Interior Level Design

#1 Checking out the FPS Tutorial's map - "Chinatown" - would be a great example.

#2 There really isn't a standard. It mostly comes down to more of a matter of what works best for your specific game/project and design goal. A level, or mission, itself will contain many different objects.

Interior 1 for game A could be one huge mesh populated with props and effects. Interior 2 for Game B might break things into chunks to allow for more modular and reusable Interiors. Interior1/GameA might work best if you never intend to go outside. Interior2/GameB might not work so well if you intend to allow inside/outside functionality. In either case, using Zones and Portals will help improve performance.

#3 I think "Chinatown" is a good example. I checked some of those meshes prior to designing the map. It looked mostly modular design, and I wanted to do a completely interior map. According to the above post above, I think our game would be more like "Game A". It would almost never take you outside. Our map for example would be completely indoors, like the older games of the 90s. But the editor for Torque is nothing like those. Thats some good advice, I just wanted to make sure if I made one complete mesh, it wasn't something I was suppose to do.

#4 Have a look at constructor, granted torque doesn't use interiors anymore, it can still import them and converted them to the dae format.

I tend to find this kind of tool pretty useful for designing indoor spaces, where full blown 3D modeling programs tend to become confusing very quickly when working on whole scenes, instead of singular objects.

#5 @Kyrah,
I did not know it would convert them to DAE. That is really useful! Especially for city scapes and the like. I have used QuArK in the past. I just have not messed with Constructor.

#6 Possibly a slight misconception, but Constructor cannot export to DAE. Torque 3D can however. From the menu inside the World Editor you will find options to export a DTS or DIF (Interior) file to Collada. There may be some texturing issues: scale, flipped, etc...

I used to be a great fan of Constructor, however I wouldn't really recommend it, or brush based geometry, for general use for Torque 3D. Yes, you can easily convert the Interior format to something that is nowadays more performant but the resulting 'optimized' (due to the BSP format of Interior files) geometry is very cumbersome to work with if you need to make changes or add additional detail -- and detail is where a mesh based modelling app will excel over a brush based one.

The old Undercity demo level was a great example of a large scale interior space that was built in a modern mesh based modeler - 3DS Max I believe.

#7 Is there a discussion available on how the went about designing that, from a modeling perspective?

#8 Here you go: The Inner working of the Undercity Demo

I don't think that particular level or demo is available any longer, but another example of a mesh based interior model, which is nothing but an interior space with a few props, would be the Burg level from the FPS Example. It was designed to show off the lightmapping as done in the Purelight application... you might have to turn off some of the default PostFX though.

#9 Hmm, they mentioned that there was 100 static shapes, yet the Autodesk screens show massive levels. If anyone ever downloaded the demo, can you recall if the structure was one entire mesh?

And what is Polysoup that I read about in this discussion? I've never heard of it nor know what it is.

I think I might have to go back and rethink how I have designed this map.

#10 It's been a while but I'm almost certain (if I'm remembering correctly) that the structure itself was one big mesh which was littered with a bunch of props such as pipes, lights, fans, crates, etc., that were individual meshes placed from within the T3D World Editor.

And polysoup is just a catchphrase for visible mesh collision, where collision happens at the mesh itself instead of at a collision mesh or boundary box.

#11 Using DAE/Collada you can build an entire level out of multiple meshes in your "favourite 3D modeling app" and when you export them they seperately they'll be in the same place because Collada calculates from origin (0,0,0) the location of the mesh.

Meshes will truncate if you have too many vertices (possibly 10k), but you can have multiple meshes in 1 object.

Here's an entire 2 square miles of corridors that I built and placed in Blender and exported out as DAE, each section went into T3D in the place it was in Blender, relative to the origin. This is using Basic/Lowest lighting and showing off pureLight lightmapping.

I think I had >70 meshes.

#12 I keep forgetting that relative to the origin trick!

#13 So whether I export it as once giant mesh, or several pieces, as long as I make sure I change each piece's origin point then I'm good. I didn't know that. Thanks.

#14 I installed T3D 1.2 today and out of curiosity tried a DIF interior and it loaded, although the textures were missing. Playing with the material editor, I got a few loaded.

Is this an on the fly conversion to a vertex mesh, or something else?

#15 A DIF's a DIF, in the world editor file->export interiors to collada or file->export to collada.

DIF only really exists to allow for loading and conversion now.

#16 I hate trying to skin a massive monolithic mesh - especially one like the original Chinatown. Originally, Chinatown was all one mesh with one texture. Our art team spent quite a bit of time making it modular, and then even more time making it "good enough" to put in the art pack.

My approach is to build sections in world unit multiples (so I can use "snap to grid" to align everything easily) and assemble the pieces in T3D's editor. Though I like Steve's "build the thing in blender and dump it out in one big set" idea, too. It is easier to get material mapping right on smaller objects, at least for me. But then again, I'm no artist.

#17 "world unit" What are these units, in comparison to Blender.

1 blender unit = ? world units.

I know, I've probably seen this in the documentation and skimmed over it. But knowing that may be nice for future meshes.

Right now, I'm just using imperial units in Blender, so I have an idea of how big things are compared to me, but translated into the game, I definitely have to increase the scale of the objects.

Maybe this is probably better suited for an entirely separate thread

#18 In any modelling application, a single unit is one meter in T3D. So, if you make a box 1x1x1 in your modelling application, it will be a one meter cube in T3D. (Unless something has changed since TGE - but this seems to work as it always has).

#19 I would certainly build interiors for Torque in much the same way Skyrim does it. Build a set of room and hall shapes that are more or less empty, and a ton of individual "props" that you can place with the world editor.

The main reasons are artistic flexibility and memory management. You'll also spend less time in your 3D app guessing, and more time in Torque making.

#20 I'm only recommending constructor, because it is extremely fast for mockups, urban structures and blocking out precise level parts. It is much more "rigid" than "my favourite 3D app" when it comes to units, and grid snapping.

Not having to work all the time at the vertex level when you are trying to build urban stuctures is very useful (I absolutely hate 3DSMax's grid). Constructing walls in a regular 3D app is generally boring vertex work, csg brushs do half of this work for you by stripping out hidden faces and merging vertexes occuping the same place. Uvw mapping is also more adapted to level design than, lets say a regular uvwmapping tool.

I feel that constructor does a good job at being a "glue" for testing structural models, and getting something quickly into the engine, which can then be imported in max, and refined if necessary.

But hey, before 3dsmax, i spent a lot of time in Valve hammer editor, so maybe that's just nostalgia :)