There is a lot of talk about 3D Model design applications. How about a level editor? Something appropriate for interior/exterior architectual design, of the likes seen in games such as Quake or Unreal.
I’ve got my hands on a program called GTKRadiant (free) that does this, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to export to a Unity friendly format. Did anyone successfuly use GTKRadiant with Unity?
There is also SketchUp, but the Pro/Commercial license is out of my range right now.
Blender is going to be your best bet for a free 3D app. Most level editors are specific to their respective game engine I think. For Unity, the best bet would be to just grab the most competent 3D app that you can afford. Blender is more than capable of creating great environments for use in Unity and if you can get used to its eccentric UI it can’t be beat for the price.
iirc it’s illegal to use radiant with another game engine (at least commercially). same with alot of them like hammer etc. just grab a 3d app like (as was said) blender or wings or whatever works for you. your 3d app is your level editor for geo. you do scripting etc in unity.
torgue game engine, irrlicht game engine and crystal space all have converters for using the gpl’d gtkradiant as a mapper resource. so as far as i can tell, it can be used, but how to get a bsp compiled geometry into unity…i have no idea.
if it’s even possible, only the geniuses of the uniteam can say…
hey good find harrio. been a while since i looked. can’t you get a .map format out? what about .3ds?
[edit: ya know i’m just one of those guys who says, “cool! try it.” about everything but i really should add… why bother?! just use blender and be done with it! but to each his own. if you like radiant and can work it out, go for it! and of course if you have maps already made in radiant, i imagine it would be nice to get the geo out. anyway…]
i think a .map format is possible, maybe through lightwave or something else. i don’t know about .3ds. using radiant would be good because the workflow is designed for mapping so i think it may be faster or more efficient than most 3d apps. although i’m sure most apps, blender included, could duplicate what can be done in radiant, i don’t know if it could be done as quickly, efficiently or intuitively as a ‘mapper’ app.
anyone on the uniteam, know how/if gtkradiant maps can be imported somehow into unity? it’s a great app for that specific purpose.
yeah but level editors like radiant are also so you can place lights and entities and such. create lightmaps and so on. many of them texture by face rather than uv (don’t know about radiant). plus they were built for specific engines. i really doubt you’d be able to get all that info out except as a bsp compile.
so really it could only useful for geo in terms of unity. then you’d need to convert your geo. you could do it with say a .map through realityfactory (free for the pc) or another converter to a .3ds or whatever and then into blender (or whatever). then you would have to uv in blender.
seems like extra work. aside from having existing maps you want to access, i really think one would be better off just learning blender in the first place. you’d have to know it or some other app anyway. plus it does more. if you have any cash to spare, there are plenty of arch viz tools for apps like lightwave (around $800 + additional plugins like lwcad 2). i’m sure there are free tools for blender too.
but as i said, to each his own. everyone should use whatever works for them! i’m only trying to point out to dafu the possible issues in trying to use something like radiant.
on a side note, it would be fun to do a quake or maybe even rtcw remix in unity! that’d be ambitious!
I’ve been learning basics of Blender past few days, and it does seem good enough to do most kinds of level editing.
With that in mind, does anyone know where I could get a set of Blender addons/plugins that ease the task of level editing? For example, last night I tried to make a simple cube room, to accomplish this I had to make a basic cube, extrude all sides of it to make walls and then delete the inner cube. That’s a lot more work than in GTK radiant where you can turn any shape into a room with a click of a mouse, it extrudes for you to a given wall thickness.
Speaking of rooms, my first approach was just to make a simple 6 sided cube and put my objects inside of it. Collisions don’t seem to work like that, my guess is that the normals of the cube would have to be flipped? Is this possible? Or is it still recommended to follow the Quake-ish approach of outlining a room with cube-walls as I described in the paragraph above?
yep just flip the normals. think it’s just hit the f key. been a while since i used blender - don’t remember exactly. you can also hit the space bar with your cursor in the 3d window and a pop menu will appear. pretty sure you need to be in edit mode. go to faces/flip normals in the menu. you’d only need wall thickness if you want it (like where a door would be). the collision thing might also have to do with scale and time scale.
you can import vector art into blender as an eps i think which means you could draw a floor plan in illustrator and bring it in. then extrude it. i think you can also draw splines in blender. i’d check out blenderartists.org and search for arch viz.
I’ve been looking, really for anything that can assist in level creation in blender. I feel like I can make solid assets fine, but hollowing out rooms, and just…general level design is tricker. I’ve used hammer and found that to be rather simpole
Just need to study Blender… You can extrude spline objects, or grab a series of vertices and drag them, then select the desired vertices, press “F” to fill the perimeter with faces, etc.
And it also does a pretty decent job of importing/exporting…
Seems like an interesting tool. May have to give it a once over when trying to use Blender tonight. From the screens it seem to have the layout I enjoy (top, side, back and 3d).
I like that a lot also, as my first level making tool ever, was the HL2 hammer editor.
heres the cliffs notes version:
When you open Blender, your cursor will most likely be in 3D space. Move it to the top of the screen, near the centre, until it overlaps the 3D workspace and the header above (the cursor should turn into this double-ended arrow thingy).
When you’ve done this, right click and select “split area”. This will cause the screen to divide vertically. You can slide the line back and forth if you want one side bigger than the other. When you like where it is, left click and the screen will be divided into two panels.
Once this is done, move the cursor to the extreme left or right of the screen (it doesn’t matter which…you’re going to do both sides) until you see the double ended arrow again. Repeat what you did vertically, right clicking to select “split area” and then left clicking when the screen is divided where you want it. After you’ve done one side, do the other…thus dividing into four views.
Finally, go into each window and select the view you want. You do this with your numeric keypad. Make sure your numberlock is on and use the keypad…the numbers along the top of the keyboard control layers so you don’t want to touch them! the “7” key on your keypad provides the top view, “3” is the side view, “1” is the front view, and “5” is perspective. Typing one of these while your cursor is in one of the windows will switch it to that view. Personally? I’d also make the 3 “straight on” views as wireframe. You can click the button that changes from solid-textures, etc. Its one of the choices there as well.
One final step. To save from having to do this every time you open Blender, there are two different things you can do. First, if you save a file at this point (call it “4-view” or something simple so you’ll remember it) you could load it every time you open Blender.
So… basically blender is about configuring it to be like you like, however that may be… but that aside…
I saw a different thread here where people can probably weigh in more on the pros and cons of each. ( I see its your creation ,prophet :P). In any case I’ll be following that.
I will say that my time making levels in blender has gotten…ever so slightly easier now that i found and explored blender’s snapping capabilities, but I am still learning and struggling with texturing an entire level. Some useful forum members have pointed me to some solid resources on that, but I am always open and grateful for more tutorials that ease the difficulty of unwrapping basically a whole level.
that’d be ambitious!