The ThinkingWithPortals Map Showcasing Thread

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reepblue
894 Posts
Posted Mar 08, 2013
Replied 6 hours later
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Click to make it bigger, using the Majhost thumbnails.

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FelixGriffin
2,680 Posts
Posted Mar 08, 2013
Replied 4 hours later
You're using Reflection Gel as well? Nice, I can't wait to see what you do with it.

But which particles will you use? At the moment I know of four--I made purple ones, Sprowl black, Carl silver-gray, and someone on BackStock neon green. :razz:

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reepblue
894 Posts
Posted Mar 08, 2013
Replied 18 minutes later

FelixGriffin wrote:
You're using Reflection Gel as well? Nice, I can't wait to see what you do with it.

But which particles will you use? At the moment I know of four--I made purple ones, Sprowl black, Carl silver-gray, and someone on BackStock neon green. :razz:

Decided to go and work with Valve's screw ups and use a silver color. I also tried to play with the vmt to make it more mirror-ish, but my results made it look like it was in some graphics benchmark; ugly.

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portal2tenacious
393 Posts
Posted Mar 10, 2013
Replied 1 day later
I've been working on a destroyed theme map for a little bit now. I'm remaking some more of my friends' PeTI maps so I can really focus on detail. Any feedback would be great, here's some screenshots:
Click to show screenshots
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Companion Cube that shows up several times in the map.
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Small room in the first chamber (any idea how to get some light inside the tubes?)
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Corner view of a room in chamber 1.
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My first attempt at a destroyed ceiling. Just some props, should probably add some tiles and such.
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A little bit of dust falling from the ceiling.
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A little puddle and a shot of LP's death fizzler.
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Small picture of a hallway connecting chambers 1 and 2.
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Another try at a ceiling. Props look a little dark though.
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Main room of chamber 2.
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Floor view of chamber 2

I'm pretty happy with the work so far, but I'm sure you all will have lots of ways I can improve. Thanks in advance!
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CamBen
973 Posts
Posted Mar 10, 2013
Replied 13 minutes later
Wait is that the portal 1 companion cube? (I like it better). Also, as you said, the broken ceiling section does look a bit strange. Make it look more irregular, and have some tiles bending off of it. Other than that it looks very good.
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portal2tenacious
393 Posts
Posted Mar 10, 2013
Replied 23 minutes later

CamBen wrote:
Wait is that the portal 1 companion cube? (I like it better). Also, as you said, the broken ceiling section does look a bit strange. Make it look more irregular, and have some tiles bending off of it. Other than that it looks very good.

Yeah. I got bored one day and decided to port it over. I've added some lights in the ceiling and will add some bendy broken tiles soon. Thanks for the feedback :smile:

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srs bsnss
552 Posts
Posted Mar 11, 2013
Replied 11 hours later
I really like that skybox - is it meant to be like a sunset kind of thing? The dark blue sky + orange/red light gives it that impression.
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portal2tenacious
393 Posts
Posted Mar 11, 2013
Replied 1 hour later

http://css.gamebanana.com/textures/3132

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josepezdj
2,386 Posts
Posted Mar 11, 2013
Replied 18 minutes later

portal2tenacious wrote:
I've been working on a destroyed theme map for a little bit now. I'm remaking some more of my friends' PeTI maps so I can really focus on detail. Any feedback would be great, here's some screenshots:

...... screenshots ......

I'm pretty happy with the work so far, but I'm sure you all will have lots of ways I can improve. Thanks in advance!

WOW mate! Really really good looking so far :thumbup: However you could work on certain details:

  • Normally, I guess that mostly because the cool skin light covers are a bit too clean, the destroyed theme looks better using warm skin light covers and I'd suggest also a warmer overall lighting. Check in pics no. 3 and 5 those light covers spotted by the env_projectedtexture coming from the sky (or whatever lighting you're using), look too unstained.

  • Even though you're making a good usage of the skybox to spot the chambers, these are really darkened, overall at some parts. I'd suggest you to mess around with the light_environment entity and also adding some light_spots. Overall last 2 pictures and the second one look specially darkened. That cube_floor_button (the square-shaped one) has almost no light around.

  • If it's not too annoying to you and you think it's a good idea, you could use the dynamic models for the fizzlers so you can set them to be closed when the trigger_portal-cleanser is not active, at least to me they look so odd opened when they are not emitting the fizzler :biggrin:

Other than that, really good job! Keep it up! :thumbup:

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HMW
806 Posts
Posted Mar 11, 2013
Replied 7 hours later

portal2tenacious wrote:
I've been working on a destroyed theme map for a little bit now. I'm remaking some more of my friends' PeTI maps so I can really focus on detail. Any feedback would be great, here's some screenshots:

...... screenshots ......

I'm pretty happy with the work so far, but I'm sure you all will have lots of ways I can improve. Thanks in advance!

This looks pretty good!
Here are some ideas you may want to think about:

The area above your collapsed ceilings looks very boxy, especially in the fourth image. It would look better if the area above the hole were bigger than the hole itself. (I was going to include some example screenshot but fucking Steam doesn't let me upload them.)
Anyway, the way I usually do it is either:

Method a: cut an irregular hole in the ceiling and build a big cap over it with brushes. The walls of the cap are metal, and the ceiling is sky. (If at all possible, turn any inner ceiling parts into func_details.)

Method b: move the original ceiling up and turn it into sky and build new destroyed (func_detail!) ceiling pieces below it. (This looks perfectly OK as long as you make sure that the inner hole is not too close to any wall.)

If there is any place where the sky-hole still looks too regular or boxed, throw in some extra debris to cover it up. It also looks cool if you put some more things at a greater distance, like another layer of destroyed ceiling, or a "models/props_destruction/rubble_ceiling_collapsed01.mdl" with lots of plants hanging down from it, etc.

As for the lights: I agree with Jose that some of the light panels look a bit too clean still. I have noticed that placing the lights in horizontal strips close to the floor usually works better with the destroyed theme. Also just for fun: make just one light in a group a different colour. It will look like that bulb burned out some time ago, and the correct colour was not in stock so they just used whatever was available.

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FelixGriffin
2,680 Posts
Posted Mar 16, 2013
Replied 4 days later

In this new random act of science, I find out what happens when I spray Adhesion Gel over a bunch of Companion Cubes.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =132518047

The result so far has been a big glued-together blob of companion cubes. Further testing is required.

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Naulziator
104 Posts
Posted Mar 20, 2013
Replied 4 days later

Hey! I have a group of glass tiles you guys might want to use in the future. I'm in the process of finishing the larger grid sizes (64, 128) but all my 16 and 32 tiles are ready.

gtest01redux0017.jpg

Now, if I can get help on some pattern ideas, that would be great. Just make sketches. I'll finalize on Photoshop with my template PSD.

Update: Got all 'grid' sizes from 16 to 128 done.

gtest01redux0020.jpg
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Lpfreaky90
2,842 Posts
Posted Mar 21, 2013
Replied 12 hours later
img

Work in progress. iWork925 did a lot of detailing here and this is how it looks now :biggrin:

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srs bsnss
552 Posts
Posted Mar 21, 2013
Replied 31 minutes later

Lpfreaky90 wrote:
pic

Work in progress. iWork925 did a lot of detailing here and this is how it looks now :biggrin:

:notworthy:

That's a LOT or arm_exteriors!

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iWork925
1,080 Posts
Posted Mar 21, 2013
Replied 18 hours later
They are the glue that hold up aperture.
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Naulziator
104 Posts
Posted Mar 22, 2013
Replied 10 hours later

iWork925 wrote:
They are the glue that hold up aperture.

:notworthy: That's for sure!

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srs bsnss
552 Posts
Posted Mar 22, 2013
Replied 2 hours later

iWork925 wrote:
They are the glue that hold up aperture.

Them and squarebeams, that is :lol:

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iWork925
1,080 Posts
Posted Mar 22, 2013
Replied 1 hour later
Squarebeams are the glue that holds the glue, that together that holds up Aperture!
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Idolon
417 Posts
Posted Mar 22, 2013
Replied 5 hours later
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Naulziator
104 Posts
Posted Mar 23, 2013
Replied 16 hours later
The collapsed observation room gives a unique feel to the 'destroyed' theme in your snapshot. It's too bad you don't see that form of detail in the official game.