the way i understood it is: You want to be able to click and drag an outline. Following that you want to be able to manipulate the outline. when your happy with what your outline has become, you "press a button" and the outline gets filled in and forms a face.
was that correct?
A sort of workaround for this is to just create a face, extrude it and then instead of extruding it further just grabbing a face and moving it with texture lock off. that way you wont end up with a multitude of extrusions on your meshes.
<!--quoteo(post=1740638:date=Nov 26 2009, 05:48 PM:name=Nossah)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Nossah @ Nov 26 2009, 05:48 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1740638"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->the way i understood it is: You want to be able to click and drag an outline. Following that you want to be able to manipulate the outline. when your happy with what your outline has become, you "press a button" and the outline gets filled in and forms a face.
was that correct?
A sort of workaround for this is to just create a face, extrude it and then instead of extruding it further just grabbing a face and moving it with texture lock off. that way you wont end up with a multitude of extrusions on your meshes.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yep that's exactly what I want... but I guess that workaround is really the only way to do what I'm trying. Alright, I'll give that shot then. Thanks :)
I would really like a selection filter, to limit the kind of things you can select. Along with buttons, using 1-5 as hotkeys would be very handy. For example you can press: 1 - Will only let you select geometry faces (no verts, edges or models) 2 - Will only let you select geometry edges (no faces, etc.) 3 - Only select vertices 4 - Only select models 5 - Only select entities (lights, spawnpoints, etc)
If you've ever used 3DS Max, this is a very similar idea to what they have in there.
Also, when entering values into a text box (ie. entering a texture offset), pressing the TAB key should select the next text input box, not switch tools causing you to have to switch back and reselect what you were editing!
A vert snap tool would also be nice. While moving a selection, pressing the v key will snap the origin of your selection to nearby vertices in whatever axis/plane you were moving in. Look at Maya's implementation of this for reference.
Basically, it'd be awesome if you took a good look at how 3DS Max and Maya handle editing geometry and things like selection, and implemented some of their tried-and-true methods.
I'd really like the ability to "unweld" vertices and move a face without warping the other faces around it.
Along the same lines, I'd like the ability to partially extrude a face; let me explain with an example: say I want the bottom side of a square to stay where it is, I'd like to extrude the top side of a square and have it create new faces on only 3 sides (to determine which face you want to extrude, you could select it first)
have a "ball" tool where u can bulid ball and "eggy" shapes, those could come in handy.
now this one i was thinking about, i dunno if it gonna get implemented or if it is even possible but here we go. a DI painting tool would be awsome, where u could point then hold LMB and move it and it draws DI, and if u move it on the same place the DI would get thicker, RMB could serve as a decrese function, hold it and move it on a thick DI to make thinner and smaller untill it disappears.
<b>Big suggestion</b>: Release the editor (not the engine, obviously) under the GPL or a similar license and allow user contributions to be put back in to the editor. The purpose is not to encourage forking, but to garner additional editor features that are deemed useful by UWE/the community. One feature that is likely out-of-scope right now (but hopefully doable post-release as a community effort) would be introducing a plugin system to add new tools (e.g. geometry generators/importers/etc.). Now, I can think of several reasons why you might want to keep the editor closed-source, so it would be nice if at least consideration might be given to a plugin system for the power it gives the community.
<b>Littler suggestion</b> (this is a good example of something that could be a plugin / later feature): Someone already suggested "splines" earlier to help with generating pipes/wires, etc., and I figured I'd throw in more support. It's really great to have all this stuff that fits together, but it would be awesome if it was trivial handle the common operation of fitting it together.
For the most part, props would have properties that allow easy classification (for example, you should be able to select "triple-pipe props" as a spline's "type", which causes it to select at random from a set of geometrically-compatible pipe props). Splines would default to first-time random generation of the props, but the mapper could always change the props later, although they still remain "slaved" to the spline. The spline would handle automatic swapping of props for certain angles (e.g. 90-degree angles might get a L-joint prop in the proper orientation). If you take it further and let the user create their own geometry as a prop (e.g. brushwork representing some floor grate), you could see how maps could almost be entirely composed of splines. It's already the case that NS2 hallways are almost entirely composed of props.
I don't know if other editors support this sort of thing (my mapping experience is exclusively in the realm of quake, and I have only seen basic geometry generation of this sort in QuArK...and I can't find much with google), but this would bring NS2 fantastically close to pseudo-procedural content generation. You can really take this sort of thing a lot further to generate props themselves, but that's getting a bit out of hand :)
<!--quoteo(post=1741526:date=Nov 30 2009, 04:22 AM:name=Dogbite)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Dogbite @ Nov 30 2009, 04:22 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1741526"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->2.) Is there a way to have the other 3 views center on where the camera is looking automatically? I may have missed it.
This would be a time saver too. Also, without scroll bars on the other view windows it can be a little tricky manually and wasn't intuitive at first.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> the closest thing would be zoom to selection. select what you want to look at and hit "z".
feature request: *Carve tool... so that any planes overlapping an existing face will cut a hole... useful shortcut to make oddly shaped holes in things ;) *ability to modify multiple assets (such as lights) at the same time *generic textures of crazy office antics! *a toggle button to lock the grid to a specific selected geometry (even after deselected) -- (functioning like holding the shift button)
I've been playing around with trying to create pipes. I have figured out how to make the bend alright, but my problems arise when I got to remove all the extra surfaces created. So far I've really missed two options:
Snapping. Snapping to centerpoints of circles, endpoints of lines, the faces of objects (to get that lamp to not float) and similar. The option to move a surface and attach a point of it to another one. Right now you can do something similar, but instead of moving the face you can move the point of it and snap it to another one, changing the shape of the original face. I'd like the option to move the face to the snap point instead of distorting it.
An option wich lets all surfaces wich is intersected by other surfaces be cut along the intersection line. To trim away all potential extra faces inside/outside of pipes easily.
An option to make donuts and other more advanced shapes would also be nice (rotate a face around a centerpoint). Basically what I've been trying to imitate but lack some options to do efficiently.
Been having great fun with it so far, and I'm sure I will enjoy it more still.
I really want a combined spotlight + omni light. Attempting to select a spot & omni combo individually to move/adjust it is a pain, as is creating it to begin with.
Sometimes when I scale props the editor seems to get confused about which direction they should extend from the origin along the direction(s) of motion while moving them. Inevitably this happens as I'm nudging the prop into just the right place, throwing it way out of line.
In the perspective view, orient the move tool so that each plane is always accessible, i.e. the tool "opens up" towards the camera. (right now it appears to be fixed) That way I can move stuff without first having to fly around to a place where the plane I wanted isn't blocked by a plane I didn't.
Please, please let me adjust the settings of multiple lights at the same time.
The rotate tool seems finicky. That or I'm not doing it right. Is it based on simple linear motion in the axis, mimicking a circle, super double crazy magic voodoo? Please fix and/or document this.
I'm sure it's been mentioned, but the ability to group objects together / create prefabs.
A "rotate spotlight direction to this point" tool. In fact, just making the very center of the spotlight cone a movable point that automagically adjusts the direction and length would be awesome.
Tags for props, (e.g. models/props/refinery/refinery_wallmods_04_upperpanel1.model would get "wall, panel, upperpanel, set, lights, ...") that I can customize. The existing search is great, but I often mentally fumble panel and console among other things.
Thanks for this great editor. I haven't done any mapping in years (when I did it was for NS1, never finished much though). Honestly just the experience of using an editor that's a lot closer to what things felt like they should have been then has been worth the money.
Have to mention that I haven't had the time to try out Spark yet, and that I don't know if this feature is available, but it would be great if there was a "new features" window. This would just be a list of new features in the latest release of Spark. You keep the old features in the list but add new ones on top in green. And it should be divided into categories; texturing, lighting, geometry creation, geometry handling and so on... Sorry if this is a feature already in place.
Other than that I'm happy as an alley cat with Spark ;)
Hmm, no one has suggested displacement. Some kind of displacement similar to the Hammer tool would be beneficial for creating terrain. Prop terrain is... not optimal. I'll add my +1s to carve and intersect for two or more selected faces, too.
<!--quoteo(post=1741912:date=Dec 1 2009, 10:52 AM:name=noncomposmentis)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(noncomposmentis @ Dec 1 2009, 10:52 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1741912"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Hmm, no one has suggested displacement. Some kind of displacement similar to the Hammer tool would be beneficial for creating terrain. Prop terrain is... not optimal. I'll add my +1s to carve and intersect for two or more selected faces, too.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> My understanding of displacements is that this is just the same as dragging vertices around in Spark.
<!--quoteo(post=1741959:date=Dec 1 2009, 10:32 PM:name=Daworm)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Daworm @ Dec 1 2009, 10:32 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1741959"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Displacements wont' be in the editor/game until after launch most likely. This has been stated previously.
And displacements allow you to create rolling / rocky / spiky terrain etc with littler effort. Doing that vertice by vertice? ... no thanks :)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I've made that... Made a circular hollow donut, then removed the lower half, and the outer walls. Flipped the walls inside out. Coppyed and rotaded it down so that the faces were rotating the same direction all the way around. Then I proseeded to extrude the faces and make them into triangular rails spiraling down the hole to the other side... All the faces.
Yes, it took alot of time, and I guess I spend way to much time on details. But it looks good.
<!--quoteo(post=1742165:date=Dec 2 2009, 05:30 PM:name=WatchMaker)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(WatchMaker @ Dec 2 2009, 05:30 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1742165"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Selection based undo and redo!
IE, pressing ctrl + z while having a certain object selected only reverts the most recent changes to that specific selected object.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What if you deleted a prop, for example. Then you selected a bunch of faces to edit their texture. Then you decide you didn't really want to delete that prop. You would have to unselect everything, hit undo, then re-select everything. Because if you kept the faces selected, it would revert them to something you did a while ago. Or did I understand this wrong?
<!--quoteo(post=1742167:date=Dec 2 2009, 06:36 PM:name=edkrst)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(edkrst @ Dec 2 2009, 06:36 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1742167"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->What if you deleted a prop, for example. Then you selected a bunch of faces to edit their texture. Then you decide you didn't really want to delete that prop. You would have to unselect everything, hit undo, then re-select everything. Because if you kept the faces selected, it would revert them to something you did a while ago. Or did I understand this wrong?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You're correct, issues like this would certainly come up. I guess a separate hot key for this form of undo and redo would have to be utilized in order to avoid this peculiarities.
Comments
was that correct?
A sort of workaround for this is to just create a face, extrude it and then instead of extruding it further just grabbing a face and moving it with texture lock off. that way you wont end up with a multitude of extrusions on your meshes.
was that correct?
A sort of workaround for this is to just create a face, extrude it and then instead of extruding it further just grabbing a face and moving it with texture lock off. that way you wont end up with a multitude of extrusions on your meshes.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yep that's exactly what I want... but I guess that workaround is really the only way to do what I'm trying. Alright, I'll give that shot then. Thanks :)
A hot key to control which axies it will 'lock on to'
It would exclude the selected axies
whereby if I hold 'Z' it gives me the X Y grid
but if I switch to X, it switch to an Y Z facing grid
I came upon this after frustration drawing stairs...
BTW I really like the way it automatically draws onto a face, even if its diagonal
Another option would be to just lock on to the current axis
Along with buttons, using 1-5 as hotkeys would be very handy.
For example you can press:
1 - Will only let you select geometry faces (no verts, edges or models)
2 - Will only let you select geometry edges (no faces, etc.)
3 - Only select vertices
4 - Only select models
5 - Only select entities (lights, spawnpoints, etc)
If you've ever used 3DS Max, this is a very similar idea to what they have in there.
Also, when entering values into a text box (ie. entering a texture offset), pressing the TAB key should select
the next text input box, not switch tools causing you to have to switch back and reselect what you were editing!
A vert snap tool would also be nice. While moving a selection, pressing the v key will snap the origin of your selection
to nearby vertices in whatever axis/plane you were moving in. Look at Maya's implementation of this for reference.
Basically, it'd be awesome if you took a good look at how 3DS Max and Maya handle editing geometry and things like selection,
and implemented some of their tried-and-true methods.
Along the same lines, I'd like the ability to partially extrude a face; let me explain with an example: say I want the bottom side of a square to stay where it is, I'd like to extrude the top side of a square and have it create new faces on only 3 sides (to determine which face you want to extrude, you could select it first)
Footstep sound: Metal, grid, wood
Surface: Wet (way more shiny and slippery level), dirty (dust particles when walked on), ..
now this one i was thinking about, i dunno if it gonna get implemented or if it is even possible but here we go.
a DI painting tool would be awsome, where u could point then hold LMB and move it and it draws DI, and if u move it on the same place the DI would get thicker, RMB could serve as a decrese function, hold it and move it on a thick DI to make thinner and smaller untill it disappears.
Release the editor (not the engine, obviously) under the GPL or a similar license and allow user contributions to be put back in to the editor. The purpose is not to encourage forking, but to garner additional editor features that are deemed useful by UWE/the community. One feature that is likely out-of-scope right now (but hopefully doable post-release as a community effort) would be introducing a plugin system to add new tools (e.g. geometry generators/importers/etc.). Now, I can think of several reasons why you might want to keep the editor closed-source, so it would be nice if at least consideration might be given to a plugin system for the power it gives the community.
<b>Littler suggestion</b> (this is a good example of something that could be a plugin / later feature):
Someone already suggested "splines" earlier to help with generating pipes/wires, etc., and I figured I'd throw in more support. It's really great to have all this stuff that fits together, but it would be awesome if it was trivial handle the common operation of fitting it together.
For the most part, props would have properties that allow easy classification (for example, you should be able to select "triple-pipe props" as a spline's "type", which causes it to select at random from a set of geometrically-compatible pipe props). Splines would default to first-time random generation of the props, but the mapper could always change the props later, although they still remain "slaved" to the spline. The spline would handle automatic swapping of props for certain angles (e.g. 90-degree angles might get a L-joint prop in the proper orientation). If you take it further and let the user create their own geometry as a prop (e.g. brushwork representing some floor grate), you could see how maps could almost be entirely composed of splines. It's already the case that NS2 hallways are almost entirely composed of props.
I don't know if other editors support this sort of thing (my mapping experience is exclusively in the realm of quake, and I have only seen basic geometry generation of this sort in QuArK...and I can't find much with google), but this would bring NS2 fantastically close to pseudo-procedural content generation. You can really take this sort of thing a lot further to generate props themselves, but that's getting a bit out of hand :)
Not sure if this has been mentioned.
There is middle mouse button panning in orthographic viewportss ;)
1.) I find I am missing the way you could hold down both mouse buttons in Hammer to move the camera vertically or horizontally.
This would allow us to look at a face and adjust our view hight at the same time.
Having to look up or down before moving and then refocusing is a lot slower and more clumsy.
2.) Is there a way to have the other 3 views center on where the camera is looking automatically? I may have missed it.
This would be a time saver too. Also, without scroll bars on the other view windows it can be a little tricky manually and wasn't intuitive at first.
This would be a time saver too. Also, without scroll bars on the other view windows it can be a little tricky manually and wasn't intuitive at first.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
the closest thing would be zoom to selection. select what you want to look at and hit "z".
Bevel- makes a beveled edge when used on lines and vertices, creating a new face
Collapse- all selected lines and faces become a single vertex
Dissolve- selected lines and faces become a single face by removing internal lines
Bridge- two selected faces connect along their lines, creating a 3d object
Intrude- makes a new face, the same shape as the selected face, centered on the existing face
More primitives- be able to create spheres, octotoads, pyramids, and toruses and inverted versions thereof
Extrude could work on multiple faces at once, causing all selected faces to extrude the same amount
*Carve tool... so that any planes overlapping an existing face will cut a hole... useful shortcut to make oddly shaped holes in things ;)
*ability to modify multiple assets (such as lights) at the same time
*generic textures of crazy office antics!
*a toggle button to lock the grid to a specific selected geometry (even after deselected) -- (functioning like holding the shift button)
Snapping. Snapping to centerpoints of circles, endpoints of lines, the faces of objects (to get that lamp to not float) and similar. The option to move a surface and attach a point of it to another one. Right now you can do something similar, but instead of moving the face you can move the point of it and snap it to another one, changing the shape of the original face. I'd like the option to move the face to the snap point instead of distorting it.
An option wich lets all surfaces wich is intersected by other surfaces be cut along the intersection line. To trim away all potential extra faces inside/outside of pipes easily.
An option to make donuts and other more advanced shapes would also be nice (rotate a face around a centerpoint). Basically what I've been trying to imitate but lack some options to do efficiently.
Been having great fun with it so far, and I'm sure I will enjoy it more still.
Sometimes when I scale props the editor seems to get confused about which direction they should extend from the origin along the direction(s) of motion while moving them. Inevitably this happens as I'm nudging the prop into just the right place, throwing it way out of line.
In the perspective view, orient the move tool so that each plane is always accessible, i.e. the tool "opens up" towards the camera. (right now it appears to be fixed) That way I can move stuff without first having to fly around to a place where the plane I wanted isn't blocked by a plane I didn't.
Please, please let me adjust the settings of multiple lights at the same time.
The rotate tool seems finicky. That or I'm not doing it right. Is it based on simple linear motion in the axis, mimicking a circle, super double crazy magic voodoo? Please fix and/or document this.
I'm sure it's been mentioned, but the ability to group objects together / create prefabs.
A "rotate spotlight direction to this point" tool. In fact, just making the very center of the spotlight cone a movable point that automagically adjusts the direction and length would be awesome.
Tags for props, (e.g. models/props/refinery/refinery_wallmods_04_upperpanel1.model would get "wall, panel, upperpanel, set, lights, ...") that I can customize. The existing search is great, but I often mentally fumble panel and console among other things.
Thanks for this great editor. I haven't done any mapping in years (when I did it was for NS1, never finished much though). Honestly just the experience of using an editor that's a lot closer to what things felt like they should have been then has been worth the money.
2. Add Triggers like their was in hammer.
Have to mention that I haven't had the time to try out Spark yet, and that I don't know if this feature is available, but it would be great if there was a "new features" window. This would just be a list of new features in the latest release of Spark. You keep the old features in the list but add new ones on top in green. And it should be divided into categories; texturing, lighting, geometry creation, geometry handling and so on... Sorry if this is a feature already in place.
Other than that I'm happy as an alley cat with Spark ;)
My understanding of displacements is that this is just the same as dragging vertices around in Spark.
And displacements allow you to create rolling / rocky / spiky terrain etc with littler effort. Doing that vertice by vertice? ... no thanks :)
*gravity shift! (in any form?)
*those tauron things for making circular hallway turns easier.
Or something to go in tool where you select just edges or just vertices and it connects them togeather?
And displacements allow you to create rolling / rocky / spiky terrain etc with littler effort. Doing that vertice by vertice? ... no thanks :)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I've made that... Made a circular hollow donut, then removed the lower half, and the outer walls. Flipped the walls inside out. Coppyed and rotaded it down so that the faces were rotating the same direction all the way around. Then I proseeded to extrude the faces and make them into triangular rails spiraling down the hole to the other side... All the faces.
Yes, it took alot of time, and I guess I spend way to much time on details. But it looks good.
IE, pressing ctrl + z while having a certain object selected only reverts the most recent changes to that specific selected object.
Yes, I know that's ridiculously complicated to do, probably... But damn, would it be useful.
IE, pressing ctrl + z while having a certain object selected only reverts the most recent changes to that specific selected object.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What if you deleted a prop, for example. Then you selected a bunch of faces to edit their texture. Then you decide you didn't really want to delete that prop. You would have to unselect everything, hit undo, then re-select everything. Because if you kept the faces selected, it would revert them to something you did a while ago. Or did I understand this wrong?
You're correct, issues like this would certainly come up. I guess a separate hot key for this form of undo and redo would have to be utilized in order to avoid this peculiarities.