Backstory: In the middle of the night, the BLU team guarding Factory #4 have been rudely awakened. RED have infiltrated the factory and will blow it up if BLU cannot get to the bomb in time!
Theme: I have been looking into making a Noir-themed map for a couple of months now and since it doesn't fit well with the project I had, doing it for the artpass contest seemed like a nice idea. I think the Noir theme goes best with a factory theme with a lot of girders and things that can cast sharp shadows. Making it night-time is also a fairly obvious choice, allowing me to light up the outside areas with artificial lighting as well.
My palette will be extremely muted, consisting mostly of gray/white/blue.
Possible problems: Making the playable area light enough while keeping the shadow details high-contrast and crisp. I haven't done much optimization with lightmap scale before, might get issues with the size of the lightmap.
The main personal issue is finding enough time to make the map look stunning in just a couple of months. Then again I'm not really doing this to win, more to test out the black and white theme as a concept and detailing with light and shadow instead of models. I might be able to scrounge up 80+ hours of working time which some people seem to be at already.
If nothing else, it might be used as inspiration for other mappers.
Theme: I have been looking into making a Noir-themed map for a couple of months now and since it doesn't fit well with the project I had, doing it for the artpass contest seemed like a nice idea. I think the Noir theme goes best with a factory theme with a lot of girders and things that can cast sharp shadows. Making it night-time is also a fairly obvious choice, allowing me to light up the outside areas with artificial lighting as well.
My palette will be extremely muted, consisting mostly of gray/white/blue.
Possible problems: Making the playable area light enough while keeping the shadow details high-contrast and crisp. I haven't done much optimization with lightmap scale before, might get issues with the size of the lightmap.
The main personal issue is finding enough time to make the map look stunning in just a couple of months. Then again I'm not really doing this to win, more to test out the black and white theme as a concept and detailing with light and shadow instead of models. I might be able to scrounge up 80+ hours of working time which some people seem to be at already.
If nothing else, it might be used as inspiration for other mappers.