Since I got back to CS I noticed the absence of one of my all-time favorites, cobblestone. So while Valve is busy working on the rework, I decided to work on my own version of one of the oldest maps in the franchise. Of course, I will not redo the whole map from scratch, I am not insane. The plan is that I will be working on this part of long A.
My biggest goal for this project is to maintain the same shapes, layout and scale of the map while giving it some more realism and credibility. This is Wiktor Öhman’s take on Dust II which massively inspired me to try a similar project. I do not expect my work to excel Wiktors, or even come close to it, but I plan a similar approach: same overall vibe, more detailed models/textures/materials. Here is some reference that I have gathered already and this are some ingame screenshots that I took.
I have no idea how long this will take me but I will try to keep this thread updated with my progress.
First up on the list: planing out modularity and figuring out the scale in Blender.
It’s turning out great dude! A lot of nostalgia in this. The workflow used in Wictor’s video is really cool, I learned a lot from it. Look forward to seeing this project as it progresses.
Turns out doing a basic blockout is harder than I expected. Originally, my plan was to eyeball everything… which I did, but the scale just felt off and not at all like the original cobble. Like I said up above, the main goal is to preserve the same vibe, so I had to scrap that version.
My next idea was to do a bunch of screenshots of long A, throw them at a photoscan program and hope for the best. After fiddling around with Meshroom for a whole day, realizing that I didn’t have enough screenshots, have it crash on me two times and almost losing my sanity in the process I was left with this monstrosity.
Probably the worst photoscan ever created, but it does the job (except lower long A, which is not even recognizable.)
Now it’s getting interesting. This is how far I’ve come today with the structure modeling; I am trying to go from big to small so there still quite a lot to be modeled.
If you look at the outer wall, I tried to implement the inserts from the reference pictures (from the 1st post), while maintaining the same holes as in the actual cobble, two on the left, three on the right. I believe that this is enough change for it to somehow feel more believable and fresh, while still basically remaining the same. This is the sort of formula I will be using for everything else. I believe that the texturing will make an even more notable difference.
I really enjoy keeping track of my progress in posts like this, it almost acts like a diary. If I had not written this post in the first place, I would have probably given up on the project after the first hurdle of not getting the scale right from the beginning.
Nevertheless, this will be the last post of this length. The next posts should be straight forward pictures of progress.
The plan is that I will be working on this part of long A.
