Torque 3D Terrain Editor and Terrain Capabilities
by A · in Torque 3D Professional · 05/04/2009 (11:27 am) · 1 replies
As a user of TGEA for creating maps for the GG title Fallen Empire: Legions, my primary interest in using the beta is to help make sure that the mapping utilities and capabilities are more powerful than that of TGEA. For a game that requires much more attention to terrain detail, smoothness etc... I would hope to be able to give input to help the current toolset expand beyond TGEA. I realize as well that some tools such as the create empty / clear empty tool are not in.
Inspector Window:
This does not scale correctly, it expands, but the dialogue boxes do not expand with it.
Terrain Editing:
Will the toolset include the ability to select large areas of the terrain and raise them all at once? This was very useful for sketching out a map before find adjusting terrain. Similarly, TGEA lacked a method to deselect ALL the selection without restarting or ctrl+clicking everything, which can be a pain on some maps. Will this feature be included?
Will the brushsize increase beyond 40?
Will the tool set include the ability to "set height" so that you can quickly sketch out areas based on height before detailing them.
I noticed that I can create a terrain tile, raise the terrain as I need, and then flip it sideways. Does Torque3d intend to make this a viable option for creating canyon walls/caves out of terrain tiles much as Dynamix allowed for Starsiege: Tribes?
If terrain tiles are intended to be rotated, they need to have a way to be converted into a model, because right now the map will not reload with a sideways or inverted terrain tile, and there are issues with editing them if they are tilted.
Terrain Texturing:
Will the terrain texture mode have an option to set a blur on the edges of the terrain layer? With grass over rock, all I can get is a firm line along the edge of the grass.
Water:
Will there be a way to "copy waterblock properties" from one waterblock to another? In a map with many pools at different altitudes I could see this as a useful method rather than having to manually enter or copy+paste pools.
Those questions being said, I am very impressed with the engine thus far, and I can see it as being a very large step in the right direction for Torque.
Inspector Window:
This does not scale correctly, it expands, but the dialogue boxes do not expand with it.
Terrain Editing:
Will the toolset include the ability to select large areas of the terrain and raise them all at once? This was very useful for sketching out a map before find adjusting terrain. Similarly, TGEA lacked a method to deselect ALL the selection without restarting or ctrl+clicking everything, which can be a pain on some maps. Will this feature be included?
Will the brushsize increase beyond 40?
Will the tool set include the ability to "set height" so that you can quickly sketch out areas based on height before detailing them.
I noticed that I can create a terrain tile, raise the terrain as I need, and then flip it sideways. Does Torque3d intend to make this a viable option for creating canyon walls/caves out of terrain tiles much as Dynamix allowed for Starsiege: Tribes?
If terrain tiles are intended to be rotated, they need to have a way to be converted into a model, because right now the map will not reload with a sideways or inverted terrain tile, and there are issues with editing them if they are tilted.
Terrain Texturing:
Will the terrain texture mode have an option to set a blur on the edges of the terrain layer? With grass over rock, all I can get is a firm line along the edge of the grass.
Water:
Will there be a way to "copy waterblock properties" from one waterblock to another? In a map with many pools at different altitudes I could see this as a useful method rather than having to manually enter or copy+paste pools.
Those questions being said, I am very impressed with the engine thus far, and I can see it as being a very large step in the right direction for Torque.
About the author
Associate James Ford
Sickhead Games
The world editor could really use the ability to inspect multiple objects at the same time and change fields that all share at the same time. And it could also use, as you said, the ability to copy properties from one object to another, optionally ignoring some like position, rotation, scale, and name.
Some of these might make it into the t3d release, I don't know for sure.