Editor tips + tricks
Fortune
Join Date: 2009-04-27 Member: 67290Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2009-04-27 Member: 67290Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">Please post on things you've found so far</div>Okay I'll start, because I noticed in the suggestion thread a couple of things that are already in the editor.
- The texture, mesh and properties window can be dragged from the right side of the screen and made a new window, the window positions will be saved when you close and start the editor (Except the default select tool menu). You can drag the menu from the side by dragging from it's title bar. This will also stop your viewports resizing.
- When you select a mesh with the select tool, under the scale options, you can mirror the mesh, just like in Unreal Ed 3. Just add a "-" before any of the values in the X, Y and Z fields e.g "| Y | -1 |"
- The texture, mesh and properties window can be dragged from the right side of the screen and made a new window, the window positions will be saved when you close and start the editor (Except the default select tool menu). You can drag the menu from the side by dragging from it's title bar. This will also stop your viewports resizing.
- When you select a mesh with the select tool, under the scale options, you can mirror the mesh, just like in Unreal Ed 3. Just add a "-" before any of the values in the X, Y and Z fields e.g "| Y | -1 |"
Comments
Another good one is alt+c to create a face if you end up with a gap. You will need to select all the surounding edges first, you can do this by double clicking one of the edges, you might have to play around a bit to find the right edge to double click on. For some reason creating a face will almost universally place it inverted to all the other faces so you will need to rotate around it, select it and press ctrl + f.
Anyway...
- This isn't specific to Spark but it's very useful because of the crashes, save often and save multiple files. The editor does have an auto backup which you can configure, but having versions of the same map at varying detail is a life saver when you find a bug you simply can't fix without going back in time. Do this also for when a map file eventually corrupts and you don't lose weeks of hard work because you only have one backup.
- Not everyone notices but when you paste a mesh, it's pasted at the exact origin of the original. So when you paste a mesh, use the move tool on what is selected to move it out of the way.
Open the layers tool ( under window or by pushing F7 ) and make a layer for the lights. Click on the lights u wanna hide and then click on the checkbox that will group them to that layer. Now click the eye icon to make the lamp models disappear but u will still have the lights.
Open the layers tool ( under window or by pushing F7 ) and make a layer for the lights. Click on the lights u wanna hide and then click on the checkbox that will group them to that layer. Now click the eye icon to make the lamp models disappear but u will still have the lights.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
i just facepalm my self with this, just ask about this in the forums and yea.. but good to know if you dont heh.
Actually, I find the way it currently works to be most useful - rather than letting the editor guess where I want something, I can minimize the number of transformations needed.
Another tip: When selecting faces, if you have accidentally selected an entity, undo once to cancel the selection of the entities - only the level geometry will remain in the selection. They may take this out in future versions...
Good shortcuts (inspired from 3d tools like 3dsmax/maya)
q = select
w = move
e = scale
r = rotate
alt+e = place a prop
I never have to move my left hand around on the keyboard and I get things done a lot faster. Obviously this is purely subjective.
well i though that many didnt know about it as I myself just learned it so no harm done if i put it here right.
Are you sure? When I do this, at least in the texture editor, the -1 just turns into a 0.
Also thanks for the negative scale, tried it out vaguely before but I didn't press the "+" to move out the menu so it didn't work then.
I've only tried it with static meshes, I don't know about textures.
- Creating a face on a flat 2d surface which already has a face on the other side will create the extra face on that side too. So click on the existing face and press ctrl+F to invert that face to the other side of the surface, this will give your flat surfaces two faces. For example I drag out a square with the rectangle tool and it creates a textured face on one side. Because I want to turn this into a cube I select the four lines and press alt+C to create another face on the other side of the square. The editor creates a new face over the existing face though, so I have to click on the side with the existing face and press ctrl+F to flip the new face around to the other side, so I can extrude the new face.
It's really hard to explain, so if it makes no sense that's understandable.
- Also when you extrude a face, you only have to extrude enough to make a new extrusion and you can click on the extruded face with the move tool to move the extrusions to wherever you want it to be. I notice some people keep extruding to get the length they want, while creating many new lines in the process, you don't need to do this.
This works with Dual monitors!
Me and my dual monitors love you atm.
<a href="http://img171.imageshack.us/i/dualscreen.jpg/" target="_blank"><img src="http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/6549/dualscreen.th.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" /></a>
Edit: if you do this, couple of wonky things I've noticed:
You can't have the (ex) props menu higher on the second monitor than the menu bar on the primary monitor, or it will autosnap it back to the main screen at the top.
it casts the opposite of whatever color you have the light set to, so if the color is set to black, it will emit white light (negative black)
or green will emit pink, etc.
the color part you can use to absorb ambient light if it's not the color you want in an area, and it's handy to cast shadows at will :P