Post your thoughts, comments, questions and love about this blog entry here.

cant seem to get the video to work

Video doesn't load for me on Youtube! When I try to access it through Youtube page I get some "private video" message :S

Cheers for update though

Edit: Had no idea texturing took so much skill and effort D:

Oops sorry, fixed.

Great entry.

I am really hoping that the canister gets some particle effects inside the tube to visualize energy flux.
Have you thought about adding a timer, that shows how long it actually took? I am pretty sure the "when is NS2 comming out" threads would be going down if people were shown how much time even such a small object can take to texture.

The video's downloading now; thanks for the update. I'm real curious to see how the "buy maps from the community" thing works out. It's pretty novel as far as I know.

I had no idea texturing was THAT much work.

And that's just a simple prop

Oh hey I've got a question. What's the program on the left? I can't quite make it out.

The same as on the right, I would guess.

(It looks like a preview window )

EDIT: Scrap that.

It looks like the source SDK model viewer. When he turns the model you can clearly see the green lines forming a circle.

Yeah not even Photoshop CS3 Extended can do a 3d view like that. Thanks for clearing up the mystery though.

nice going j keep up the hawt work xD

All that work for a simple prop. Wow.

The program on the left is the SDK's HLMV (and PSCS2 on the right). I use a dual screen setup.

Almost makes me want to start texturing again; It sucked me into making a forum post, at the very least (The first in years, Align has been blamed).

Another great post!
Making textures is one of the things I never did really well, but is a very interesting topic.
I will download the hires version tomorrow to see everything in detail.

Please document a making of an infestation-texture in the future. This would really interest me, and others as well I guess.

I'm looking forward for the next post!

Recording your progress like that is the best thing since sliced bread. Period.



CS2 eh? I was about to ask. I recongized HLMV easy and knew it was Adobe that you were using. I still have Photoshop 2.0, I guess I should invest in CS3. You should contact Adobe with that video, both UWE and Adobe could profit from that advertising.

JJJ1, are you using a mouse to do that? If so consider using a Wacom Tablet, I just got one and it makes digitizing new Xzianthia drawings easier.

PS: I have some new anatomical disection drawings of the classic NS aliens I just started work on. Would you be interested in them? (closest thing I can think of is Stephen Biesty's cross sections in how it's all scientifically labeled and stuff.)

I use an intuos 3 6x8. It is the best thing ever.

very very cool, i know that hard work for ONE model.
Take very long time to made it perfect.
keep good work.

do you use UVMapper Professional?

ah you build this:

Very good job! I'm betting that that took 1 - 2 hours at least, because of the fast forwarding. Keep up the good work!

If it took that long for 1 prop, imagine for a whole map! ....

*Realizes that I will never be able to make a map requiring so much work*

I need to tone down my attitude.

It's really not that hard to do it by hand and the results are crazy amounts better.

Especially for something so hilariously simple as this prop. It's like, a cylinder. Come on, you can do a cylinder by hand

Wow! NS2's world is slowly taking form... in 3D! Amazing work there, JJJ1! With so much work on a single prop, I have no doubt mappers will be very well equipped to create some breath-taking levels! Keep up the awesome work!!



Heh, same for me... I can't wait for NS2TR so I can try to map a little, but I am confident about not making it to the release ^^. I might join up with a friend to split and share the work, but I'm not certain about it...

How long did it take to do the full texture for it?

About one and a half hours.

As for UV mapping, I just use Maya's tools.

I see the word "prop" tossed around and that brings a few questions to mind:

Is a prop similar to an object in Half-Life 2 that bounces around when you shoot, bump, pick up, etc?

Does that mean we will be about to shoot the place up on NS2 maps? Flying debri?

Or does "prop" just mean an object a mapper can place and it doesn't move?

Or is it something in between?

Thanks to anyone who can clear up the definition of "prop" for me.

There are two types of props. Static, and dynamic. A dynamic prop is linked to the physics system (so you can move it around), a static prop is not (so it just sits there and looks cool). This is a static prop.

Nice to see what its like to make a texture of a prop, now NS 2 is one step closer. Keep up the good work J!

Nice work J! can't say I didn't see it comin! But yeah, the art work on NS2 will be without a doubt up to the extremely high standards the game industry sets.

I was gonna (or did? can't remember now!) ask to see the design process from concept art to workable asset (texture/model/whatever) after the last blog... Thanks for that!

Share your brushes J ;D

This is a really awesome post. Its cool to see the process things go through.

Could we have a similar thing done for a character model at some point? Obviously would have to be broken down to initial modelling, texturing, animation.

RSD: Unfortunately that's unlikely. Many, many hours go into a character model, making it very difficult to record the entire process.

Aegix: If you really want them I can send them to you, but (speaking from experience) I think you'd be better off creating your own brushes that really suit your style of painting.

Holy crap

Just incredibly awesome.

A little faster and it would be a Matrix like tutorial/training programm

Amazing! Thanks for updating your blog that often. Great (never thought a prop texture takes that much time to create). JJJ1, was the final texture smaller ? Do you scale your textures down before they go for final ?

The texture was 512x512. I don't scale down the textures before they go final.

Great idea J, glad to see you getting stuck into the NS2 work.

I think we work in a reasonably similar manner. I just need a few brushes to break up my lines a bit.

very nice
by chance is that being normal mapped?

Damn... Now that I enjoyed watching. Nice choice of music too.

Well, you never saw the modelling, nor the compiling, and if this gets a specular map or even a normal map you didn't see any of those either.

Is it only me, or does the high res version not work?
When I try to download the file it stops at 44MB.

The lowres version works as expected.

Nice post. It is amazing how much work goes into what ends up looking so simple.

I assume custom mappers are gonna have access to a lot of your predesigned props?

There's no justification for a normal map, but yeah, I didn't record the specular map creation because it's not particularly interesting to watch, especially with this particular model.

KainTSA: When we release the NS2TR, mappers will have access to all of our props and textures.

one word : AMAZING

Wow, awesome movie. Never knew, that texturing a single static_prop takes that ammount of effort

Can't wait to see more stuff done and for sure the, as you mentioned, NS2TR. Would love to pre-map some old maps from NS for NS2 (with those awesome textures and props).

is the ns2tr going to use hammer? or are hl2 maps going to be able to be imported into the tech release mapper thingy?

Uh, you'll be using Hammer to create maps. I'm not really sure what you mean about importing hl2 maps, though.

you must have the paitence of a saint to give something like that your love and attention. how long did it take, real-time?

since ns2 is a standalone game, i wasnt sure if you would use hammer to make maps, or if there was going to be an improved tool to work with, and if there were would it be able to import maps made in hammer