What's "north" on an interior?
by Ray Depew · in Artist Corner · 07/25/2005 (3:02 pm) · 6 replies
I'm not sure how to ask this question. "It doesn't matter" may be a suitable answer for a game game, but for a serious game the answer may be different.
I searched for "north" in the forums and read some discussions about "which way is north" on the terrain map. I'm actually pretty comfortable with that, since we got our ski resort demo oriented correctly and the sun in the correct (southern) part of the sky.
Now I'm creating some public buildings, working from their blueprints, and I'd like to make my life easier by orienting them correctly in CShop/QuArK/TC-not-yet right from the start. Before I create a giant compass needle and set it on the ground at rotation 0 0 1 0, just to see which way it points, I thought I'd ask about it here.
Is there a convention for "north" when creating interiors? +x, -x, +y or -y? Or do most people create an interior with an arbitrary orientation, and then rotate it when they put it in their world?
I searched for "north" in the forums and read some discussions about "which way is north" on the terrain map. I'm actually pretty comfortable with that, since we got our ski resort demo oriented correctly and the sun in the correct (southern) part of the sky.
Now I'm creating some public buildings, working from their blueprints, and I'd like to make my life easier by orienting them correctly in CShop/QuArK/TC-not-yet right from the start. Before I create a giant compass needle and set it on the ground at rotation 0 0 1 0, just to see which way it points, I thought I'd ask about it here.
Is there a convention for "north" when creating interiors? +x, -x, +y or -y? Or do most people create an interior with an arbitrary orientation, and then rotate it when they put it in their world?
#2
07/25/2005 (3:32 pm)
Someone will correct me if im wrong, but i beleive its possible to simply create the dif, import it, then rotate it to face north. Remember to relight the scene as well.
#3
("yes" is an okay answer.)
07/25/2005 (3:59 pm)
So if I try to align my interiors when I'm creating them, I'm simply trying too hard?("yes" is an okay answer.)
#4
if you've already decided in-game which way is north (based on the sun?),
just do as you suggested and make a big cube in your modelling program
with the faces labelled +/- X, +/- Y, +/- Z and see which face ends up pointing north.
it seems useful to me to have a sense of the compass right there in your modeller.
also, modellers vary in the notions of 'up' and 'front' etc,
so going thru this process for each modeller seems pretty simple and worth the time
if the compass is something you care about in modelling.
07/25/2005 (4:16 pm)
I dunno..if you've already decided in-game which way is north (based on the sun?),
just do as you suggested and make a big cube in your modelling program
with the faces labelled +/- X, +/- Y, +/- Z and see which face ends up pointing north.
it seems useful to me to have a sense of the compass right there in your modeller.
also, modellers vary in the notions of 'up' and 'front' etc,
so going thru this process for each modeller seems pretty simple and worth the time
if the compass is something you care about in modelling.
#5
07/25/2005 (4:22 pm)
Aligning your interiors to a compass direction in Quark is irrelevant. You can rotate them easily when you place them in the editor, so make them face "north" in there :)
#6
07/25/2005 (10:20 pm)
Yes taking the time to align your interiors while creating them is a unnessicary headache, it takes 2 seconds to rotate a dif around how you want it. Besides what happens if you goof and it faces south are you going to go back, rotate the entire model, then re-export? Too much work and hassle when rotating in game editor is so easy.
Torque Owner David Tiernan
Heck there are times I model the side on the front view because thats where I want to see that view lol.