Making New Materials
Contents
1. example a corrugated metal or a rough rock surface could be an image that only has a single shade of grey Also not that the end lit material tends to look best when you use pixel values of medium brightness Moreover high contrast and high frequency components should be used with care in diffuse maps as such components often interfere with the normal maps later compromizing the effect of dynamic lighting Also the specular highlights might look strange with such diffuse maps Specular maps sometimes also called gloss maps define the shininess of the material They are conveniently created together with or derived from their diffuse map Bright values mean that the material is very shiny dark values mean that the material is mat Note that specular maps are not limited to gray scale images Their tone color modulates with the color of the light source Specular Maps often have the strongest impact on dynamic lighting Note that for many materials that only have diffuse light reflection characteristics e g sandstone specular maps can often be omitted entirely Luminance maps define the light that a texture emits As with specular maps they are easiest created together with their diffuse map and often very simple in nature The light of luminance maps is local to the texture and does not cast on any other surfaces or objects Typical occurances for luminance maps are with LED panels or com puter screens but frequently2. option off 7 Render the normal map 8 Finally you need an image processing program in order to invert the green color channel because the ATI tool saves the normal map vectors with flipped y components Inverting the green color channel that is replacing g by 1 g fixes the problem 9 You may scale down the resulting normal map in order to obtain some smoothing from the filtering but keep in mind that this might also require a subsequent renormalization of the normal map Turning smoothgroups on is especially important for objects that are more complex than a simple wall rectangle e g character models As demonstrated in the images to the right tracing normal vectors without smoothgroups enabled may lead to considering regions on the high polygonal model twice overlaps or not at all breaks whereas with smoothgroups enabled there is a smooth transition across the entire high polygonal model The documentation of the ATI tool has more in depth information in this regard w 10 7 Making new Textures diffuse normal specular maps Finally here is a trick that applies to rectangular low polygonal models as in our texture example above but not really to more complex models As the normal vectors of the low poly planar rectangular surface always are parallel to each other and actually point orthogonally away from the surface even with smoothgroups turned on as there are no non planar neighbouring triangles
3. Note that the example file has a section that should be copied without modification and another section that you should overwrite with your MOD specific data see the comments in the DeathMatch fgd example Acquire the textures that you want to use in your MOD and create a material scripts for them as described in the Ca3DE Material System documentation Configure CaWE with the fgd file by creating a new game configuration and make your first map Keep it small and simple you can add additional and more sophisticated worlds later Now you can compile the world as described in section 5 but it will not be possible to run it because there is no code and no DLL dynamic link library yet that defines how the world is run If you haven t already get the OpenWatcom C C 1 2 compiler at http www OpenWatcom org Also study section 9 for some additional information Write code for your own MOD Start with copying the DeathMatch source code Throw out what you don t need and modify what can be kept This is the most important and the most difficult part of all but the DeathMatch MOD source code should provide good examples for everything 11 Other Contributions If you want to contribute to Ca3DE in ways that are not mentioned in this text please do not hesitate to contact me For example if you are a native English speaker I would be happy if you proof read the Ca3DE related documents like for example the user manual the webs
4. compute the proper position of the p model relative to the body model it partially has to match the skeletons of both models That is it first computes the skeleton of the body model depending on its current animation sequence and frame Then it considers the skeleton of the _p model starting at it s root and tries to match it bone by bone to the previously computed body skeleton If a match was determined the engine simply takes the information from the body models bone also for the p model bone Only when the matching breaks for the first time the engine resumes normal bone computing also for the _p model This way you can for example have a face hugger held by another player that is wagging it s tail Matches are made by comparing the names of the concerned bones by the way As a consequence if you want to make additional body models for the DeathMatch MOD and additional weapons and you want to be able to combine each body model with each weapon then you re forced to make sure that they all have a corresponding skeletal structure and bone names View models are the models that you see in 1st persons view after you have picked up a weapon yourself They are also independent from anything else but the engine has usually special code for handling them Thus you can well make a replacement weapon for e g the shotgun matching the animation sequences of the existing view 13 8 Making new Models weapon model according
5. face of the horizontal bar properly connected to the inner rightmost face of the vertical post Of course in more complex modelling situations you may also use other techniques to solve sim ilar problems 8 3 Models and dynamic lighting Ca3DE supports dynamic lighting for models as it does for the worlds Currently how ever there is the problem that the only file format that Ca3DE can import Half Life 1 md1 file format does not inherently support dynamic lighting A real solution to this problem will become available when other newer file formats become more common natively supporting dynamic lighting and are suitable for re placing the existing file format Another solution to this problem will be offered by the upcoming Ca3DE material system Until then we ll have to live with a work around which I ll describe in the rest of this section The work around is basically very simple Keep your modeling habits you have for making old md1 files The key idea is to store the new multi image textures as separate files outside of the md1 file That is when you create your model e g in 3D Studio Max deal with the model geometry the animations and the diffuse maps as you did before The result is a proper md1 file that contains the diffuse map as texture Now export the normal maps and specular maps from 3D Studio Max into separate files The engine will later collect the model and all separate image files and combine them acco
6. many very good examples Note that quite often not all four maps of a texture are present They don t have to because many materials do not have specular reflections or don t actively emit light Only the diffuse maps are mandatory Omitting the normal maps is possible but not sensible because normal maps are very important for the cool effects associated with dynamic lighting For now the important message is that old style textures should not be used any longer with Ca3DE Technically they still work properly but they will look very bad compared to the new style textures 5 Making new Worlds 4 2 The next fact about new style textures New style textures are now organized in and closely related to the new Ca3DE Material System Please refer also to the Material Systems documentation for details about creating new materials from new style textures 4 3 Acquiring textures Especially when you want to make new worlds there is the problem to acquire a set of textures that you can use for the new world Internet resources As they are so new only a very small amount of high quality new style textures is available on the internet Those that are available are usually copyright protected low quality or unusable for other reasons Old textures li braries like The WadFather drop out anyway because they only carry old style textures If you are more lucky than I am and actually find a collection of textures that can be use
7. maps that both have high frequency components and the diffuse map possibly high constrast col ors tends to compromize the effects of dynamic lighting 7 3 Obtaining normal maps directly from 3D geometry While the above generic method works well in many cases it is often cumbersome to create really good normal maps manually that is by hand painted bump maps that are then converted to normal maps This is especially true for textures with architectural or technical contents where precise and clean normal maps of highest quality are desired Therefore this section will introduce you to computing normal maps directly from 3D geometry We will restrict ourselves to textures for world polygons for now but the same technique extends to computing normal maps for entire models later Here is an overview of the essential steps that are required 1 You use your favourite 3D modelling software to create a spatial object whose geometry represents the desired shape of the surface 2 Save or export the 3D surface object to a file on disk For some software this may require an exporter plug in 3 Import the file into another tool program that can compute the normal map from the input geometry 4 Use the tool program to obtain the desired normal map Some 3D modelling software is able to do steps 2 to 4 in one e g XSI which comes with integrated support for these steps Lightwave and Cinema 4D can also do these steps in one but r
8. model then yields the normal vectors at the intersection point which are then taken as result values for the normal map on the starting polygon See figure DOES NOT YET EXIST for an illustration This principle applies to both world polygons as well as more complex e g character models That means that in step 1 you do not only create a 3D surface object high poly model but also a very simple low poly surface that only consist of a single rectangle two triangles Note that both the high and low poly model should have the same cross sectional size and that their size should fit the size of the desired final normal map As a result the work flow is as follows 1 Start with creating a rectangle that fits the size of the desired normal map This will become the high polygonal model 2 Add as much detail as desired Export the result to disk 4 Create another rectangle of the exactly same lateral dimensions but offset to the first such that the normal vectors of this rectangle can see the other model As this rectangle will become the low polygonal model it must be planar and no more than two triangles are required 5 Export this one to disk too 6 Now import both the low and high polygonal models into the ATI tool set the desired size make sure that you have smooth groups turned on see below for an explanation and for objects with holes like grates ladders it is recom mended to turn the expand border
9. the normal map computation reduces to a parallel projection That means that you may for example create a sphere in front of the high poly surface and the result will look as if you had modelled the sphere right into the surface when it was actually only in front of it In this case the result will look like a rivet When you instead cut the front half of the sphere away and reverse the normal vectors of the remaining hemi sphere such that you can see the inside the resulting normal map will look as if it had a spherical dent This way you may create high poly surfaces that are not made from a single piece but rather from a composition of several pieces T his much simplifies the modelling process in many cases especially for people who are not safe with advanced modelling techniques It also recudes the rendering time in the normal map tool as fewer polygons are required to model a complex surface 7 4 Combining height maps and normal maps For surfaces with natural or organic textures smooth height maps surfaces with high frequency height map components e g bumps dents scratches or surfaces whose height map is derived from the diffuse map that is the height is actually material dependent it is usually best to derive the normal maps simply from the height map as described in section 7 2 For technical or architectural surfaces however the 3D method of section 7 3 is much preferable This 3D geometry method however
10. they are not present at all because most materials do not actively emit light themselves 7 2 Deriving normal maps from bump maps Height maps also called bump maps are gray scale images that de fine the height of the surface dark is low and white is high They often only serve as an intermediate product for creating normal maps In fact Ca3DE converts all height maps to normal maps internally before use Some people convert the diffuse maps to gray scale images in or der to obtain height maps but this does almost yield very bad quality It s just a lazy trick that you should never use Instead you should rather draw the height maps properly This is almost always very dif ficult though and works best with either natural or organic materials or with high frequency components like scratches dents and so on N Another method is to obtain height maps from the depth buffer information of some rendered geometry In this case however I d recommend to skip height maps entirely and render normal maps directly from geometry as described in the next section 7 Making new Textures diffuse normal specular maps Normal maps are the most important component in dynamic light ing They contain information about the shape of the surface They are normally never hand made but rather derived using a software tool from height maps Please note that according to practical expe riences combining diffuse maps and normal
11. to similar rules as indicated for making replacement human player models but you cannot introduce entirely new weapon models without writing additional code for them Applicability to your own MOD If you create an own MOD things may or may not be different of course However please keep in mind that if you want to achieve a high degree of flexibility and ease of maintenance you ll sooner or later probably experience the same rules and dependencies as described here They are the relatively cheap price for the ability to combine every human player model with every weapon model 8 2 Models and dynamic shadows In order for your models to cast correct shadows using the stencil buffer technique that the Ca3D Engine employs it is required that all your models are closed 2 manifolds so that every edge connects exactly two triangles and there are no T junctions Also the winding order must be consistent objects like M bius strips are not allowed There is one exception to these rules The Ca3D Engine can also handle border edges that only have exactly one triangle associated with them However such edges do probably not occur very often While all this is much simpler than it sounds just make some neat closed geometry and stop reading here there is the case that I d like to point out that will never work Edges that connect more than two triangles or edges that connect triangles with inconsistent winding Both cases m
12. well as the names of the corresponding bones However you are free to add bones to the skeleton as you like change their sizes or lengths change their positions relative to each other and do many other interesting things You may even omit bones if you want to create a one armed one legged hero What works and what works not is easiest determined by trying it out but please do also refer to the next part about weapons Weapons Weapons do usually come as a set of three models world models player models and view models World models are the models that lie around in the world before someone picked them up They are usually not animated or do only have a single animation sequence are independent from anything else and are therefore in the same category as the all others models so that we need not be further concerned about them Player models are the weapons that you see in the hands of other players who have picked up and are using that weapon For the following discussion I ll refer to the player weapon model as the _p model and to the character model of a human player as the body model First if you consider the skeleton of a p model in a model viewer you will find that it resembles a partial body model the bones from the pelvis to the shooting arm are there before it diverges into additional bones for the actual weapon Here is the crucial point In order for the engine to
13. Ca3D Engine Making New Materials Carsten Fuchs June 24 2005 Contents Contents 1 Introduction 2 The Ca3DE Material Development Kit MDK 2 1 Windows and Linux specifics ic oa s i esasa oeoa aa to aa i a 3 Before you begin 4 Textures and dynamic lighting 4 1 Introduction to new style textures 2 2 on nn 4 2 The next fact about new style textures 2 2 22 2m nn nn AS Acquiring textures o cs aa ise ata 90 xo a 5 Making new Worlds 6 Making new Sky Maps Environment Maps 7 Making new Textures diffuse normal specular maps l Getting started 2 222204 609 oro B Ree he eee ewe eee 7 2 Deriving normal maps from bump maps 7 3 Obtaining normal maps directly from 3D geometry 7 4 Combining height maps and normal maps 1 5 The texture viewer noo noo ec Rom bee o ox eR EG aw ee 8 Making new Models 8 1 Dependencies among models Emm nn 82 Models and dynamic shadows 2l 8 3 Models and dynamic lighting llle 9 Compiling the DeathMatch source code 91 Compiling On Wins s s sa sop wks o a e3 e eA eh 02 Compiling ou Dini co 22a ook e Row Fo Xem a a vok Ry E 10 Making new MODs 11 Other Contributions 12 Solving Problems 13 When you are finished 14 Legal 12 12 14 15 15 16 17 17 18 19 19 20 1 Introduction 1 Introduction Dear Reader if you are interested in making new materials like new textures n
14. It is self contained meaning that the current demo release of the Ca3D Engine is not required In order to install the MDK simply unzip the packed file that you downloaded from the website Please make sure that the directory structure is preserved Later depending on what new materials you want to make for Ca3DE supplementary tool programs may be required that are not included with the MDK They are available from external websites and you will usually find a link to their download location in the corresponding text of the following sections 2 1 Windows and Linux specifics The instructions and examples in this manual were written with reference to the Mi crosoft Windows operating system Now with Ca3DE being also available on Linux I rely on the Linux users skills and experience to transfer the provided information to their favourite OS The transfer is almost always very easy to achieve Examples include that Linux has tar gz file archives versus zip file archives on Windows and that the Linux executables are suffixed with linux versus exe on Windows I hope that this helps to keep this manual easy and intuitive to understand for every one The alternative has been to mention all specifics for each OS in each text fragment and each example 3 Before you begin 3 Before you begin Before you go on to the next sections please be aware that making certain types of new materials is very MOD specific For example before you make any
15. about its usage 8 Making new Models For model making it is important to first decide which MOD you want to make models for This is specially true for animated models like player models because they are usually MOD specific and can not be shared among different MODs Static models are much easier to replace and to reuse Besides professional tools like 3D Studio MAX or LightWave 3D which are very expensive there also exists the well known tool Milk Shape 3D Although MilkShape 3D has no built in support for Ca3DE yet I recommend it warmly to you anyway In the MilkShape dialogs just choose to save or export your models in the Half Life md1 file format Ca3DE is provided with an importer for models in this file format In conclusion there is no problem at all with using MilkShape 3D to make models for Ca3DE MilkShape 3D is available at http www swissquake ch chumbalum soft 8 1 Dependencies among models Although it might not be obvious at a first glance there are several dependencies among certain models It is worthwhile to have knowledge about these issues before you start making own models because it helps with resource planning and prevents expensive problems later Pll describe several typical kinds of dependencies considering the ex ample of the Ca3DE DeathMatch MOD In the Ca3DE DeathMatch MOD mutual dependencies affect the human player mod els and their weapons First lets deal with all models that are neither of b
16. ase compiles the DeathMatch DLL with release compile and link switches This can take much longer than with development switches but the executables get a lot faster and smaller 16 10 Making new MODs 9 2 Compiling on Linux Before compiling you have to set the Ca3DE environment variable to the directory that contains the Ca3D Engine directory For example on my computer I type export Ca3DE mnt WinD Projects but on your computer you ll probably have to type something like export Ca3DE Ca3D MDK Or setenv Ca3DE Ca3D MDK For convenience you can also put this command into your bashrc file so that you don t have to type it for each session over and over again The purpose of this environment variable is to let the Makefiles know where all the interesting stuff that is required for compilation is located Besides the proper installation of the compiler these are all assumptions that must be met for a proper compile Next cd into Ca3DE Ca3D Engine Games DeathMatch Code like cd Ca3DE Ca3D Engine Games DeathMatch Code Now you have essentially three compile options The commands make f Makefile g clean make f Makefile g clean version release delete all object files libraries and executables both for debug and release builds make f Makefile g compiles the DeathMatch DLL with development compile and link switches Debug information is included with the object files and executables make f Makefile g vers
17. ay occur for example with simple handrails where the horizontal top bar meets the two ver tical posts at the left and right end of the top bar For now lets concentrate on the top and left bar where each bar is a simple rectangular box with a square cross section as shown in the first image to the right wherein the right post has been omitted When these two bars are joined like in the second image we have constructed the very case s that won t work The highlighted edge connects four surfaces two from each bar which makes the computation of correct shadows impossible Note that the triangle subdivision of the rect angular surfaces is not shown in the images Moreover some of the adjacent surfaces have inconsistent windings implying additional problems Even if you omit the top surface from the vertical bar this surfaces is indicated by a different material in the first image the edge still con nects three faces still some with inconsistent windings which will still cause highly incorrect shadows 14 9 Compiling the DeathMatch source code Solutions The easiest is to move the vertical post else where so that the edges do not connect more than two triangles any longer e g as shown in the image to the right Even better at least from a technical point of view is to make a proper mesh that is to model the L shape as one water tight piece The top face of the vertical bar would be omitted and the bottom
18. can typically not handle easily the properties of the previously mentioned surfaces Thus for making a really good normal map that has properties of both methods e g a tech wall with scratches practical tests have revealed that no attempt should be made to choose one from both methods for everything Instead simply create two maps First create a normal map that contains the technical aspects of the surface using the 3D method of section 7 3 Then additionally create an independent hand drawn height map that contains the bumps scratches HF components and whatever you like Now comes the crucial point The normal map and the height map will dynamically combined by the upcoming Ca3DE Material System which essentially adds both maps in order to obtain the final result Please refer to section DOES NOT YET EXIST about the Ca3DE Material System for more details on combining a normal map and height map in this way in a material shader 7 5 The texture viewer Together with the Ca3DE MDK I m providing you with a texture viewer in order to help and facilitate the development of new textures The texture viewer lets you preview a texture that is the combination of the diffuse map normal map specular map and luminance map as it will appear in the engine 11 8 Making new Models The program file TextureViewer exe is a command line driven program Please run it from the command line without any parameters in order to see a message
19. ce of code and I prefer to avoid double work I 9 1 Compiling on Win32 Before compiling you have to set the Ca3DE environment variable to the directory that contains the Ca3D Engine directory For example on my computer I type set Ca3DE D M Dev MProjects but on your computer you ll probably have to type something like set Ca3DE C Ca3DE MDK For convenience you can also put this command into your autoexec bat file or put it into the system settings so that you don t have to type it for each session over and over again The purpose of this environment variable is to let the Makefiles know where all the interesting stuff that is required for compilation is located Besides the proper installation of the compiler these are all assumptions that must be met for a proper compile Next cd into Ca3DE Ca3D Engine Games DeathMatch Code like d cd Ca3DEY Ca3D Engine Games DeathMatch Code If your directories are located on the C drive you ll have to type c instead of d of course Now you have essentially three compile options The commands nmake nologo f Makefile vc60 clean nmake nologo f Makefile vc60 clean version release delete all object files libraries and executables both for debug and release builds nmake nologo f Makefile vc60 compiles the DeathMatch DLL with development compile and link switches Debug information is included with the object files and executables nmake nologo f Makefile vc60 version rele
20. d with Ca3DE please make absolutely sure that you do not infringe on copyrights and ask the author for permission Ca3DE resources For the purpose of making new worlds for Ca3DE you may of course use the textures that come with Ca3DE These textures were made by highly talented people exclusively for Ca3DE They are included with the Ca3DE MDK and using them is the fastest way to make a world with high quality textures Making textures yourself Ideally you d create your own set of new multi image tex tures No matter if you then use them for your own worlds and or offer them to other artists this is really the best solution Please refer to section 7 for more details on making your own textures 5 Making new Worlds Great news the Ca3DE World Editor CaWE is now available and has its own user guide Both CaWE and its documentation are still under construction but already available and useful Please pick up the latest issue of the CaWE User s Guide at the Ca3DE website http www Ca3D Engine de gt Downloads Documentation 6 Making new Sky Maps Environment Maps The good news is that Peter Kleiner the author of the famous high quality sky maps of Serious Sam 2 has also created some new exclusive and excellent sky maps for Ca3DE You can see them in the worlds that come with the Ca3DE demo and MDK Thus sky maps are the only artistic resource from which Ca3DE does not suffer shortage and there is currently no real need f
21. e not primarily interested in textures Many important key concepts are covered herein that are also fundamental to other as pects of Ca3DE and require a basic understanding 4 1 Introduction to new style textures Some time ago when earlier releases of Ca3DE were current you were probably familiar with other 3D engines like Quake 3 and Half Life 1 which in turn also helped you to become familiar and deal with Ca3DE at least conceptually However Ca3DE evolved and the latest releases come with dynamic per pixel lighting and shadowing The first release of Ca3DE with these state of the art features was in October 2003 even before Half Life 2 and Doom 3 came out Therefore I d like to take the opportunity and introduce you briefly into the new aspects of dynamic lighting Actually this section is not so much about dynamic lighting but rather about the new textures that form the basis of the new lighting technology First lets review the old style textures as they were common with graphics engines of the Quake3 and Half Life 1 era These textures consisted of a single image They have usually shown some material surface and normally also contained some fixed built in lighting almost like a photograph does 4 Textures and dynamic lighting New style textures for Ca3DE dynamic lighting are different Now each texture con sists of up to five individual images providing an augmented description of the surfaces mater
22. equire free plug ins The plug in for Lightwave is availble at http www and the plug in for Cinema 4D is available at http www Maya and others probably work similar but I m not familiar with the details 3D Studio Max can also collapse steps 2 to 4 into one but the required plug in is commercially distributed non free An alternative is to combine 3D Studio Max for steps 1 and 2 with ORB for steps 3 and 4 ORB can import many common file formats also from other 3D modelling programs but is pretty slow Another alternative for 3DS Max is to use 3DS Max for step 1 the free exporter plug in from http www for step 2 and the ATI tool from http www ati com developer tools html for steps 3 and 4 The ATI tool is faster more powerful and more advanced than ORB but only supports its own native file format which in turn requires the additional exporter plug in for step 2 7 Making new Textures diffuse normal specular maps More detailed information using 3D Studio Max While this manual cannot teach you how to use 3D Studio Max or any of the other 3D modelling programs this section will contain additional information to the steps outlined above in order to get you on the right track First normal maps are always the result of a projection A low polygonal model serves as ray source Rays are then cast along the normal vectors of the low polygonal model The intersection of those rays with the high polygon
23. ew worlds new models new sky maps or even new MODs for the Ca3D Engine then this document is for you This document is intended as a guide and introduction to making such new materials Please be aware that the Ca3D Engine is a product that is under constant develop ment Therefore making new materials is subject to changes as the underlying concepts structures tools implementations or philosophies change For example file and path names change and their processing may vary across software versions and not all of the tools that are described in this text may be available for download yet Consequently this text should only be considered as a very preliminary introduction that aims at people who already have a basic understanding of computer technology and are safe on solving smaller problems on their own I am releasing this document despite its preliminary nature because many people were asking for it With the development of the engine technology being very tedious and time consuming and due to a lack of artistic skills I am focusing my own efforts on the technology and the source code Therefore I would be very happy and grateful about anybody who likes the Ca3D Engine and would dedicate new materials to it 2 The Ca3DE Material Development Kit MDK To start all you need is this text and the Material Development Kit Ca3DE MDK zip The file is available in the download area at the Ca3D Engine website at http www Ca3D Engine de
24. g new textures for your own levels yields the maximum possible coordination and best results After the short introduction to new style textures in chapter 4 where you learned that such new textures actually consist of a combination of multiple images called maps we will now talk in greater detail about the multi image components maps of new style textures and about methods to create such maps Initially we will restrict ourselves to making new style textures for world polygons that is those textures that you apply in CaWE to the surfaces of the brushes Making appropriate new style textures for models is an entirely different matter that I d like to defer until later 7 1 Getting started In almost all cases you start making a new texture with the diffuse map Diffuse maps are still almost always created manually in an image processing program e g hand painted or derived from a photograph similar to the way old style textures were made in the past The diffuse map shows the material color when the surface is diffusely lit Thus you should not draw any hard shadows into the diffuse map they are automatically generated by the engine later You should however in some cases draw some soft shadows into the diffuse map sort of a reachability factor How hard is it for the light to reach a certain spot on the texture This implies that a diffuse map of for 7 Making new Textures diffuse normal specular maps
25. ial A diffuse map a height map a normal map a specular map and a luminance map The Ca3D Engine mathematically combines these individual images later also taking interactions with the dynamic light sources into account in order to render a properly illuminated surface material A diffuse map defines the material color of a surface when it is diffusely lit almost like an old style texture image did However it really contains only the material texture nothing else For example a diffuse map of a corrugated metal or a rough rock surface could be an image that only has a single shade of grey height maps also called bump maps store the height of the surface as a gray scale image dark is low and white is high They often only serve as an intermediate product for creating normal maps The normal map contains encoded information about the shape of the surface Artists often derive a normal map from a height map or create it directly from a 3D model You can normally recognize a normal map immediately by its typically bluish appearance specular maps define how much a materials surface mirrors light and luminance maps define the light that they emit e g a computer screen or a panel with LEDs Section 7 about making such new textures has more in depth information about these indiviual maps If you have never seen all these maps before I encourage you to have a look into the Ca3D Engine Games DeathMatch Textures directory which contains
26. ion release compiles the DeathMatch DLL with release compile and link switches This can take much longer than with development switches but the executables get a lot faster and smaller 10 Making new MODs One of the most interesting and the most challenging tasks you can do with the Ca3D Engine is making an entirely new MOD for it Here is an overview about how this works 17 11 Other Contributions Design your MOD This is similar to creating the story line and screen play of a movie Ideally you should have a precise idea about everything or nearly everything details of your future MOD For example which weapons and which monsters will appear in your MOD and how they will behave in which setting they play and of course the goal of the game The design is important because it allows you to plan the stages of the actual work and prevents you from the huge amount of work that can accumulate on late changes Create a directory sub structure for your MOD in the Games directory Look carefully into the DeathMatch directory for an example Although only the Games MyMOD Code and Games MyMOD Worlds directories are mandatory I rec ommend to lay out the other directories similar as well Create an fgd file with which you will configure the world editor CaWE later fgd files are simple text files Please have a look into the DeathMatch fgd for an example You can create your own fgd file by copying and modifying the example
27. ite or this 18 12 Solving Problems text If you find something unclear and have a suggestion how it can be better explained you can even write corrected or additional sections if you want to If you want to operate a Ca3DE dedicated server great Currently there is not much comfort about this it still has to be done via the old fashioned way you must explicitly publish the IP address and port of the server on a separate website Thus if Ca3DE becomes more popular in the future it will become crucial to develop and provide good network backend services I like the built in server list in Half Life pretty well but I d also be willing to think about involving other programs like GameSpy There is also a nice article by Yahn Bernier available at Gamasutra Maybe you are interested in helping to develop a master server Another point I am constantly looking for ways to increase the popularity of Ca3DE and therefore file press information whenever a new major Ca3DE release is ready How ever I only know the German computer magazine market well and a few international websites like http www opengl com If somebody knows international american or other european computer magazines with high circulation or website addresses please let me know Finally I am happy and grateful about any feed back like test reports bug reports suggestions stylistic issues praise blame anything 12 Solving Problems If you ever experience pr
28. new worlds or new models ask yourself which MOD you are going to make it for I am sure that you knew that already but I felt it was worth mentioning it For other types of materials the matter is simpler New textures or new sky maps are not quite so specific to a certain MOD whereas modifying or writing new source code is so very specific that I m assuming you know what you re doing I Please note that many auxiliary programs that come with the Ca3DE MDK are com mand line driven programs That means that in general you can not double click on them or use drag n drop Rather for using WcMap2Ca CaBSP CaPVS CaLight and other programs you have to open a command line window DOS prompt and work from there Detailed instructions on using these programs are given later in this document If you are completely new to Ca3DE a good way to familiarize yourself with the Ca3D Engine is to study the user manual that is included both with the MDK and the Ca3DE demo releases It will also help you understand this document better Then it is best to start small Start with small samples until you are familiar with all the tools and know how everything works For problem solving and contacting me per email please refer to section 12 4 Textures and dynamic lighting This section will briefly introduce you to dynamic lighting and the consequences arising out of dynamic lighting to textures Please read this section entirely even if you ar
29. oblems that you cannot solve with the help of this document please contact me per email at CarstenFuchs T Online de However please note that if you experience problems with programs or tools that are not part of Ca3DE or the MDK like the C compiler texture or graphics tools you have to refer to the help resources that are available for that tool usually these resources are very good If you contact me with a problem description please be as specific as possible and include all necessary information such that I can understand and reproduce the problem Thank you 13 When you are finished If you have finished a work for Ca3DE you may wish to distribute it and share it with others The easiest and fastest way to do this is to set up a website and offer your work for download there If that is not an option for you I may host your work for download too If you wrote new source code or even a whole new MOD send me an email In any case send me an email such that I know that you made something for Ca3DE I can update the Links section on my website accordingly and if necessary we can talk about the details 19 14 Legal 14 Legal Please refer to the End User License Agreement that is detailed in the UserManual pdf file for the legal terms and conditions that govern all use of the programs and files provided with the Ca3DE New Material Development Kit 20
30. or making more sky maps for Ca3DE unless you are absolutely positive that you can do better than Peter 7 Making new Textures diffuse normal specular maps There are several tools which new sky maps can be created with one of them is Ter raGen available at http www planetside co uk Also have a look at Peter Kleiners website at http www terradreans de Sky maps for Ca3DE must be stored in the SkyDomes subdirectory and the six in dividual files must be properly suffixed If MySky is the name of your sky map the files in the SkyDomes subdirectory must have the names MySky_bk bmp MySky_dn bmp MySky ft bmp MySky 1f bmp MySky rt bmp and MySky_up bmp respectively Note the separating underscore in the names The files must be stored in the Windows bmp bitmap file format using a color depth of 24 BPP The dimensions of all files must be 256 x 256 512 x 512 or 1024 x 1024 pixels 7 Making new Textures diffuse normal specular maps Self making new textures requires mostly computer graphics and artistic skills and it s attractive at least for two reasons e There are still only very few high quality new style textures in existence It would be great if you helped out with that Simultaneously it is a big opportunity to achieve something unique e In order to produce high quality results dynamic lighting requires that the texture and level artist work much closer together than ever before Makin
31. oth Usually these other models are not closely related to each other each of them has a separate piece of game code associated that handles it and thus they do not suffer from any inherent dependency problems Human player models Human player models are special because they are usually intended to be 10096 equiv alent to each other That is if somebody makes a new human player model and offers it for download you expect it to work exactly like the ones that you already know In order to achieve this kind of equivalency two assumptions must hold The skeleton of the new models must basically match the skeleton of the old models and the animation sequence numbers must refer to reasonably identical animations The animation sequences must match because the engine has built in knowledge that for example sequence number 3 refers to an idle waiting animation and that se quence number 27 refers to an aiming with a shotgun animation It is entirely up to you to animate your model to look at his wrist watch while aiming with the shotgun 12 8 Making new Models or to pick his nose but it is important that sequence number 27 corresponds to some aiming with a shotgun animation because the same is true for all other models and the engine relies on it The skeletons must also match for similar reasons At least the basic hierarchical structure starting from the pelvis to the most important bones must be identical as
32. rdingly Im aware that this is only a vague description Please don t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions on this regard While the current work around works very well for models that only have a single diffuse texture and thus only require a single normal map and specular map Ill soon clarify these issues also for models with more than one diffuse texture 9 Compiling the DeathMatch source code This section exists to introduce you to compiling the Ca3DE DeathMatch source code and to prepare you a little for the next section Anyway if you want to play around with the source code this is a good place to start The most important message here is to get and use the right compiler Use Microsoft Visual C 6 0 for compiling the Ca3DE MOD source code under Windows and g 3 3 x under Linux The reason is that different compilers have different internal represen tations of C objects Pointers and references to such objects are used as parameters 15 9 Compiling the DeathMatch source code in function calls to and from the engine For the demo and developer kit I chose to compile the Ca3D Engine with the above mentioned compilers and thus the MOD DLLs must be compiled with the same compilers too If you want to modify or enhance the existing DeathMatch source code and also want me to include your changes with my future public releases please contact me before you begin Maybe I or others are already working on the same pie
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