Questions for 3D World Studio users

#1 The .dif export is pretty good, you will inevitably bump into a couple of gotchas that can be common with CSG brush editors, like non-detail brushes creating a ton of extra polys when they intersect. I saw this recently when I did a simple building with columns, and a roof attached to the columns. Wherever the columns intersected the roof, a huge number of faces was created. The solution to this was to make the column brush group a detail group. There was a detailed online help document which helped with this.

So it has been great to make buildings and architecture for me, especially by creating and reusing prefabs to build structures.

#2 I have recently started using this; (warning: OPINION IN COMMING!) I did so because QuArK is old, and suffers from what I like to call "Feature saturation".

"Feature saturation" simply means, that they have packed so many "Features" into the editor, to accommodate so many games, each one having its own set of rules that the tools seam to ignore, that the program has lost all focus. It's akin to "To many cooks" theory.

3Dws is simple, focused easy to use, minimal tools that WORK WELL, with out having 300 ways to make an arch that may or may not be invalid for your chosen game. (Don't read into that, it's just a loose example / comparison).

It's a one click (maybe two) export (BAMB! you have a .DIFF) , No set up, unlike quark where you almost have to rewrite the editor to get it to export anything useful..

It's fast, easy to learn, well crafted tool set, and focused on making .maps. You don't need any 3ed party applications to get textures into it, just drop them in the texture folder and they will be there when the application opens, this is the same with any models you wish to use fro reference sizes or other wise, just plunk the useable formats in the folder (I think its .x .OBJ .3DS and more..). And, you done even have to be aware of the textures you use, as it puts them with the (.map) .diff on export...Done.

As far as the detail brush thing goes, all BSP editors suffer from this, so its not limmited to 3dWS.. Thats why they all have detail brushes.

#3 Well, I did get the note that quads and polygons are not supported upon import (which makes sense in a brush-based environment). That was with the outpost model from Beyond Virtual. I used your Orc Building 13 and it opened fine but the .map export didn't work (exported two large squares). the console.log registered one zone and no geometry for DIF creation.

I'll play around with GameSpace and the level exporters tomorrow when I have time during the day to see if I can get them to play nicely with some different OBJ/3DS models. I guess I could try the LW exporter as well. Have you tried Game Level Builder export from Max?

#4 I dont think the use of the model import was intended for conversion, just scale comparsion and mabye placement marking.

#5 Yes David, I tried GLB, but unfortunatly, it can only export levels created with GLB, but not custom objects :/


Thank you very much for your help! :)

Christophe
www.frogames.net

#6 Oh damn! I forgot to check LW and GS. I'll have to do that after class tonight.