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"Observer" Spy Prop Pack 3

This is the third prop pack, featuring large props and structures. I made these structures several months ago as part of a effort to make my own SFM maps for filming/rendering. I wanted a sort of film noire rainy-day european city feel to my shots. Essentially, creating a locale that isn't really featured in any of the TF2 maps that currently exist. I went about it in Hammer at first, but quickly I lost my patience with the tool, as it crashes very frequently and has several issues when compiling high poly models. In fact, during this project I literally hit Hammer's upper vertex limit.

So, I went back to the drawing board, tackling the map problem from several different angles. It took several iterations to get even close to what I wanted. In the end, I achieved "reasonable" results, though not quite what I was hoping for.

On the topic of how these buildings work, they are made stand-alone, with hot-swappable textures and colors. You can paint any of the buildings by simply overriding the materials. They are also heavily bodygrouped, letting you turn off features such as windows, rails, doors, etc. They also have a layer of Ambient Occlusion baked over top of the mesh. Think of it as a second skin wrapped around the building. Is usually makes the buildings seem more realistic, though it can clip or edge the mesh at certain angles or distances. If you have any trouble with the ambient occlusion texture, you can turn it off by toggling the "detail" bodygroup.

The main reason these buildings/props are grouped together is due to their shared texture cache. Each structure draws from a shared group of textures. Due to the way the AO trick is applied, you can use the same brick/stone/metal texture as you would a brush in Hammer, with infinite tiling, but still have the ease of use of a placeable prop in SFM. The fence and street props also draw from this texture cache, and therefore are included.

Finally, we have the euro_lane building. Not actually a building, but instead a rig. When I originally worked on my initial scenes, I planned them out in Blender. Instead of exporting the entire scene as one gigantic prop, I broke all the buildings down into reusable pieces, and then exported the animated rig out as just a road and a bunch of bones. On the SFM side, I snapped all the buildings back into their respective places. I did this as a way to get around several compiler and tool constraints, namely vertex limits. It was no simple task, however, and afforded weeks of testing and frustration to get right.

You can ignore the euro_lane building if you want. I'm mainly including it for others who want to snap together the scene I used for my promos. When snapping buildings, be sure to snap the bones to the "roottransform" of the building you wish to add, and bind the roottransform's "pos" and "rot" values separately. It just gives the least amount of grief if you do it that way.


Buildings: "models/buildings/euro"
Props: "models/props"

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bui_euro_brick_tunnel.mdl
-A sort of storm tunnel/side route from the upper streets. Has a nice alcove/tunnel effect on shots.
-Paintable
-Bodygrouped, you can turn off everything but the exterior arch.

bui_euro_apartment.mdl
-A simple apartment building.
-Paintable
-Bodygrouped

bui_euro_arches_front.mdl
-A building with arches at its base, intended for law/business offices.
-I didn't model a door, because it wasn't needed for the shot.
-Paintable
-Bodygrouped

bui_euro_bar.mdl
-A simple pub/bar with rooms on the upper floors.
-Paintable
-Bodygrouped

bui_euro_cafe.mdl
-A cafe/coffee shop, with rooms on the upper floors.
-Paintable
-Bodygrouped

bui_euro_slim.mdl
-A slim apartment/store.
-Paintable
-Bodygrouped

bui_euro_storefront.mdl
-A set of two antique/classic european style shops.
-Paintable
-Bodygrouped

bui_euro_woodfront.mdl
-A rustic store with a wooden panel front and canvas shades over the windows.
-Paintable
-Bodygrouped

bui_euro_hydro_tunnel.mdl
-A hydro-electric dam tunnel.
-The valve/door in the back of the tunnel is rigged, and can be rotated.
-The water is tricky to render properly. Apply liberal amounts of lighting to get it to shine.
-Paintable
-Bodygrouped

prp_city_street.mdl
-A simple street prop.
-Low quality
-Can be chained by snapping one street to another street's high bone.
-Paintable

prp_park_fence
-A simple brick park fence.
-Can be chained by snapping one fence to another fence's high bone.
-Paintable

bui_euro_lane
-The street rig used for the "Raincatcher" and "Wetworker" promotional material.
-You can snap various buildings found in this pack to the various bones on the street. They are labeled according to their street side(left or right), their number order, and the building type used.
-Paintable
-Bodygrouped


All props were created using the Soldier as scale.

Includes:
buildings\euro\bui_euro_apartment.mdl
buildings\euro\bui_euro_arches_front.mdl
buildings\euro\bui_euro_bar.mdl
buildings\euro\bui_euro_brick_tunnel.mdl
buildings\euro\bui_euro_cafe.mdl
buildings\euro\bui_euro_hydro_tunnel.mdl
buildings\euro\bui_euro_lane.mdl
buildings\euro\bui_euro_slim.mdl
buildings\euro\bui_euro_storefront.mdl
buildings\euro\bui_euro_woodfront.mdl
props\prp_park_fence.mdl
props\prp_city_street.mdl

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