its development).
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Re: Wall Worm Displacement Tool

Postby shawnolson on Wed Oct 05, 2011 4:00 pm

Oh My God! I finally solved my dilemma. I will finally release a viable version of the displacement tool in the very near future. It literally took me months to figure this one out! (That's what happens when you're trying to solve a quad-core problem with a Commodore 64 brain! :) )

I'll post news as soon as I have it packaged and released!
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Re: Wall Worm Displacement Tool

Postby nub on Thu Oct 06, 2011 6:58 am

Is it possible to use this tool only for sculpting the displacements, and export it with a simple texture like nodraw, and leave the texturing and painting for Hammer instead? To me it seems like painting displacements would be easier in Hammer than doing it in 3DS Max.
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Re: Wall Worm Displacement Tool

Postby shawnolson on Thu Oct 06, 2011 3:07 pm

nub wrote:Is it possible to use this tool only for sculpting the displacements, and export it with a simple texture like nodraw, and leave the texturing and painting for Hammer instead?

Yes.
nub wrote:To me it seems like painting displacements would be easier in Hammer than doing it in 3DS Max.

At the moment the tool isn't even sending the UVW rotation and scale to Hammer... so you'll most likely need to do that do a degree anyway. I personally like the Alpha painting in Max much better... easier to increase/decrease paint nib size/transparency on the fly without having to go to a menu.

But I haven't released this version yet anyway... maybe next week.
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Re: Wall Worm Displacement Tool

Postby shawnolson on Fri Oct 07, 2011 4:35 am

Here are a couple screen shots of the testing I did tonight. The top is in Max and the bottom what was exported into Hammer.

Image

Image

So far this new version if performing well. I'm not sure I will get around to exporting the actual texture scale and rotation in this update... but it's looking workable now. I may release it over the weekend.
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Re: Wall Worm Displacement Tool

Postby Mr. Happy on Fri Oct 07, 2011 4:55 pm

If I'm understanding the UVW scaling/rotation, your goal is to make it export without stretching? Do the displacements get unwrapped automatically? It would actually be handy to have a checkbox to turn that on and off. You should totally release what you've got of the displacement tool even though it's not finished, people can use $seamless_scale to fix texture stretching (though when you are done they won't!)

Can you go back and forth between hammer and max? Say if you want to edit the displacement in max after you've exported it without re-exporting and copy pasting and arrrrghghg. Maybe have a link involving the brush id/face id?

I have been learning 3DS Max specifically because Wall Worm's is so awesome! If it wasn't for your work I would stick with Softimage.
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Re: Wall Worm Displacement Tool

Postby shawnolson on Sat Oct 08, 2011 4:48 am

Mr. Happy wrote:If I'm understanding the UVW scaling/rotation, your goal is to make it export without stretching? Do the displacements get unwrapped automatically? It would actually be handy to have a checkbox to turn that on and off.

The scale/rotation I'm talking about is the equivalent to Texture Scale X/Y and Rotation in the Material Tab of the Face Edit dialog in Hammer. Right now the texture scale in Max doesn't match what you get in Hammer... but it will.

As for stretching textures on the displacements, I don't really have plans to deal with that because there is a really easy way to handle it in Max... just use the Relax brush in the Graphite Modeling Tools (Max 2010+) to quickly alleviate stretching on faces. I don't think there can be a UVW solution to stretched textures on displacement faces because I believe that each displacement has a fixed UVW (planar, I think) that cannot be changed per face (all you can do is rotate/scale the entire displacement UVW). I may be wrong about that... but I'm working under that assumption... so it means that stretching can only be fixed by topological adjustments. But like I just said, the Relax brush deals with that nicely... and if you really need to extrude a face really far... it means you just might need to add another displacement.

Mr. Happy wrote:You should totally release what you've got of the displacement tool even though it's not finished,

I may do that tomorrow or Sunday. There are still quirks, though... and if I release it without at least basic documentation (hilighting features and pointing out current bugs/limitations) then I will get a deluge of emails asking for explanations, etc. So it is going to depend on how much time I have this weekend to write a little bit of explanation.

Mr. Happy wrote:Can you go back and forth between hammer and max? Say if you want to edit the displacement in max after you've exported it without re-exporting and copy pasting and arrrrghghg. Maybe have a link involving the brush id/face id?

That is certainly an idea for a potential feature in the future. At the moment it's a one-way street from Max to VMF. I personally only use Hammer anymore for testing my tool output, entity I/O... or merging together my WW VMF output with the VMF output of Convexity. If Convexity adds entity I/O support, I may never actually use Hammer again :P which then lessens the appeal of builing the back and forth. But still, I'll put it on the list of potential features.

Mr. Happy wrote:I have been learning 3DS Max specifically because Wall Worm's is so awesome! If it wasn't for your work I would stick with Softimage.


With the exception of a couple naughty things my woman said to me this week, that's about the coolest thing I've heard all week. Thank you!
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Re: Wall Worm Displacement Tool

Postby shawnolson on Tue Oct 11, 2011 5:25 am

OK boys... here it is... the Displacement Tool 1.0.



Unfortunately, my server crashed the other day and I had never really backed up the Wall Worm forums... so there are a bunch of useful tidbits that are now gone (I did get it restored to around May... so half the members are now erased from the forum). I actually haven't slept in nearly 48 hours as we have been working to get all of our other domains up and running... but I decided I had to share the Displacement tool with everyone.

Note that there are still improvements I have planned... but right now it's pretty cool and handy.

Also, for those of you who don't know, Wunderboy is working on a new version of his SMD Exporter that will fix a few bugs... and it will integrate with WWMT better.

Sorry about the rambling email... lack of sleep mostly.
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Re: Wall Worm Displacement Tool

Postby shawnolson on Thu Oct 20, 2011 12:39 pm

I'm testing a newer version that works faster and has some more features... and noticed that Hammer is now displaying the reverse texture for my materials when using Blend Materials in Hammer. I'm thinking it is a bug in the latest SDK updates... but I would think more people are having a stick about it on the Internet. Just open an existing level with blends on displacements and see if Hammer is now showing the wrong materials...
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Re: Wall Worm Displacement Tool

Postby shawnolson on Thu Oct 20, 2011 3:24 pm

shawnolson wrote:I'm testing a newer version that works faster and has some more features... and noticed that Hammer is now displaying the reverse texture for my materials when using Blend Materials in Hammer. I'm thinking it is a bug in the latest SDK updates... but I would think more people are having a stick about it on the Internet. Just open an existing level with blends on displacements and see if Hammer is now showing the wrong materials...

Well looks like it is now back to normal after another SDK update.
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