A friend of mine has released a map he has been working on over the span of two years. He has recently released it and having played it, I can vouch for both the game play and visual to give you many hours of UT 3 fun. Description Citius is a water filtration plant located on an unknown planet high on rocks in the middle of the sea whose Liandri owns. The installation began experiencing some operational difficulties so it is now used for team competitions. Related Pages Stevelois’ Page Epic thread Pics
Odedge
While I have added some links in the past weeks to mainly the Resources page, I haven’t created a post to let you know of the changes. This post will get you up to speed. Campaganini has released some cardboard boxes and an industrial button static mesh/texture. mAlkAv!An has released some fern static meshes/textures as well as some tile able stone maps. Nobiax has released a few 3D Plants meshes that can be used on various textures, including his 3D textures. Nobiax has released some of his texture packs, #18, #19, & #20. I found some nice texture creation workflow tutorials by Phili which use both modeling and texture programs. [Philipk Bricks] [Philipk Blocks Bricks] [Philipk Concrete] [Philipk Metal] [Philipk Stone Cliff] [Philipk Stone Cracked][Philipk Stone Rough] [Philipk Wood]
Aug 132011
Blender 2.59 is released. You can see the changes here and download it here.
Jul 242011
Blender Cookie has 2 tutorials that can be very useful for UT 3/UDK mappers. They cover many techniques including baking high poly meshes to low poly meshes, creating diffuse textures in Blender as well as others. Create a Grundy Brick Wall Create a Sci-Fi Panel (part 1) I have followed and replicate the Sci0Fi pan tutorial with good results.
Achernar took the time to convert many of the Nobiax meshes into the .ASE file format, which is useful to us UT 3 mappers. He added light map support as well as collision models. You will still need to download/have the texture files which can be found on Nobiax’s Deviant Art page.
Jun 222011
Blender 2.58 has been released. You can see the changes made since 2.57 here and download the program here.
Blender Cook created a 2 part video tutorial (Part 1 and Part 2) on how to create a lowpoly concrete barrier. Part 1 covers creating the model in blender, then creating a UV map. Part 2 covers taking the UV texture that was created in part 1 and importing it into Photoshop. Once there, sample textures are used to create the diffuse/specular/bump maps. The tutorial also shows how to continue creating the texture while in Blender. It also covers creating materials that can be used only in Blender and how to setup the model to render. I like the second tutorial as it was interesting how to create a texture from source photos and how you can alter your texture in Blender as well. This is a great tutorial for those who are still learning the basics of Blender and those who want to get a better idea of the workflow.
Stevelois has gathered his knowledge on optimizing a level and created a tutorial. If you need some extra help in optimizing your level, have a read.
KatsBits created a nice tutorial on how to make a low poly sword. It covers the modeling, smoothing, adding materials, uv maps and so forth. If your new to Blender, a tutorial like this can help you get started nicely.
Jun 022011
Here is a few tips that may help you with your Blender project. If you are going to use the same materials/textures/images in multiple blend files, create a master materials blend file. Create a blend file with multiple plane meshes. For each mesh, create a material and add a texture/image as needed. Now you can link these materials in other blend files. If you are going to have multiple meshes and collision meshes in a single blend file, come up with an object naming structure to help keep things organized. Blender keeps the objects in your outliner organized by name. You can give each mesh object a prefix such as “M-” or “Mesh-”. For example “M-Stairs” or “Mesh-Stairs”. You can set your collision meshes (that use the prefix UCX_) to always render in wire frame. This will be a quick visual indicator that it’s a collision mesh. Select the mesh. In the properties window, select the Object tab, expand the Display section. Select the drop down menu in the “Type” field and select Wire. Even if you select Solid or Texture in your 3D window, these will always show in wire frame.
