Hey thanks for posting this, hopefully people are ok with the informal-ness of this tutorial. My audio is a little quiet, so sorry, you have to turn it up a little. Also the crash bug in 246 made this video a little frustrating, but hopefully you won't have to deal with it.
One of the things I failed to talk about was using groups to change visibility and how that helps you. Please ask me any questions you have about the editor.
As I watch this I want to stress environment light is to make sure all faces are at least slightly lit, as a compliment to normal lights & spot lights. It's really best as a gentle background effect, in all areas but very soft.
Lastly, can someone explain to me how you use the color gradient tool?
I watched the tutorial, and got a small-mid sized room pieced together. I encountered more crashes than I can count though. In its current state, anyone beginning to use the level editor must be fairly discouraged/frustrated.
I also cannot seem to get a couple of my faces to texturize, and I believe this is due to the actual faces no longer being present (they were removed somehow). But when I try to recreate them with the line tool and/or the rectangle tool either nothing seems to happen, or I get a complete crash, or I manage to get a half wall (and then a crash). I hope to see the tools developed further, and more tutorials of course!
Thank you for your efforts, the material out there is very slim (the official wiki itself lacking a lot of information)!
I watched the tutorial, and got a small-mid sized room pieced together. I encountered more crashes than I can count though. In its current state, anyone beginning to use the level editor must be fairly discouraged/frustrated.
I also cannot seem to get a couple of my faces to texturize, and I believe this is due to the actual faces no longer being present (they were removed somehow). But when I try to recreate them with the line tool and/or the rectangle tool either nothing seems to happen, or I get a complete crash, or I manage to get a half wall (and then a crash). I hope to see the tools developed further, and more tutorials of course!
Thank you for your efforts, the material out there is very slim (the official wiki itself lacking a lot of information)!
All I can do is apologize for UWE and say the fix is already slated for 247, they just haven't published yet. That will solve the majority of your issues here. The other is to try to triangle in your geometry. I have done the entirety of angst so far with this bug, so I assure you it is possible though frustrating.
I also cannot seem to get a couple of my faces to texturize, and I believe this is due to the actual faces no longer being present (they were removed somehow). But when I try to recreate them with the line tool and/or the rectangle tool either nothing seems to happen, or I get a complete crash, or I manage to get a half wall (and then a crash). I hope to see the tools developed further, and more tutorials of course!
My workaround for this is to find the size of your empty face. Use the draw edge tool to get the dimensions. Then draw a new face in some empty space away from your room. Then you can just copy/paste the face you just created into the space you are having trouble drawing a face. This will cause you to have a ton of extra vertices, but once you get everything in place you can "weld nearby vertices" to reduce this number.
I wouldn't do any of that line stuff. It's too buggy. Just build everything out of cubes, and use Blender for complex areas.
Complex geometry is unavoidable and necessary to make models fit well. You would actually spend more time creating custom models to fit your room than you would creating geometry to make the current models fit well. Please take some time to thumb through the UWE maps to see how they balance geometry & models, as it's also important to the number of draw calls in a room (max should be around 1800). During the course of even creating a graybox like angst you need the line tool, even just to separate one face into two so you can extrude one. You will regardless end up in a situation where you will have to input a face: eloitmat's fix is a great workaround, just don't forget to weld it back in place.
And again, the line fix will be in 247 - please do not teach yourself to map avoiding the line tool because one release had a bug.
FlaterectomyNetherlandistanJoin Date: 2005-02-03Member: 39643Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
Another method of creating the face is to just select its outer lines and select Create Face under Edit (or hit Alt+C) while you have the Select Tool active. This will only work if the lines are connected to each other, though.
I personally have not had the editor crash because I don't use the method that's making it crash. It wasn't until a friend described what I needed to do in order to make it crash that I managed to make it happen. :>
Another method of creating the face is to just select its outer lines and select Create Face under Edit (or hit Alt+C) while you have the Select Tool active. This will only work if the lines are connected to each other, though.
I personally have not had the editor crash because I don't use the method that's making it crash. It wasn't until a friend described what I needed to do in order to make it crash that I managed to make it happen. :>
This is so much of an easier way to create faces! I'm not sure how I didn't know about this already... oh right there was no tutorial.
I was about to say what Flat said. That line method seems like a real hassle.
I also realized that I've made my whole map without the grid, should I switch now?
I was about to say what Flat said. That line method seems like a real hassle.
I also realized that I've made my whole map without the grid, should I switch now?
It is a hassle... I feel so dumb now... hours wasted...
No reason to, just because the lengths aren't in multiples of 8 or something doesn't make a big difference. Just select all geometry, snap to min grid, and check for distortion - which should be minimal, just rounding issues e.g. one room's floor at 5.49 height and the next (unwelded) floor at 5.51 will cause a 1 unit discrepancy after snap to min grid. You can use the hole checker to help find leaks (like the ns1 days) - since they won't be larger than 1 unit it will be hard to find them visually.
Edit: another good tip everyone should know - moving something with alt but the sensitivity isn't good enough to align precisely? View what you want to align in perspective, and then zoom in far in on a top/side view and then alt+move the object - it will move much slower, letting you align more accurately.
When moving copied chunks of geometry you can easily snap it to place to the other geometry by double clicking the copied chunk. Press and drag one of the vertexes of the copied chunk with the move tool it should now start to move as a "free move" mode so you can drag it at any axis. You can now snap it to any vertex on your level.
It's really quick since you don't need to use the move gizmo at all to align your beloved cloned geometry of choice with the rest of the level, just drag one corner and snap it to another corner, quick and easy.
Comments
I reference a couple things:
Mendasp's one click map test
Mendasp's entity setup
Rudy's tutorials
One of the things I failed to talk about was using groups to change visibility and how that helps you. Please ask me any questions you have about the editor.
As I watch this I want to stress environment light is to make sure all faces are at least slightly lit, as a compliment to normal lights & spot lights. It's really best as a gentle background effect, in all areas but very soft.
Lastly, can someone explain to me how you use the color gradient tool?
I also cannot seem to get a couple of my faces to texturize, and I believe this is due to the actual faces no longer being present (they were removed somehow). But when I try to recreate them with the line tool and/or the rectangle tool either nothing seems to happen, or I get a complete crash, or I manage to get a half wall (and then a crash). I hope to see the tools developed further, and more tutorials of course!
Thank you for your efforts, the material out there is very slim (the official wiki itself lacking a lot of information)!
All I can do is apologize for UWE and say the fix is already slated for 247, they just haven't published yet. That will solve the majority of your issues here. The other is to try to triangle in your geometry. I have done the entirety of angst so far with this bug, so I assure you it is possible though frustrating.
I personally have not had the editor crash because I don't use the method that's making it crash. It wasn't until a friend described what I needed to do in order to make it crash that I managed to make it happen. :>
I also realized that I've made my whole map without the grid, should I switch now?
Edit: another good tip everyone should know - moving something with alt but the sensitivity isn't good enough to align precisely? View what you want to align in perspective, and then zoom in far in on a top/side view and then alt+move the object - it will move much slower, letting you align more accurately.