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Cryrid In reply to escanive [2007-06-05 18:25:36 +0000 UTC]

You could easily make a map solely with the game (so that you can actually play and test the map) and hammer (which is what I use). Photoshop will only be of a help if you wish to add custom textures, as otherwise you can work with all the ones from HL2. If that is the case, there are two plugins for photoshop which are a great help - one allows you to save the texture as a .vtf so you don't have to compile it, and the other allows you to generate normal maps from your textures.

The first tip would be to learn the major shortcuts for navigation. Especially how to change the grid size ([ & ] ), nudge things with the arrows (you have to turn that on in the options), and quickly move the viewports to where you want them (either mouse wheel, or hold space like in Photoshop). Our first semester of level editing tools I absolutely hated Hammer because I didn't know any of this (we were only briefly introduced to Hammer, the rest of the course focused more on compiling the .smd's and textures for custom models). It left me feeling like Hammer was horribly limited (when really it isn't).

Another thing that gave me this impression was that I was sure I was limited to blocks as far as geometry goes. Hammer started to get a lot better and become fun once I found out how to clip, create different shapes such as cylinders, use displacements, etc. And really when you start observing rooms and buildings in real life (tip 2), you start to see how everything is pretty much created with simple shapes, which really helps when you're building a room of your own.

The biggest tip (which I think applies to every aspect of life, especially when creating something), is to understand what you're doing and why you're doing it. I don't mean a big philosophical self-journey or anything, I just mean knowing how the program works. You can make a map with no knowledge at all, but chances are you'll end up rendering 4x the amount of geometry you actually need (a huge majority of it being faces that are impossible to see while in the map – learn to use the “nodraw” texture), your geometry will not be sealed creating a leak, your geometry will be tessellated into tens of thousands of triangles because you didn't understand how hammer breaks up the world when compiling, your file size is probably massive because the lighting maps were not changed, etc. There's a group of students that started the same 3DGA program 3 months before us, and there map is currently plagued with problems because of this. They didn't have a skybox until I pointed it out last week (massive leak), and I'm pretty sure all the above reasons I listed applies to them. If you know what is going on behind the scenes you won't have problems, you'll be able to quickly fix any issue that does pop up, and you'll be better able to make the program do what you want it to do. Combine tips 1 and 3, and mapping becomes as fun and as easy as playing with lego.

And of course use as many sites and tutorials as you can find. Valve has a developer wiki wet up which is a great help, and there are many places to find videos and tutorials on how to create glass, use displacements, optimize maps, etc.

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escanive In reply to Cryrid [2007-06-07 07:21:52 +0000 UTC]

Thanks for the comprehensive answer

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Cryrid In reply to Shimmering-Sword [2007-06-03 22:36:03 +0000 UTC]

Thanks. I would have a group of people very, very angry at me if I didn't ^_^'

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