Map editor -- any suggestions?
by Fenrir Wolf · in Torque Game Engine · 09/16/2003 (11:02 am) · 5 replies
Okay, I'm a resident newbie when it comes to Torque. I've finally got my .dts file generation out of the way, and now have a decent understanding of how to create static/moving objects.
I've switched to working with interiors. My question is: What is a good map editing tool?
I know that Hammer (aka Worldcraft) seems to be the preferred one, but after playing with it for the last week or so has left a sour taste in my mouth. It contains a lot of bugs and the editing functions aren't all that extensive. I spend a lot of time to create a building, texturing the windows and doors properly, and then when I make it a pre-fab object and try to resize it -- all the textures shift out of alignment! Argh! (And I had "lock textures" turned on too.)
Quark I have installed and intend to mess with soon, but it looks like a far more complicated program than Hammer. However, more complicated could mean more flexible. And hopefully it will let me do more than carve boxes out of more boxes, for my box city with its box cars and box streetlamps. :)
I also keep seeing Cartography Shop mentioned on here. What is it like? I use Gamecreator's Texture Maker, and I was rather impressed with it.
Anyway, while I know that no single tool with make me a super-duber map creator, I do want something that's a nice mixture of easy-of-use and full features.
I've switched to working with interiors. My question is: What is a good map editing tool?
I know that Hammer (aka Worldcraft) seems to be the preferred one, but after playing with it for the last week or so has left a sour taste in my mouth. It contains a lot of bugs and the editing functions aren't all that extensive. I spend a lot of time to create a building, texturing the windows and doors properly, and then when I make it a pre-fab object and try to resize it -- all the textures shift out of alignment! Argh! (And I had "lock textures" turned on too.)
Quark I have installed and intend to mess with soon, but it looks like a far more complicated program than Hammer. However, more complicated could mean more flexible. And hopefully it will let me do more than carve boxes out of more boxes, for my box city with its box cars and box streetlamps. :)
I also keep seeing Cartography Shop mentioned on here. What is it like? I use Gamecreator's Texture Maker, and I was rather impressed with it.
Anyway, while I know that no single tool with make me a super-duber map creator, I do want something that's a nice mixture of easy-of-use and full features.
#2
Hammer has stability issues that has taught me to save often, and I mean more often than I usually do, which is pretty often. Also, sometimes I get screwy polygons when doing really complex carving operations and I don't see a real easy way to fix those. Since you can't deconstruct your solids once you've created the extra points, it means I have to redo the solid again. (Please correct me if I am wrong and there is a way to get around this...)
I messed with Quark last night but didn't get very far. It looks like it contains more primitives and a little bit more flexible manner for creating solids (using nega-brushes and such), but sadly it refuses to read my textures, they just come up as black squares. Maybe it doesn't support .PNG files?
CShop I DLed and toyed around with it a bit. It looks like an exact clone of Hammer, and I would probably use it if it wasn't for the fact that it doesn't support a visual UV editor like Hammer. (You have to type in the UV coordinates by hand, then hit OK. If you need to change something, rinse, lather and repeat...) Other than that, I like it and the ability to see how my lightmaps will look without having to go load up Torque.
09/17/2003 (10:29 am)
I'm using Hammer 3.4, and when I engage Lock Textures, it seems to only work for moving blocks around. If you want to rescale your blocks, then you're screwed. Well, I've modified my work-flow so I drop a placeholder block in my scene sized to exactly what it needs to be, then export that to a seperate window and work from there. It's a bit more work, but it gets around the fact that Hammer doesn't resize textures.Hammer has stability issues that has taught me to save often, and I mean more often than I usually do, which is pretty often. Also, sometimes I get screwy polygons when doing really complex carving operations and I don't see a real easy way to fix those. Since you can't deconstruct your solids once you've created the extra points, it means I have to redo the solid again. (Please correct me if I am wrong and there is a way to get around this...)
I messed with Quark last night but didn't get very far. It looks like it contains more primitives and a little bit more flexible manner for creating solids (using nega-brushes and such), but sadly it refuses to read my textures, they just come up as black squares. Maybe it doesn't support .PNG files?
CShop I DLed and toyed around with it a bit. It looks like an exact clone of Hammer, and I would probably use it if it wasn't for the fact that it doesn't support a visual UV editor like Hammer. (You have to type in the UV coordinates by hand, then hit OK. If you need to change something, rinse, lather and repeat...) Other than that, I like it and the ability to see how my lightmaps will look without having to go load up Torque.
#3
The lesson you should learn is build everything at the final scale it should be at from the start. And CSG construction is NOT the same workflow as polygon soup modeling.
You should NEVER EVER use the carve tool, build everything by hand from three sided pyramids or wedges to have complete control over the CSG construction.
Regardless of the program you use, they all have the same "problems" because they are all CSG modeling tools. Polygon modeling mentality and techniques will be equally useless in any of the programs.
Read all the Half-Life mapping tutorials you can find to better understand that you are NOT modeling polygons but CONSTRUCTING CSG blocks.
09/17/2003 (11:32 am)
Actually WorldCraft/Hammer does resize textures, you are just not doing it correctly, when you apply the texture you tell it how to apply it and there is an autosize option.The lesson you should learn is build everything at the final scale it should be at from the start. And CSG construction is NOT the same workflow as polygon soup modeling.
You should NEVER EVER use the carve tool, build everything by hand from three sided pyramids or wedges to have complete control over the CSG construction.
Regardless of the program you use, they all have the same "problems" because they are all CSG modeling tools. Polygon modeling mentality and techniques will be equally useless in any of the programs.
Read all the Half-Life mapping tutorials you can find to better understand that you are NOT modeling polygons but CONSTRUCTING CSG blocks.
#4
I'm familiar with CSG, but I've given up on the carve tool except in the simplest of cases. It always generates at least one kattywompus polygon whenever the extents are too extreme. Now that I know how to make the clip-plane tool subdivide instead of just clip, that helps me immensely with detailing. That and visigroups allows me to hide geometry I'm currently not working with, which makes it a bit easier. This works kind of like subd-patch editing in LW. (Well, with the added limitation of creating only convex shapes.)
Also, I figured out that the vertex tool will merge points, allowing you to destruct a box into a wedge, for example. Too bad there is no way to extrude existing shapes, or the merge vertexes between shapes. But I'm guessing you don't want your shapes to end up with too many faces spread over a large area.
09/18/2003 (10:37 am)
Autosize? I don't see that. I see the buttons for auto-aligning a texture, or scaling it to fit the entire brush. But those values are disturbed (at least the scale is) when you resize the object. Moving the object will retain the U/V offsets of the textures, as long as "Lock Texture" is set. I've tried this with align-to-world and align-to-face and no difference.I'm familiar with CSG, but I've given up on the carve tool except in the simplest of cases. It always generates at least one kattywompus polygon whenever the extents are too extreme. Now that I know how to make the clip-plane tool subdivide instead of just clip, that helps me immensely with detailing. That and visigroups allows me to hide geometry I'm currently not working with, which makes it a bit easier. This works kind of like subd-patch editing in LW. (Well, with the added limitation of creating only convex shapes.)
Also, I figured out that the vertex tool will merge points, allowing you to destruct a box into a wedge, for example. Too bad there is no way to extrude existing shapes, or the merge vertexes between shapes. But I'm guessing you don't want your shapes to end up with too many faces spread over a large area.
#5
09/18/2003 (3:23 pm)
@David, I believe the 6.4 alpha of QuArK supports viewing png images (it previously would load them to the texture browser but they were not visible in the viewer. The solution in prior versions was to use jpg for the build process, then replace with png in your TGE interiors folder. In any case, I only use png when I need transparency.
Alex "IkoTikashi" Zappe
anyway, i think that quark and hammer are the only tools for easily/fast interior-creation.