Resource Links

[Ninjabuntu]

So is this useless to anyone who isn't currently a student?

Yeah, pretty much sounds like it.

I'm not a student myself and saved up a lot of the spare bits of cash of my wages for about 2 years before I was able to buy Maya Unlimited 2009. the good news of that however is a got a lot more software for my very pretty penny then just Maya in the whole deal. Mudbox, MotionBuilder and a few others along with it in fact.

**SNIFF**

I really wish I was an official student at some school rather then just a self taught sort of guy...

[AlexG]

Yes. It is great news for students.

[Nobody]

will ... i think it's great but i'll stay prefer photoshop ....and don't forget Gimp it's free & open source .....it's cool too
thanks nexusdog for it

[GuerillaSe7en]

Didn't see anyone post this yet so I figure I'd throw it in:

Chris Carney of Bungie talks about his process on creating multiplayer maps for the Halo series. It's meant to help people make things in Forge, but most of the concepts apply to level design in general. Pretty good read and some cool sketches thrown in for good measure.

http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx ... &cid=29601

[devmarc]

wahoo iam a student and just got access to all the software thx Alex

i also got your UDK© 11 Day Level Design and its brilliant, everything together rather then pulling everything together myself thx again

[AlexG]

wahoo iam a student and just got access to all the software thx Alex

i also got your UDK© 11 Day Level Design and its brilliant, everything together rather then pulling everything together myself thx again

Thanks Devmarc. Happy to help.

I just found this nifty little tool that allows you to take screenshots of your progress, without interrupting your workflow:

http://www.screenshot-utility.com/


Rather than saving the image using paint, you can just take a snap, and it automatically saves to a user-specified directory. The quality is a bit less than using print-screen but it saves time. Plus it's free.


EDIT: Just found out about the 30-day trial. DX

[ShiroiHusky]

Essentially you create 2 meshes. One contains all of the detail you want on your model, often stretching into millions of polys. The other is the simplified mesh you will see in-game.

When you bake a normal map, each surface of your game mesh will send out small rays to check what high detail geometry is around it, and when it hits, which direction it faces.

This information is brought back and stored in a texture using 3 values, X, Y and Z (Stored in the Red, Green and Blue channels respectively). When this texture is applied as a normal map to your game mesh, light information hitting it will respond per texel, as it would if it were hitting the high res mesh (with a limitation of texture size/resolution).

When done correctly, it can really add to an object, but it can also look very crude if it's not done properly. It's essentially faking the lighting of an object, it does not add any extra geometry, or deform existing vertices.

EDIT: I know this is an oldish topic, but I just wanted to share what I could, in case the original poster had not yet found any info.

[Nexusdog]

Respect to the guy!



Video tutorial:
http://www.blenderguru.com/how-to-cr...tunning-trees/

[George]

Use this: http://www.irfanview.com/

You can configure what key/keys to press, where will save images and all kind of captures options.

[George]

http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/autode ... -workflow/

A very long video tutorial...

[netravelr]

Level Design and Its Applications in Affecting Emotions and Actions

This was a paper that I wrote for my psychology class about how level design can and is used in order to affect players actions. Wrote this around a year ago, but thought it'd be a nice giving back to the community. Let me know what you think!

http://www.scribd.com/doc/37088498/L...ns-and-Actions

[WarrenM]

Thanks for that, I enjoyed it! I especially liked your section on the illusion of choice.

Although, honestly, it sometimes lets me down when I think I'm being clever and then I find out that I'm right where the game wanted me to be. It's sort of like, "Damn you, I was being creative!" Or so I thought...

>WarrenM

The apartments chapter at the start of HL2 was one of those moments for me. I went completely straight through without hitting a single obstruction- so for the longest time I assumed there were many many routes through this massive world Valve had created. Only later did I realise that I'd just been manipulated to 'choose' the one and only right way through. Fantastic.

[MilesPrower]

nice overview of the general Leveldesign workflow it's quite short, but written in a nice way of explanation i definitely like the part about the reward in sonic2, thats my absolutely favorite game.