cubemap cubemap cubemap.....

[trebhome]

What the hell is a cubemap and what the hell does it do. It seems like everyone understands this but me. I have no idea about anything having to do with cubemaps, someone please give me a detailed decription of what these things are for. Thanks

 

[MrFoofles]

cubemaping... is also known as environment mapping (cubic) ... essentially environment mapping is a way to mimic a reflection effect on a surface, cubic environment mapping basically creates sort of a camera in space, takes a shot in six directions (think going out of the faces of a cube) and creates a texture which is optimally mapped with six sides... thus... a cubemap... the cubemap is then mapped to any surfaces to allow such, and usually this special mapping is smoothed out (normals optimized) as to show a very smooth, shiny surface, it also deforms with the player.

Placing env_cubemap entities in Hammer will allow surfaces to use that point in space as a reference for a "reflection" ... you MUST have this present or surfaces such as shiny metals and water may not display correctly, when you compile your level run it and use buildcubemaps in console to finish the process and compile full cubemap textures to the .bsp file

there are other methods to environment mapping, but cubic maps are the most popular because their panaromic nature allows them to be relatively seamless

 

[ericms]

it has to do with specular maps. reflections that highlights the lights from above and such.

 

[trebhome]

i feel like a huge noober. Man it takes a rocket scientist to build a cs map now. Well I really did aprechiate your explination MrFoofles, and I did uderstand it, but wow, it just seems like to make a good css map would require a team of people just to get everything dont and not forget anything. Hmphhhh....maybe I'll try my hand at mapping but geez it seems so difficult. ::

 

[Kyorisu]

i feel like a huge noober. Man it takes a rocket scientist to build a cs map now. Well I really did aprechiate your explination MrFoofles, and I did uderstand it, but wow, it just seems like to make a good css map would require a team of people just to get everything dont and not forget anything. Hmphhhh....maybe I'll try my hand at mapping but geez it seems so difficult. ::

Well you can't just go and make a GOOD map with no experience what so ever. It takes a lot of time and hard effort like any other hobby out there in the big wide world.

 

[tuemmykids]

Cubemaps are easy, just place some there, where you want a reflective surface. I'm just not sure which textures use the cubemaps, but most of the glass textures do. The closest brush will use the cubemap automatically. Then all you have to do is launch your map with HL2 or CSS or whatever, and type buildcubemaps in the console.

 

[trebhome]

yeah I know kyo, and believe me I must have spent 500 hours with Hammer 3.4. After about 500 hours I still sucked, granted not nearly as bad as when I started but still I couldnt make a good map for nuthin'! Then hammer Source comes out with about 896398w6423 more entities (that w is supposed to be a variable) and I have to in a sense re-learn everything. I mean does the source engine even still use r_speeds? Or can I just go crazy with the polygon count.....hmph i fell defeated in mapping. Maybe I should stick to playing.

 

[Kyorisu]

yeah I know kyo, and believe me I must have spent 500 hours with Hammer 3.4. After about 500 hours I still sucked, granted not nearly as bad as when I started but still I couldnt make a good map for nuthin'! Then hammer Source comes out with about 896398w6423 more entities (that w is supposed to be a variable) and I have to in a sense re-learn everything. I mean does the source engine even still use r_speeds? Or can I just go crazy with the polygon count.....hmph i fell defeated in mapping. Maybe I should stick to playing.

Well mapping for mp is tonnes easier than sp. SP usually involves all those awkward entities that I havn't even bothered looking at yet.

Get an idea a few peices of reference material and go make it.

 

[PvtRyan]

I mean does the source engine even still use r_speeds? Or can I just go crazy with the polygon count.....hmph i fell defeated in mapping. Maybe I should stick to playing.

Brush faces aren't as important in HL2 as they are in HL1. In HL1, brushes were the main thing impacting performance, but in HL2, there is stuff like lots of entity polygons, displacement terrain, shaders, cubemaps, particles etc etc.
You should aim for a certain performance level, like an avarage of X fps on system Y, not a magic r_speed < 800 like in HL1.