One more question, as i said :P
How do you make shop signs? They look so amazing

Hey, I appreciate the questions and am happy to answer:

Originally posted by Dadaskis:

I understand one thing, once you learn how to make those, you might just start focusing on it too much, like in my case when i did gm_post_ussr, where i decided to make everything on my own mostly for learning purposes. In your maps, you make assets only for certain cases (which is great because reinventing a wheel is not really productive choice), so... I'm wondering, which exact cases?

I hope I'm understanding this correctly, but if there is a very specific interior/area or object that needs to be made, I either look for readily available models/textures that make a perfect fit from my Gmod asset library, Sketchfab or textures.com or someplace else, and if nothing fits perfectly, I have to make them myself.

Originally posted by Dadaskis:

Additionally i'd like to ask another question: How do you do building textures? Are you going outside and taking photos yourself?

That is the best way to get them, but I used Google Street View and took screenshots of building facades that looked perfect, from all over Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs. It took a while to edit them using Photoshop from raw images into usable textures for the map. There are so many hidden gems to be made into textures, you just have to know where to look and explore to your heart's content.

Originally posted by Dadaskis:

Damn, probably i'm asking too personal thing, but are you living at New York yourself?

Haha, don't worry about it. I have never been to New York myself and live on the other side of the planet, but I do love NY.

Originally posted by Dadaskis:

All those details your maps have, they seem to be too real to be just copied from "Google Street View" or various photos.

They are very much copied from images, if you try to come up with all the details yourself it wouldn't look very convincing. You would have to come up with hundreds of years worth of architecture made by real-life professionals and artists, and it's nearly impossible to re-invent that wheel. Looking at reference images for everything is very very important if you want to make something convincing.

Originally posted by Dadaskis:

One more question, as i said :P
How do you make shop signs? They look so amazing

They were done by taking images of real-life shop signs that you can find using Google images or Street View, then finding similar looking fonts that were used in them ( whatthefont.com is very good for this), and replacing any text that may reveal real phone numbers or names with something else you come up with. Maybe add some extra grime or detail that you want to add. I hope this helped.

Thanks for the answer! And i can't tell anything but... This is spectacular work with photos, references, and, indeed, Google Street Maps. I've not used this tool on my own that much, but this is one more reason to use it. That made me wondered earlier why building textures seem to be low-res enough, but when i'm actually playing (and even looking around), that resolution actually seems to be perfect choice. I really like the fact the building texture might represent whole building with all windows at the same texture instead of one repetitive bunch of window(-s), because it has much more life and detail to it. And, again, thanks for your answer, you are damn legend for me ;)

Originally posted by Dadaskis:

I really like the fact the building texture might represent whole building with all windows at the same texture instead of one repetitive bunch of window(-s), because it has much more life and detail to it. And, again, thanks for your answer, you are damn legend for me ;)

I agree. A tileable building texture will be a little repetitive if it has for example only 3 floors, but having an entire building facade with every floor with different looking windows on it along with other details included makes it a lot more believable. Here's a pro-tip if you want to make good looking building textures using Street View: https://imgur.com/a/6RfgvgI
And thank you for the compliment!

Originally posted by Fishke:

Originally posted by Dadaskis:

I really like the fact the building texture might represent whole building with all windows at the same texture instead of one repetitive bunch of window(-s), because it has much more life and detail to it. And, again, thanks for your answer, you are damn legend for me ;)

I agree. A tileable building texture will be a little repetitive if it has for example only 3 floors, but having an entire building facade with every floor with different looking windows on it along with other details included makes it a lot more believable. Here's a pro-tip if you want to make good looking building textures using Street View: https://imgur.com/a/6RfgvgI
And thank you for the compliment!

Thanks a lot for tutorial with in-depth tips! I hope it's going to be helpful not only for me, but for others too. And... damn i didn't know there is an option for timelines, i really need to use it more. Earlier i tried to work with textures that affected by lighting way too much, and, damn, it's definitely pain to fix. I mean, yea, it's possible, but there is no reason to fix lighting issues when you can just get an appropriate photo with a good, neutral lighting. And yea gotta say that i'm downloading Adobe Air to get ShoeBox with a Texture Ripper tool, i'd really wish to practice with this workflow, i don't know, make a building in Blender with all sorts of textures, with texture for first floor store, with a sign texture, with a texture for other floors and other sorts of details. I'm pretty sure Ian Hubert uses something like that, but now i'll just download this thing and fool around. Probably if it's going to be nice-looking render, i'll post it here as an example of power of this workflow. Additionally i'm really interested to experiment with these textures, with their colors, with potential to apply more detail by applying more photos on top, maybe making them seamless, all of that common texturing magic, but with usage of Google Street View as a source of building textures. I used textures.com for finding these building textures, but it's rather complicated and limited choice. I guess no one will be able to get so much photos of buildings as Google Street View can provide, and, besides the building, you get additional references, what a great bonus to make actually immersive surreal environment

So... As i said, i really wanted to try this method...

And i did: https://imgur.com/a/f1FyGW6

It's really simple job, but even in this case i understood the pros and cons of finding buildings using Google Street View. It seems like you can spend a lot much more time on finding good spots, but if find one, processing of the photo is not really complicated. I mean, i don't think it's bad, it's nice to walk around New York when you can't access it in real life. Or not only New York, since this is Google Street View, i can access any place on this planet... Brazil maybe? Anyway

The only bad side of the render i did (second render at this link), is about how blurred is this building. And i guess the only way to fix it is splitting this building texture by 2: First floor store and windows for other floors. And, most importantly, first floor store must to be high-res enough, because this is the most noticable part of the building when you are walking near this building. Yet even in this case building seem to be nice, especially for 3D skybox

Edit: Missing words

Originally posted by Dadaskis:

So... As i said, i really wanted to try this method...

And i did: https://imgur.com/a/f1FyGW6

It's really simple job, but even in this case i understood the pros and cons of finding buildings using Google Street View. It seems like you can spend a lot much more time on finding good spots, but if find one, processing of the photo is not really complicated. I mean, i don't think it's bad, it's nice to walk around New York when you can't access it in real life. Or not only New York, since this is Google Street View, i can access any place on this planet... Brazil maybe? Anyway

The only bad side of the render i did (second render at this link), is about how blurred is this building. And i guess the only way to fix it is splitting this building texture by 2: First floor store and windows for other floors. And, most importantly, first floor store must to be high-res enough, because this is the most noticable part of the building when you are walking near this building. Yet even in this case building seem to be nice, especially for 3D skybox

Edit: Missing words

Good result. Yeah the trick is to find the most high-res version of the building/shop you want to make into a texture while zooming in as close, while also having neutral lighting, so it will look the best.

Originally posted by Fishke:

Good result. Yeah the trick is to find the most high-res version of the building/shop you want to make into a texture while zooming in as close, while also having neutral lighting, so it will look the best.

Good to know! And... I can only imagine how long it takes just to make all of the building textures ._.

question, what does it take to make maps from night to day? just wondering because it seems my curiousness is maybe asking a silly question.

I know this isn't really the place, but if this map were to ever get updated, I'd add a morgue to the hospital

Originally posted by Left 4 Deadᵀᴹ:

question, what does it take to make maps from night to day? just wondering because it seems my curiousness is maybe asking a silly question.

It boils down to removing any lights outside and replacing building textures with their daytime variants, and adding in daylight to give the map a daytime appearance. It's a good question.

Originally posted by DarthRednax / Pyraxiate:

I know this isn't really the place, but if this map were to ever get updated, I'd add a morgue to the hospital

Safe to say I'm probably not going to add anything more in the map at this point. You can repurpose the lab room in the hospital for that though