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Easy Radiant Question


tnl

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I have radiant question!!

 

How possible easy, and fastly make windows in room and building.

 

 

Example: I make one room from 6 brush.

 

I want window. How possible make easily the hole?

 

I can delete one of 4 wall and make new wall from four

brush, after make windows from one simple brush.

 

in dromed enough

 

2 brush, in radiant 10 brush ???

 

 

front view

 

111111111111111111111111111

111111111111111111111111111

333333335555555555222222222

333333335555555555222222222

333333335555555555222222222

444444444444444444444444444

444444444444444444444444444

 

sliced

 

111

111

5

5

5

444

444

 

Possible make simplest????????????

Edited by tnl
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That is the worst thing about Doom 3 for me - I am so used to making Unreal engine maps, where you can carve holes out of a solid world, and D3 is the complete opposite. I don't understand it really, you end up using far more brushes/polys than you need to with Doom 3 type engines (although I assume it culls the unnecessary polys when you compile the map to BSP).

 

Does D3 do what Hammer/Worldcraft does, ie automatically make the walls by hollowing one brush, so you don't have to move so many brushes around? If not that means nearly six times the workload to make a map in D3 compared to Unreal/Dromed...

 

Serious Sam has a good editor, it lets you choose whether you want to start with a solid world or a void...

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Yeah, Radiant allows you to hollow a brush by doing a CSG subtract. In game, I don't think constructive solid geometry results in any more polys than the method Unreal takes. I think it's just a matter of taste. Personally I've always had a hard time wrapping my head around Unreal's/DromEds method, especially since in RL people make buildings by putting together peices of material rather than carving them out of a single block of wood. I have to admit that it's an ingenious way of making leaks impossible, though.

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It is horrifyingly effective at culling unnecessary polys - you don't need to caulk in D3 at all.

 

And in fact it's a lot faster IMO, especially than DromEd. In dromed, to make anything more complex than a box you have to have multiple brushes which all intersect and only work in the right order, and you then have to wait for it to compile before you can see it.

 

In D3 you just make the room out of solid bits, there's no hanging around waiting for compile, or even lighting as it's all instant. It's defintely the fastest editor I've worked with.

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It is horrifyingly effective at culling unnecessary polys - you don't need to caulk in D3 at all.

 

And in fact it's a lot faster IMO, especially than DromEd. In dromed, to make anything more complex than a box you have to have multiple brushes which all intersect and only work in the right order, and you then have to wait for it to compile before you can see it.

 

In D3 you just make the room out of solid bits, there's no hanging around waiting for compile, or even lighting as it's all instant. It's defintely the fastest editor I've worked with.

Agreed. I do not use Hollow at all, I find it confusing. Instead I just block out the floorplan of the map by drawing brushes that are one grid unit thick. Then I draw out a wall, bring it up to the correct height and clone/resize it all over the place to make the wall plan. Then I select all the floor brushes, clone them and drag upwards to make the ceiling.

 

The ability to quickly draw and resize solid brushes makes this very quick, even for fairly complex floorplans that would take a long time to create by resizing and rotating the Builder Brush in UnrealEd/T3Ed.

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I think what it comes down to, for the most part, is that this difference makes indoor spaces easier to make in Unreal, and outdoor spaces easier to make (because of the speed of brush creation) in Doom.

 

From Unreal's perspective, if working indoors only, it is very quick to subtract one single brush and have a whole room. If working outdoors, it is very slow to use the same method to add six brushes for walls, floor, ceiling.

 

From Doom's perspective, if working indoors only, it can be cumbersome to have to add every single wall for every single area - that's what I dislike about it. However, when outside, the addition of brushes is the same as Unreal, except Unreal brush design is so-goddamn-much-slower. It's really quite ridiculous that even today, UnrealEd STILL doesn't have convenient drag-n-draw brush creation.

 

In T3Ed, I find that I plan out a room (brush) and within 5 minutes I have it. In D3, you start laying brushes immediately, though you have to do so 6 or so times. I guess it does come down to preference, and I (obviously) have a gripe with both. I badly wish DoomEd had subtractive geometry, and I badly wish T3Ed could make anything other than a square brush in less than several minutes' work.

 

But of course, everyone in this thread already knows that, so this was really just a rant. Both are damn fine editors though, that's for sure.

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The last days i work with the editor. A found substract, vertex editing,

and how possible select brushhes these under some other brushes!!!!!

The resize is very good, i could work 2 times faster than dromed.

 

 

Only the lighting not good for me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

doom3 engine use pixel sized realtime lights. This Eat much cpu power

(10-25 framerate plus when i off the shadows) and not look too god!!!

 

In first time when i look projected shadow i think how i look some

grafical erorr!!!!!!!!! I used shadow off option in system/advanced menu,

in doom3 and the framerate is good. when i on the shadows, the

performance boosted!!!!!

I think in darkmod impossible off shadows options, if possible,

cause less shadows, more difficult the hiding!!!!!!

 

And the mods several times slower than modded game.

This slowness plus shadows cause how darkmod not enough

fast on my poor machine p2 2.4 512 mg ati 9600 xt!

ANd additin how realtime shadow not enough nice:(

 

 

The lightmaps very good things in games unfortunately doom3, and

t3 not use !

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I think what it comes down to, for the most part, is that this difference makes indoor spaces easier to make in Unreal, and outdoor spaces easier to make (because of the speed of brush creation) in Doom.

As someone who has almost exclusively used UnrealEd, I am probably very biased in its favour. I guess it comes down to what you are used to. The latest version of UnrealEd actually makes vertex dragging very convinient, and since a lot of geometry in UnrealEd is now prefered to be static meshes imported from a 3D app like Maya or Max, you dont need to make very complex shapes, although the 2D editor certainly makes it easy to do. Unreal actually makes large outdoor levels very easy - you simply carve out a huge cube, make it a Terrain zone, and then you can add geometry similaraly to the way you add it to D3 et al... The downside to UnrealEd now is the need to use a second 3D app to make static meshes - for some reason, the static meshes made in UnrealEd are horribly unoptimised, and kill framerates (something to do with the way UnrealEd handles vertex information), which I find very annoying - I would rather make geometry all in UnrealED for workflow reasons.

 

I haven't yet played with D3 Radiant, so I am looking forward to seeing how it does things - it sounds like it makes some things really easy...

 

I wish game developers would bring out map editors that made it easier to get by without using the big expensive 3D apps - not a lot of modders in my experience have access to Max or Lightwave etc, but they do have access to a huge range of shareware apps, but you always need to convert anything they output and fix all kinds of normal problems about five times before you can use it ingame.... makes for very slow workflow :angry:

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I won't put down UnrealEd as I rather like it. However, to clarify:

 

since a lot of geometry in UnrealEd is now prefered to be static meshes imported from a 3D app like Maya or Max

...now you need to be a modeler with Maya or Max. ;) Let's face it, that's a pain in the ass, and forces a mapper to do what they'd like to do in tools they may not have, with skills they also may not have. It's great that T3Ed has a ton of static meshes to choose from, but once you start making a level (I'm halfway through one) you find out real quick that not everything you want or need is there. Unfortunately, not even close. And what is there ends up far too often dictating the dimensions and layout of your map (something I'm currently quite disappointed with, probably part of the cause of me stepping back from it for a while).

 

On a loosely related note though: I DO wonder, just how much brush geometry T3Ed (and new UnrealEd versions) can handle. We've been told "keep the BSP simple, and do all detail that you can with static meshes." But how true/necessary is that? I haven't experimented, because brushwork is more clunky in UnrealEd, relatively speaking. I find it hard to believe that Unreal (1), which had such great occlusion, suddenly forgot how to ignore hidden triangles so well...? At the same time, part of the reason I wonder, is because it is supposed to be of the same/similar generation as D3, and for D3, you just throw polys at it by the tens of thousands and it eats them up - doesn't care if they are mesh, patch, or brush.

 

Unreal actually makes large outdoor levels very easy - you simply carve out a huge cube, make it a Terrain zone, and then you can add geometry similaraly to the way you add it to D3

While that is true in the spoken sense, and we all know Unreal has specialized in huge outdoor worlds since day one, the only real point I was trying to make here was in the relative ease of construction. And no way, no how is Unreal brush and vertex manipulation (by addition) as downright trivial and fast as it is in D3. D3's "drag LMB" to create a brush, versus Unreal's "go to vertex mode, lay down vertices, connect them" or worse, using the brush creation tool to set up size params and then fiddle with vertices afterword, /shiver. That's not to say UnrealEd doesn't have some advantages in other areas. I'm just trying to clarify what I was saying with regard to this. I tell you, if they would ever just implement D3Ed style drag-to-create-brush, it would be a huge improvement in UnrealEd. I understand that the way selection and deselection and navigation is currently set up wouldn't allow D3Ed style drag-LMB brush creation, but I'm sure they can come up with a hotkey. ;)

 

Just to balance my clarification, on the D3Ed side of the opposite point, I hate it that to make two rooms connected by a hallway, I need at least, what, 20 brushes? While in UnrealEd, I need 3. So, they both have "design decisions" <_< within that make me want to barf.

 

Aside: I'd love it if somewhere it was laid out a technical discussion (one based on fact, not assumption) that explains why Carmack decided to add to empty space with his engine, and Sweeney decided to go the opposite direction, subtracting from positive space. Why, why, why? Are there any real reasons? Rendering speed, or design convenience? Wanting to try something new, or following norms established in other software? Either could have an editor that works for each, as long as the resulting calculated BSP comes out the same.

 

I wish game developers would bring out map editors that made it easier to get by without using the big expensive 3D apps - not a lot of modders in my experience have access to Max or Lightwave etc

Yes. And I also find it amusing (amazing?) that these companies must realize by now that 90% of the people that "own" their product have stolen it, but they apparently don't care to do anything about it. A dedicated modeller is probably going to be the only person among the masses to legitimately own such expensive, specialized software.

 

Edit: Haha, by coincidence, the ad in the banner below contains the following:

 

"3DS Max 6 only $649"

 

Is that all?! :rolleyes:

Edited by SneaksieDave
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Their target market isn't people, it's companies, and companies are far less likely to take the risk of pirating, and generally better equipped to handle legitimate costs of production (heck, the cubicle might've cost more than that, nevermind the office space, or the computer it's running on, a computer purchased for the primary purpose of running that and related apps).

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SneaksieDave, to clarify, anything with Unreal Engine 2 and up allows you to make terrain by painting it with a brush (you can raise and lower terrain in the 3D view, and paint textures and static meshes over it), generating random terrain, or importing heightfileds, which I find very easy to use. You dont have to use vertex editing anymore. On a side note, I played around with making some half-life maps a while back, and found i could just add a huge block and carve out of it... And I have made UT maps with ridiculous poly counts that play fine on my 2.6 GHz P4 +1GB RAM + FX 5600... Obviously former iterations of Unreal Engine must have handled BSP geometry differently..

 

I think the advantage with static meshes is that you can have multiple instances of a high poly static mesh in the map, but you only need one copy of the mesh in memory, and that means you can have much higher poly counts overall. I am mightily annoyed with GMax - great idea, but the licencing costs for game companies mean very few will bother producing game packs for it, so it is virtually useless as anything other than a toy... Same with Maya PLE etc... At the moment, to use Gmax with Unreal, you have to save your mesh as MD3, convert the normals in another package, then convert it again in Milkshape - what a pain in the arse...

 

It is vastly easier to download a pirated copy of Max than it is to use GMax - they should just give Gmax decent export capability (.ase files for starters!), and sell it for a small fee - say $50 - would make better business sense to me... I'd buy it for that, and they would be making more money than if I were using a pirated copy of Max (which I'm not).

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Hmm, I wonder how that would work in D3Ed - to start with a huge brush and

carve from it. Might be worth experimenting with.

 

With regard to terrain, I really wish they hadn't taken that out of UnrealEd for T3. :(

 

I think the advantage with static meshes is that you can have multiple instances of a high poly static mesh in the map, but you only need one copy of the mesh in memory, and that means you can have much higher poly counts overall.

Heh, tell that to my T3 map. One semi-large area has nothing but the same columns and arches dozens of times and the framerate is the worst there of all places (though still acceptable).

 

I had a copy *cough* of 3DSMax R3 a long time ago, installed it once and played with it for a week. I was overwhelmed by how much you could do. I was determined to do every tutorial I could find, and learn it! But then I realized I forgot one thing: it's still very necessary to have sufficient artistic talent. :P

Edited by SneaksieDave
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Heh, tell that to my T3 map. One semi-large area has nothing but the same columns and arches dozens of times and the framerate is the worst there of all places (though still acceptable).

They may reside in the same memory, but are still individually rendered. Mind, saving memory is still quite useful...

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Heh, tell that to my T3 map. One semi-large area has nothing but the same columns and arches dozens of times and the framerate is the worst there of all places (though still acceptable).

Your speed problems probably have something to do with how you lit your columns: T3 uses a completely diferent, customised renderer to the vanilla Unreal Engine 2, and while it handles normal maps and dynamic shadows quite nicely, it doesn't seem to like having lots of lights at once or large poly counts (compared to say Unreal Tournament 2K4). You didn't say how you lit your columns, but I suspect if you are using too many lights, that will be the culprit. I have personally given up on T3 editing - too much seems to have been hard coded, and it takes too much time. I'll be very happy when Nightblade gets released though (I suspect I might be in for a rather long wait however)

 

:)

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I was responding to:

 

you can have much higher poly counts overall

I took that as suggesting an individual scene will run faster, but perhaps that's not what you meant. Although using the same mesh over and over saves on memory by reusing the same information for each instance, it doesn't make rendering any faster. But I'm sure you know that, so we all look silly telling each other the same things.

 

If you're wondering about the columned room I spoke of - no, the lighting is not sloppy and all over the place, overlapping, etc. It's barely lit with mostly darkness, and no light touches too many meshes (in fact, they pretty much light the column area they're attached to, minimal overlap, and that's it.) It's just that it's a large area, with other complex areas off to the sides (portalized off), a ton of polys being rendered, and realtime lighting of course. Framerate in the low teens on a 1.4GHz / GF4 - so it's a bit faster than the city sections for me, for the most part (which dipped below 10 FPS at times!)

 

I seem to have gotten myself into yet more messageboard ping pong. :blink:

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Well, I didn't mean to tell you something you already knew! Sorry if I misinterpreted what you said... :)

 

What I meant was the GPU can only render so many polys at once at any given framerate, but you can limit AGP/PCI-x16 bottlenecks by using static meshes. It will only improve framerates when memory is the critical factor slowing things down... otherwise a poly is a poly as far as rendering is concerned, and total number of polys, textures and lighting factors are what count in the end.

 

Hmm that really puts the last nail in the coffin for T3 editing for me - it is beginning to sound really limited... I just think T3 has been so optimised for consoles that if you deviate in any way from its hard coded limitations, you will have dodgy framerates. too bad, at least we have DarkMod on the way!

 

:D

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Yikes, I didn't mean to go driving any nails in coffins. It runs fine, but there is a noticeable decrease in framerate in that room. It is a high poly, large-ish scale scene, afterall. And on a slow machine too. I wonder if there's a debug stat for poly count...

 

Hey wait a second. This was a D3Ed thread! :blink:

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As someone who has almost exclusively used UnrealEd, I am probably very biased in its favour.  I guess it comes down to what you are used to.

 

As always. :)

 

The downside to UnrealEd now is the need to use a second 3D app to make static meshes - for some reason, the static meshes made in UnrealEd are horribly unoptimised, and kill framerates (something to do with the way UnrealEd handles vertex information), which I find very annoying - I would rather make geometry all in UnrealED for workflow reasons.

 

IMO it makes sense to use a real 3D app. If I would create a completely new game I woudl take the same approach. Why spending years of work to create a working 3D app, when there are already existing tons of excellent 3D application? You have to spend a great deal of time developing this and what you get is nowhere near the class that a good 3D app achieves. This time is better spent to write an importer and on the game itself. And with the increased capabillities of games it will become harder and harder to keep up with 3D apps just to have an editor. I always thought that it would be much better if I had a game which could import a 3D file from i.E. Blender as the map geometry instead of learning yet another new editor.

 

I haven't yet played with D3 Radiant, so I am looking forward to seeing how it does things - it sounds like it makes some things really easy...

 

I have no experience with other editors and limited experience with some 3D apps, but I found the D3 editor quite convinient to use, once I got used to the interface.

 

I wish game developers would bring out map editors that made it easier to get by without using the big expensive 3D apps - not a lot of modders in my experience have access to Max or Lightwave etc, but they do have access to a huge range of shareware apps, but you always need to convert anything they output and fix all kinds of normal problems about five times before you can use it ingame....  makes for very slow workflow :angry:

 

If they would support Blender natively, this would alerady be a big step. After all it's free and it can do all the stuff that you need. Of course for big comapnies they do not care much about the license fees for Maya or Lightwave. :)

Gerhard

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But then I realized I forgot one thing: it's still very necessary to have sufficient artistic talent. :P

That's right. No app will help you with that. :) But one thing is for sure. Such applications can allow a very crappy artist (like myself) to create something which is recognizable, even though I will never reach Oddities height. On the other hand, given enough determination I might, one can never know. :) A great deal can be learned in visual arts, even if you still may lack that final artistic bit.

Gerhard

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I have personally given up on T3 editing - too much seems to have been hard coded, and it takes too much time.

That was to be expected, IMO, from the comments that you could read before release. T3 was never intended to be customizable and therefore not much thought was put in such tools or datastructures. With such applications they are ALWAYS coded in such a way. And this is not even true for games it is true for most applications. I have worked on a lot of projects and I know that part of the coding process very well even though I always tried to get around it where I could. :)

Gerhard

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You should rather hope that the developers have slower machines then you (not true in my case). If a developer has a slow machine he needs to optimize that it performs well on his machine. If he has a fast machine he will not even see the problems you might run into.

Gerhard

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true.

most windows platform developers ive worked with have pc's that just fly, and as you said, i have seen the applications developed on those machiens run like a turtle on sunday on older pc's.

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If they would support Blender natively, this would alerady be a big step. After all it's free and it can do all the stuff that you need. Of course for big comapnies they do not care much about the license fees for Maya or Lightwave. :)

I'm not sure what you mean by "natively" - both D3 and Unreal support the ASE format which can be used perfectly from Blender. Of course T3 has to do things differently and use a custom-designed in-house format for meshes (presumably a design decision to optimise for - you guessed it - XBox).

 

To those comparing the relative merits of Unreal vs Doom 3's geometry paradigm, remember that you cannot use T3Ed as an example of Unreal's limitations. T3 uses a completely separate BSP tree which takes the Unreal BSP as its input (somebody presumably knows why, although I don't), and this "Flesh BSP" is what causes limitations on BSP complexity.

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