[HeadClot]

Hey - @ andrewmac

This is just a thought on the level design tools / Geo Tools for Torque 6.

These videos are from a feedback thread from the Unreal Engine 4 forums - That you can find here.






Allot of good points are brought up especially in the second video.

Either way just some food for thought

- HeadClot

[Duion]

Yes please make us a better level editor than unreal engine has.

[andrewmac]

@ HeadClot and @ Duion :

What is it about quake editor that's attractive? Is it the ability to edit the geometry so freely, or the 3-view grid system so moving objects around and resizing them? Or both?

I dug through the threads a bit and that lead me to the latest version of Hammer:


They seem to have went with the grid view as well and constructive geometry (BSP) seems popular. I'm just wondering what pieces of these we're really after? Are the grids a good way to do level editing? Or is it a thing of the past?

[andrewmac]

Here's a short video of CryDesigner:



I'm just trying to get a whole picture on what we're after here. CryDesigner seems to do things without the grid views. I can do it with or without the grid tools. Is the grid good for regular object placement too or only really useful for editing geometry?

[Duion]

Quake and Hammer editor are not attractive, the design and workflow is outdated and backwards, you don't really need four views and grids.
The Cry Engine thing is the way to go and this is similar to the sketch tool in Torque3D, it is much more fun to directly edit in the game in the 3D view.

[HeadClot]

@HeadClot and @ Duion :

What is it about quake editor that's attractive? Is it the ability to edit the geometry so freely, or the 3-view grid system so moving objects around and resizing them? Or both?

I dug through the threads a bit and that lead me to the latest version of Hammer:


They seem to have went with the grid view as well and constructive geometry (BSP) seems popular. I'm just wondering what pieces of these we're really after? Are the grids a good way to do level editing? Or is it a thing of the past?

Just thought I would chime in on this -

It is not really the quake editor but it is how it operates.

So - Back in the days of Doom / Quake the tools of the Doom and Quake editors allowed for rapid creation of levels using CSG/BSP. Basically you could do all your texturing and level design inside of the editor and not need to touch a third party app.

Basically allowing for a stream of consciousness on level design. What I mean by that is being able to iterate fast and modify things on the fly without relying on a 3rd party app apart from the engine. This goes for all things such as Lighting, Geometry Modification, Texturing, etc.

My advice would be to watch both videos that I have linked.

So what I would recommend is -

1. A mesh or CSG based solution for Torque 6.
2. Real time subtraction, addition, and other operations for new Geometry.
3. Highly Optimized for intricate and large scale scenes.
4. Texturing should should just work similar of that to the Quake 1 and Doom level editing tools.

Now for unreal engines CSG Tools -

CSG slows down the engine (Every face is a draw call) and you are forced to use 3rd party applications such as 3DS max and the like for creating assets. They are planning an upgrade to the toolset called Geometry Tools 2.0 but I am unsure right now.

So basically right now Geometry tools for Unreal Engine sucks right now. I cannot say for certain that will change but I am optimistic.

My advice would be look into a tool called trench broom - LINK

It used a singe real time view port to get things done also look into the dota 2 mod tools as they are a version of the Source 2 toolset.

[Duion]

"rapid" creating...
It was not rapid, actually it was very slow and complicated. It was hard to keep an overview in the four views from z,y,x and camera view. You could not test your level while you build it, so you build it blindly and when you wanted to test it you needed to compile it, export, start the game, load the level and test it, if something was not right, go back and repeat until satisfied.
Today you can just build in realtime in your 3D view, this is much more rapid.

Have you ever really build levels for quake, half-life etc? I did and I know that it was slow and painful and I don't want to go back to that era and that tools.
Trenchbroom or cube engine makes the process more rapid, but the output is still primitive like in that past and cannot keep up with todays standard.

[andrewmac]

I agree with both of you to some extent. I don't want to dive too deep into geometry editing tools, because as Duion said with the amount of work going into assets these days I can't keep up with Blender or 3DS max and it'll just become a game of cat and mouse as people try to get me to add more modelling features. I don't want to get caught spending months recreating functionality from Blender.

I think what I'll do is create a GeometryComponent which can take lists of faces and verts and render simple meshes. I'll make it so the rebuilding the vertex/index buffers only happens when a change is made to the geometry, so it should run just as fast as static geometry.

Without the editor it will serve as a way to construct geometry via script (possibly useful for the voxel crowd?). With the editor you'll have a small set of geometry editing tools that will let you add simple shapes, extend geometry, move verts/face/edges, and some simple UV mapping functions. The intention is to be able to prototype quick areas, or to serve as filler so you don't have to create insignificant geometry in outside programs.

At least, that's likely the best I can do for version 1.0. We can always expand on this later.

[saindd]

This is a good tool: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/3558

And this one, for the Quake fanatics, also: http://kristianduske.com/trenchbroom/

[HeadClot]

Hmmm... Just found out about Parametric design and various tools like Autodesk Dynamo and ARCHIMATIX for Unity3d.



To give you an Idea of what parametric design can do i would highly recommend checking out this thread on the Unity3D Forums and the Autodesk Dynamo Github.

What I am suggesting -

1. A Node based editor that would allow rapid creation of 3D Models inside of Torque 6.
2. Allow for extremely rapid iteration on said model.
3. Allow for reuse of node graphs and pre-existing Parametric assets.

I think that this video sums up what parametric design can do very well.

Make stuff extremely fast.

Anyway my 2 cents.

- HeadClot