The following contains my three original mapping tutorials from elitectf, and will eventually contain a number of other snippets from elite mappers who've given me tips in the past.
Part 1: The BasicsTutorial for PolyworksPreface:
First, pick a sexy texture, I chose one of VTT's
Then begin placing your polys, make sure you put then in an orderly manner so you can shade easily, Like so:
Once you've placed your polys, move the verticies so you have a nice terrain. You cna also place your polys like this and skip the previous step.
Now give it your basic colors, I wanted a nice grassy area, so I chose green fading to brown with grey shadow on the bottom.
Now, you can dynamically shade it by picking areas that have either more or less light shining on them. like so:
Now you can begin placing scenery. I chose a simple grass, and placed along the polys:
After you've placed the grass, you can begin with trees and foliage. I chose some basic trees and placed them at 100% opacity in the front, and at around 60% in the back.
Now I've added some more variety to the scenery.
After that I can add some crates for cover. You must later place colliders in these.
now you can choose some nice bg colors.
and a sun and some happy clouds.
now to make the map more intresting, I chose to make a small building. make note of the poly structure.
and I shade the building.
then I add some nice interior scenery
Now I add colliders to all the crates.
And then add spawns and we have a map.
Part 2: Advanced Shading and Texture Effects.First, mimic the texture window by making a block of polys similar to that shown.
Then Copy and paste (marquee tool then ctrl+v) groups of polys and move them to where you want and make the maps basic formation.
Now move around verticies until you have some nice terrain. You can do this using the transform tool located at the top-right of the tools menu. You just click a vertice and drag it into the positition you want.
Now go to the pallette window and pick some nice colours. If you don't have a nice palette go to the little arrow at the top and choose "load palette" then select MZ Palette
First Color the outside of the polys a fairly dark shade then colour the inside polys a lighter colour. This is the first step to creating 3d terrain. I chose a combination of yellow-orange and red. The points and untextured should look something like these
Now you can begin adding some more advanced shading to the terrain, which I'll go into more later, but mainly just add crevices and shadowing.
Part 3: 3d Effects
Disclaimer: This was made before the Vegitation scenery pack was created, and they are simply the best for creating 3d land scapes.This is for adding 3d effects using scenery set to the front position, as well as placing polys in a decorative fashion.
First you have your texture, multi or not, and shde in so you have a flat surface (grass, ground, etc) for you to put foreground scenery on, and another surface under that (dirt, underground, etc) that goes under that to use as vertical terrain.
Now you can place foreground scenery onto of the polys so it appears that there is more flat surface in front of the character. You should also put transparent background scenery to futher give a feel of depth.
Just another example:
For decorative foreground polys, make sure you use a hard transition from the grass to ground and color them in order of depth with the farthest back being darkest and those in front being lighter.
If you wanmt water infront of a player, you should use the middle setting for the water, and color the polys as if there is water infront of them, again using hard transitions.
More to come... Including some good advice on default mapping, htf layouts, and waypointing advice.
Helpful tips from other Mappers(used without permission)
tip: only turn off align vertices if you're really going to use default placement, such as in [name removed]:
Otherwise, keep it nice and aligned :>
Just some nice advice advice from Mister Charles About the layout for default maps. I suggest you also look at the poly structure of the pictures map, as it is truely incredible, and a pinnacle of default style mapping.
Sam: how should waypoints be like for htf?
Keron Cyst: They're like CTF, but you have to keep each team rotating on its own path.
Keron Cyst: It depends. I'm talking mainly about HTF maps that -should- have a DM-style layout, IMO (but there can be DM-like HTF maps that may not necessarily be suited for DM as well)
Keron Cyst: It's kinda hard to explain, lol.
Keron Cyst: For example, there's htf_Futura, and htf_Arch.
Keron Cyst: Arch is a good execution, considering the mappers in 1.3.1 didn't really know what HTF ought to be like. But htf_Futura? Man, that's total CTF.
Keron Cyst: Even Anna (PW creator) agrees that you should not allow the FC to be able to just, after grabbing the HTF flag (and even for CTF flag-stalemates), simply camp in his team's respawn zone
Sam: ok
Keron Cyst: It needs to be chaotic. Mayhem everywhere, like DM. If you've seen it, The Geologist's htf_Muck and htf_Erbium are perfect examples of this
Sam: ok
Sam: cool
Sam: thanks
Here's a conversation that Keron and I had right before I released my second Map pack. He gave me some woderful advice for both teh gameplay and waypoint concepts behind HTF. Oh, and my name is Sam. Feel free to ask questions of me on AIM.
Make Mistercharle's idea an HTF map the way it's supposed to be. Make SURE you position the spawns in roughly the same arrangement as the Star of David (I've noticed that whenever HTF maps' player spawns are positioned in some way like this, they're always successful).
They don't have to be exact, obviously, but upon making your random Arena-style boulders or whatnot, try to maintain these general locations in spawn placement.
More Htf advice from Keron. He damn well knows his stuff.
I never really wondered about this before. How important are which map components to you?
For me, 100% would be:
Vertex colors (e.g. shading, etc.): 25%
Layout: 25%
Scenery-gfx (stretch, transparent, worthy custom ones if used): 15%
Stretched textures on polygons (to achieve 3D effects, etc.): 10%
Texture: 10% (multitexture is lazy to me; I think you are more skilled if you can show multiple atmospheres with one texture)
Spawn point positions: 5% (10% if HTF; it needs more thought-out placement IMO)
Appropriate BG: 5%
Order, structure (no polybugs, etc.): 5%
If I couldn't waypoint, Waypoints: 80% 
You don't have to use my form at all (you can forget about spawn points, you can talk about lag from huge maps if your computer's slow, etc. whatever you like); this is just how I personally feel when it comes to mapping.
How Keron Sections off work on maps. Definately a good set of guidelines.
I really owe Keron for all the stuff I've quoted off of him. He really knows maps, and it should help people having a selection of his and other mappers knowledge.
