Source Engine

what about it?

>>506631
Post content you like or made

Source Thread

> meme engine
Dude I know its fun and all but source is ancient now

>>506634
Old doesn't mean bad, or by any means useless.

>>506634

the 'old' engines were much more fun to work with. you spent 99% of the time inside the level editor. modern engines you spend all your time in 3dsmax/zbrush/photoshop/subtance painter etc. in hammer you could build a lot in one day, for a modern AAA environment you're lucky to finish one complex model in one day. constantly switching around from one sterile looking piece of software to another sucks the fun out of making content. compare that to building-theme games where you could easily spend many hours in one session without ever losing fun/interest. when besieged came out i must have played that shit 10 hours straight, but i could never get myself to model in 3dsmax for that long without getting bored.

shits only getting worse too. i expect in 10 years we'll have a different piece of software for every little fucking detail in a game.

>>506671
i think source 2 is a modern version that has more capabilities

Valve is going to be talking up the new Source engine at GDC in 2016. Some things to know about it are:

>simplified workflow for getting assets into the engine (unconfirmed, but something Gaben himself complained about)
>PBR materials (unconfirmed, but widely suspcted from some demo videos that are floating around)
>completely free (no royalties at all, no price tag) for anyone to make games with, but they have to release on steam (confirmed, can be released elsewhere as well, which is also confirmed)
>modern multi-core/hyperthreading support (confirmed)
>there is a real-time tech demo floating around with a single asset (one of the portal robots) rebuilt with over 400k tris, and it's in a similarly detailed environment with other robots wandering around
>built in modeling tools (confirmed)

Basically, it's an upgrade that fixes everything that people have been bitching about with Source for a while now. Some people seem to think the SDK will include a compiler for assets that imports .fbx files. If so, that would solve the single biggest problem with the current Source engine.

Does anyone here know of a solid workflow for going from Maya LT to the Source engine? Getting shit into SFM is a nightmare unless you use Blender. Nothing against Blender, but I'd rather use Maya LT because I am more productive with it.

>>506671
lol. whatever you build in hammer in one day will look like shit. %95 of the Source mods out there are absolutely garbage. And you would also need to go through the same process if you wanna import custom models into source which is a neverending living hell even with import tools, where as other apps you just drag and drop and thats it.

Not to mention modern AAA games look and play 5000 times better than anything ever done with Source. Quality stuff takes time to create. You're just stuck with source because you can't keep up with the new stuff and you're destined to use that ancient old clunky shit.

The future is the modern AAA engines and you will slowly die down as your community dries out one by one.

>>506688
>Projecting this much
Holy shit.

>>506690
> Can't compete with modern stuff or even come up with an argument
> uses ad-hominems instead
ssshhh...no tears now

>>506692
Eh, I'm just some bored /b/fag shitposting.

>>506688
i haven't touched source in ages, i've been using UDK/UE4 now for years, i just wanted to say that i miss the 'good old days' of working with simple graphics and BSP geometry, because i remember it being more fun than what i do now. i've been working a whole week now sculpting/modeling floor and wall pieces that would be nothing more than flat BSP geo 8 years ago.

you're wrong to think AAA ultra-realistic graphics are the future, most games are using more dated graphics, stylized graphics, indie shit (2D). chances are that early 2000's graphics will become a thing again just like pixel/2D games are today. the ever increasing demands for realistic graphics will only continue to drive up production costs meaning only a handful of studios will have the resources to invest into making such games. in other words, call of duty / battlefield shit.

>>506704
I honestly don't know much about this topic, but some of the best games (my opinion) I've ever played were on older engines. I don't think it matters what engine it's on, it just depends on who's making the game.

exporting custom 3d models for hammer is such a ridiculous pain in the ass. The best tool i know of is www.wallworm.com its a plug in that works for 3ds max and makes the whole process way simpler after setting it up to work with whatever source game. The wall worm tools allow you to use 3ds Max as a replacement to hammer if you can follow all the documentation. For me it's just an amazing model exporter straight to source. PROPS!

>>506671
>>506630
Something I noticed that makes me not like it.

>be playing bf4 on lowest settings on my laptop(toshiba satellite p875-s7310)
>able to play well with no hiccups
>about 40 to 50 fps constant
>WOW THIS PLAYS WELL, LET ME FIRE UP GMOD AND CS GO
>complete mess
>hiccups every 5 seconds, 20 to 30 fps on lowest settings WITH 480p
>get mad and go lurk /3/
>see this thread talking about how great source is
>get mad and make a shitty greentext
>post it

>>506746
I can't vouch for CS:GO, but Garry's Mod is horribly fucking optimized and it's even worse when playing on poorly optimized maps.

>>506758

Garry's Mod used the old Source engine, not the new one that now powers DOTA 2. DOTA 2 doesn't look great desu, but it's a port from the original SOurce and made to run on toasters. Wait till GDC in 16 to see the new SOurce doing its thing.

>>506746
you shouldn't be playing modern games on a laptop

laptops have short lifespan as it is

There's some impressive source engine content

https://youtu.be/HUawPPDHglE

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>>506630
I've been using hammer for 6 years and in that time I have never finished an original project and now days I don't even bother to start new projects because I know im just going to scrap it within 30 minutes.

I also cant seem to pick up any other game engine to learn level design just because it's nothing like hammer.

>>506826
lel true but you know what else has a short lifespan? Source Engine.

>>506860
That's why Source has been around and widely used for over a decade?

>>506855
Just learn Unity. It's fast and easy to use. I learned the basics in a week in my free time.

Also, consider going with a psychiatrist. Sabotaging yourself is fairly common in depressed people.

>>506630
>>506632
>>506672
>>506688
>>506704
>>506732
I've used Source Engine pretty extensively, I'm moving to UE4 mainly because the support for tools isn't there anymore.
Making anything look good in engine is pretty difficult whether its UE4 or Source, but its undoubtedly easier to get "good" looking results in UE4 rather than Source.
That being said, the renders coming out of Source can still be somewhat impressive. Although UE4 easily blows Source out of the water in almost every respect.

UE4 is actually still fairly new, the cinematic tools for it aren't there right now and doesn't compare to the ease of use of SFM for rendering videos yet.

Wallworm's tools are definitely your best bet if you're into world building with Hammer.

Heres a video I made with SFM, most of it was created with putting props together. The base of the map was decompiled from Hammer and then recompiled to suit my needs.


https://youtu.be/6R-hblouNCE

>>506958
Whoops, messed up the link. This should work.
https://youtu.be/6R-hbIouNCE

>>506958

>>506958

More information on this topic please. I thought Matinee was basically what you used to make UE4 movies, and that it was as fully featured as SFM. Is that not the case?

Also, do you have to import your animations from outside the engine, or do you make them inside of it with a timeline/graph editor/dope sheet like other animating programs?

Lastly, are there any good resources for learning to use UE4 to create videos, since Epic is encouraging that kind of use?

I am mainly interested in machinima and previsualization for film.

>>506959

Dude, that is bad ass. I would be all over SFM because stuff like this is possible with it, if it weren't such a colossal pain in the dick to get assets into it from Maya 2016.

>>506960
Whoops, what I meant was that Matinee has a long way to go, Epic is still working on making it more sensible to use.

In terms of the amount of features for camera controls such as depth of field, exposure speeds, etc UE4 definitely has a leg up from what I've seen so far... although I haven't seen any kind of shutter speed controls on the Matinee camera yet!

In terms of usability/ease of use SFM's controls has a huge advantage. There are tools that allow you to lock the exactly point of where you want your depth of field to focus onto a bone of a model. Getting a "hand-held" style shot with SFM is way easier as well. From what i've seen with UE4 everything the camera does is keyframe animated which is theoretically what -should- be done for animating cameras but sometimes you just need a dirty hand-held look which is easier to get with SFM.

The way I'm trying to learn how >>506961
to use Matinee at the moment is basically just by looking at examples that Epic has created (the hand to hand fight scene and the infiltrator demo which takes 20 years to load.)

I believe a tool named Director's Tools came out for UE4 which might cover a lot of the grievances I have with it. It costs about $50 right now IIRC, I haven't had time to check it out yet but the trailer looks pretty promising.
I'm sure Matinee is definitely capable of really good looking results, just seeing what people have created in the past. However, getting to that level of quality looks like a pain in the ass every step of the way at the momement. Of course that shouldn't stop you from trying...
You could probably find tutorials on cg torrent sites but I honestly haven't checked them out yet when I should.

With SFM I baked the animations into the model and then played them as a sequence.... then I edit it with the graph editor in the end to make things fit better...
With UE4 it looks one imports the animation onto the model.
>>506961
Thx, try Crowbar Decompiler!

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Here's some badly lit shit I made for a Portal 2 mod.

>>507023
I like the ominous feel

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Why is there not a simple goddamned way to get assets into SFM? It's like they want it to be as fucking difficult as is possible. It's insane.

Someone should write a single program that takes an FBX and converts everything to the intermediate file types, and then with another click compiles ot the target Source application. Fuck no, though. Shit can't be allowed to be simple.

Fuck yes I mad.

>pic related: mfw trying to get shit into Source

>>506883
The virtual items and mods are the only things giving it life and you know that.

>>507061
Yeah, that's because Valve hasn't made anything since Dota 2. Also, I kinda agree with the other guy about it being used today, even if it's only by Gmod and other mods.

>>506630
>Any of you boys like world design? Specifically Hammer Editor?
I do it. rarely.

Source engine is so backwards, isn't worth your time to learn it.

If soruce 2 is like this, you can grantee that no one will be able to use source 2 for modding because only a select few know now.

>>507034
>Someone should write a single program that takes an FBX and converts everything to the intermediate file types, and then with another click compiles ot the target Source application. Fuck no, though. Shit can't be allowed to be simple.
>Fuck yes I mad.
There is a program but its guarded its a paid thing.

i love hammer editor!

>>507073
>There is a program but its guarded its a paid thing.

Bullshit.

>>507066
>>507061
>>507073
Guess you guys didn't hear the news, like, last year I think? Dota 2 is on Source 2 now. It's DX11 64bit. It also came with a new Source 2 editor so people can make mods/custom maps for Dota 2. It allows custom modeling importing, scripting/coding, level building and all that jazz. It's much easier to use than the old Hammer editor.

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>>506630
wip, building in berlin

>>507215
Nice it feels like I'm back in 2004
A marvellous use of modern tech I say

>>506677
>simplified workflow for getting assets into the engine (unconfirmed, but something Gaben himself complained about)
already in some form in dota2 toolset
>there is a real-time tech demo floating around with a single asset (one of the portal robots) rebuilt with over 400k tris, and it's in a similarly detailed environment with other robots wandering around
not surprising, source has little problem handling crazy polycounts, the only limitation so far was that single model could not exceed 30+K iirc
>built in modeling tools (confirmed)
yup, already in dota2 toolset, includes ability to load any model into editor and modify it for use as a static, possibly full source 2 will take it further
>Basically, it's an upgrade that fixes everything that people have been bitching about with Source for a while now.
dont think so, I doubt valve will add full support for dynamic lights and do something about their spaghetti code.

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>source 2

So, does anyone have an idea what will be the scripting language for it?

Also, how close should I expect the tools from the engine's devkit be with those in the film maker? Was this stuff closely integrated in the 1st source?

>>507532
Is that a level from torchlight 2?

>>507527
>dont think so, I doubt valve will add full support for dynamic lights and do something about their spaghetti code.
That already happened years ago thanks to the Alien Swarm devs. They implemented a deffered lighting pipeline in Source and Valve brought it into global source and refined it, used it for Dota 2 lighting. You can have dozens of dynamics lights without issue.

>>506677
>PBR materials (unconfirmed, but widely suspcted from some demo videos that are floating around)
Dota 2 is already using this... It's a metalness/glossiness workflow (for some reason they're calling the gloss map a specular still).
http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/workshop/Dota2ShaderMaskGuide.pdf

>>modern multi-core/hyperthreading support (confirmed)
Yup, long since confirmed when Dota 2 moved to DX11 and 64bit Source 2 last year...

>>507532
The scripting language is already confirmed to be LUA, as seen in the Dota 2 workshop tools.
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Dota_2_Workshop_Tools/Scripting/API#Accessing_the_DOTA_2_Scripting_API_from_Lua

>>507547

I'm just trying to post what is known, for those that are behind the times. Good to see some source links for some of it though.

>>507555

Fucking LUA? Dude, that's actually awesome. I was worried it was gonna be C++ like Unreal. Any idea if there's going to be a visual scripting thing, like Blueprint?

>>507581
high level scripting is done through lua but significant things should be done in c++

Check out my friends stuff
https://imgur.com/a/MIBMc

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>>507628

>significant things should be done in c++

Such as? How do you make a distinction between when use which language?

Also, any ideas on how the license for S2 will look like? I have a serious problem with Unreal as it is now. They are able to freeze your whole project or even force complete deletion of all code and assets, even screens. I'm not sure, but Unity might also have something, where you need to show their brand on the product, but they also can ban you from using it, so in essence they muzzle you as well.

I don't ever want to hear "derp, sorry bubb, but we rejected your submission to Steam, so you can't publish it anywhere else either (we don't want your shit hurting muh brand). Maybe try something less problematic next time. :^)". I swear if they can do that and potentially torpedo years of my work I'm not touching their engine.

>>507537


I don't think so I grabbed it off of artstation or some such.

>>506671
Please be trolling. You're not seriously implying hammer is a good level editor. It's so cumbersome and limited... Everything is made out of very basic primitives. There is no possible way to make curved brushes. Modeling any remotely complex shape in hammer takes forever and looks like shit. It doesn't help that everything needs to snap to the grid. And sometimes, even if the brush looks alright in hammer, it compiles with slight offsets due to engine limitations. There is also no sense of scale in hammer. You pretty much need to eyeball everything, or use the dev textures. For example, if I want to make stairs, how do I make them all the same size, if there aren't any units, and you have to have exact multiples of certain values, or else you can't do it (because you must be snapping to the grid at all times)? And to add to my comments about the blocky brushes, you can't use displacements because they don't behave as a brush would. And displacements look like shit for anything besides terrain because basic tools like sweep and revolve are missing. The only commendable thing about hammer is the input/output scripting system they added for the source engine.

>>509112
not him but I'm gonna bite
>It's so cumbersome and limited...
yes, outdated as fuck and really clunky in some areas

>Everything is made out of very basic primitives.
yes and no, while they are your main tool, you can use models and displacements

>There is no possible way to make curved brushes.
clipping tool, vertex manipulation, displacement tool and arch tool.
also you can model it

> Modeling any remotely complex shape in hammer takes forever and looks like shit.
hammer is not for modeling, thats what you use max/maya/blender/whatever for

>It doesn't help that everything needs to snap to the grid
you can have plenty of things that are off grid, only primitives have to obey grid

>even if the brush looks alright in hammer, it compiles with slight offsets due to engine limitations.
stop being a shit mapper, I bet you compile in fast vis

>There is also no sense of scale in hammer.
can agree, while hammer uses its own arbitrary scale which is supposed to be in inches, it still does not match real world simply because of FOV used by engine

>You pretty much need to eyeball everything, or use the dev textures
>he still uses devtextures other than graygrid

>if I want to make stairs, how do I make them all the same size, if there aren't any units
common dimensions in half-life 2 and similar games:
wall - 128hu
step - 12x8hu
vent - 64x64hu

> and you have to have exact multiples of certain values, or else you can't do it (because you must be snapping to the grid at all times)?
you dont have to snap at all times unless you use primitives
for example if you are doing steps again, max step height is 18hu, which is referenced on wiki btw, and if you wanted to do for example stone steps in some temple that are cracked and irregular, you can easily make them with regular brushes, vertex work and remembering to never make a step higher than 18hu.

cont.

>>509112
>>509129

>And to add to my comments about the blocky brushes, you can't use displacements because they don't behave as a brush would
>And displacements look like shit for anything besides terrain because basic tools like sweep and revolve are missing.
displacements main limitation is that they cant seal the void or be turned into an entity (they were supposed to be at one point, notably e3 demo from 2003). other than that, displacements trump brushes in many areas:
>they are cheaper to render
>they allow blending materials on them
>they allow fine tuning of verts
>they are primitive sculpting surfaces
you can easily make enterable building out of displacements and guess what, all it requires is proper planning.
to make a displacement, your desired brush surface needs to be four sided, others dont have to, and to do advanced sculpting where there are not visible seams, like for example in building I mentioned, you just need to plan topology ahead, which is fucking easy considering primitive system that you cry about so much.

now you wouldn't be posting on /3/ if your topology was shit, right?

>The only commendable thing about hammer is the input/output scripting system they added for the source engine.
add to that ability to handle crazy-large numbers of polygons at one time

and if you really cant stand polygons, you can build your map chunks in maya/max/blender and just assemble them in hammer, and no, models dont have to snap to grid

>>506961
have you tried using wallworms?
I can compile a model for source in like 3 clicks.
Its kind of confusing to set up but its streamlined as fuck.

Hammer editor is actually kind of fun to user. I've released a couple of maps and made some chunks for other people's maps. Ive also done a lot of optimization in hammer for friend's maps before release. It's a really easy tool to use, you just gotta spend some time learning the terminology, funny quirks, and how vbsp, vvis, and vrad all work.

>>509130
Using models in place of brush geometry doesn't work. Models are not endowed with the same properties and would cause reduced performance. Also, displacements are limited in more ways than just not sealing the world. For example, they can't be turned into brush entities or physboxes. Also, like I mentioned before, there are inadequate sculpting tools.

Hammer editor best editor everything else is shit-tier