Features I think would really enhance Spark Editor
<div class="IPBDescription">And make making maps a lot faster and easier - 1/13/2013</div>Someone said I should consolidate my ideas so that is what this thread is. I shall post more as I think of them in this first post.
1) More snap options. A CAD program I use has like 20 different snap options. You have midpoint snap, intersection snap, tangent snap, point snap, perpendicular snap, center of circle snap, quarter point of circle snap (point at which the circle is 0, 90, 180, and 270 degrees). These would all be incredibly useful for making maps. Some of these work some of the time, but usually the grid overpowers it and makes it difficult to use. These should be all toggleable. It makes a lot of sense to include a lot of CAD function since we are essentially being architects when creating a level. In making my map I've found myself wanting each and every one of these snap options. There are many many snap options possible.
2) An alignment tool. This would allow to choose one object to be moved, and another object that the first one should be moved relative to. It should allow you to move the object independently on each axis and relative to each axis of the second object. It would also allow you to choose center, minimum, or maximum extents of each object on each axis. You could choose center and center on X and Y and minimum on Z of the object to move and you could choose center on X and Y and maximum on the object you are moving it to and this would place it in the center X and Y and put the bottom of object 1 on the top of object 2. You could also choose minimum on X, Y, and Z, while choosing minimum on X, Y and then maximum on Z for the second object and this would put the first object in the lower left corner but on top of the second object. This would allow you to do many things like center a hallway exactly in a room and align many thing together very easily.
3) Lathe/revolve tool. This would essentially be a tool that does what the curved geometry tutorial does all in one step. It would be like extrude but it spins the profile around instead of stretch it out.
4) Moving the movement/rotation gizmo. Allow the user to move the gizmo around. Sometimes I find myself wanting to move the gizmo around, especially when rotating. You can to some extent move the gizmo by using a line or point else where (ala the curved geometry tutorial) but this feels clunky and would work much better if you could just move the gizmo around itself.
5) Creating lines, rectangle, circle by value entry. Right now it is just click, drag, and watch a number. It would be most excellent if we could enter the values of the line/rectangle circle manually. For a line you could enter it's length, and its angle after you clicked the origin of the line. Alternatively, you should also be able to create the origin manually too ( start at 0,0 for instance and create a line 256 units going at angle 0, press enter). This is how I create practically every line when making something in CAD. I click on a point and tell it how long I want it to be and going at what angle. The ones that aren't created this way I make between two known points using snaps. This would also be very useful for rectangles and circles. Click, tell rectangle its width and height and press enter. Same for circle. Click and tell it it's radius.
6) Ability to create partial circles. This could be achieved by having the option to tell the circle how many degrees it should have. It would then create a circle portion based on how many sides and how many degrees you have.
7) Ability to create lines that are perpendicular, tangental, etc, instead of just making a line and trying to figure it out yourself. For example, the CAD program I use allows you to create a line that is parallel to another line, perpendicular to another line, tangental from a point to a circle and vice versa, a tangent line between two circles (you click one circle and click the second circle and it allows you to pick which of the two tangent lines you want. There are more that I can't think of off the top of my head. These would also be very useful to have as it allows the user to quickly and easily create lines in a specific manner without trying to figure out a way to do it manually.
8) Scale tool should scale both horizontally and vertically when you are dragging the corner boxes and maintain the aspect ratio of the object.
9) Ability to manipulate the location entity the same way you can a regular object. IE grab each edge and move the edges around (or face even). Ticking the scale values is really clunky.
10) Ability to multiply zoom and movement of windows. I find myself trying to scroll/pan the four windows and zoom (mainly zoom) over large changes. Having a button to press to do it 10X would help a lot. For example, hold control and you will zoom and pan X times faster than normal.
11) Ability to move things along local axis. For example, you have a hallway that is at an angle and it want to stretch or shrink it. Should have an option to move the edge on either end parallel to the lines perpendicular to it.
12) When creating a circle and you end it on a vertex, the circle should have a vertex that aligns with the vertex you dragged the circle to.
1) More snap options. A CAD program I use has like 20 different snap options. You have midpoint snap, intersection snap, tangent snap, point snap, perpendicular snap, center of circle snap, quarter point of circle snap (point at which the circle is 0, 90, 180, and 270 degrees). These would all be incredibly useful for making maps. Some of these work some of the time, but usually the grid overpowers it and makes it difficult to use. These should be all toggleable. It makes a lot of sense to include a lot of CAD function since we are essentially being architects when creating a level. In making my map I've found myself wanting each and every one of these snap options. There are many many snap options possible.
2) An alignment tool. This would allow to choose one object to be moved, and another object that the first one should be moved relative to. It should allow you to move the object independently on each axis and relative to each axis of the second object. It would also allow you to choose center, minimum, or maximum extents of each object on each axis. You could choose center and center on X and Y and minimum on Z of the object to move and you could choose center on X and Y and maximum on the object you are moving it to and this would place it in the center X and Y and put the bottom of object 1 on the top of object 2. You could also choose minimum on X, Y, and Z, while choosing minimum on X, Y and then maximum on Z for the second object and this would put the first object in the lower left corner but on top of the second object. This would allow you to do many things like center a hallway exactly in a room and align many thing together very easily.
3) Lathe/revolve tool. This would essentially be a tool that does what the curved geometry tutorial does all in one step. It would be like extrude but it spins the profile around instead of stretch it out.
4) Moving the movement/rotation gizmo. Allow the user to move the gizmo around. Sometimes I find myself wanting to move the gizmo around, especially when rotating. You can to some extent move the gizmo by using a line or point else where (ala the curved geometry tutorial) but this feels clunky and would work much better if you could just move the gizmo around itself.
5) Creating lines, rectangle, circle by value entry. Right now it is just click, drag, and watch a number. It would be most excellent if we could enter the values of the line/rectangle circle manually. For a line you could enter it's length, and its angle after you clicked the origin of the line. Alternatively, you should also be able to create the origin manually too ( start at 0,0 for instance and create a line 256 units going at angle 0, press enter). This is how I create practically every line when making something in CAD. I click on a point and tell it how long I want it to be and going at what angle. The ones that aren't created this way I make between two known points using snaps. This would also be very useful for rectangles and circles. Click, tell rectangle its width and height and press enter. Same for circle. Click and tell it it's radius.
6) Ability to create partial circles. This could be achieved by having the option to tell the circle how many degrees it should have. It would then create a circle portion based on how many sides and how many degrees you have.
7) Ability to create lines that are perpendicular, tangental, etc, instead of just making a line and trying to figure it out yourself. For example, the CAD program I use allows you to create a line that is parallel to another line, perpendicular to another line, tangental from a point to a circle and vice versa, a tangent line between two circles (you click one circle and click the second circle and it allows you to pick which of the two tangent lines you want. There are more that I can't think of off the top of my head. These would also be very useful to have as it allows the user to quickly and easily create lines in a specific manner without trying to figure out a way to do it manually.
8) Scale tool should scale both horizontally and vertically when you are dragging the corner boxes and maintain the aspect ratio of the object.
9) Ability to manipulate the location entity the same way you can a regular object. IE grab each edge and move the edges around (or face even). Ticking the scale values is really clunky.
10) Ability to multiply zoom and movement of windows. I find myself trying to scroll/pan the four windows and zoom (mainly zoom) over large changes. Having a button to press to do it 10X would help a lot. For example, hold control and you will zoom and pan X times faster than normal.
11) Ability to move things along local axis. For example, you have a hallway that is at an angle and it want to stretch or shrink it. Should have an option to move the edge on either end parallel to the lines perpendicular to it.
12) When creating a circle and you end it on a vertex, the circle should have a vertex that aligns with the vertex you dragged the circle to.
Comments
you can do this already.
Really? I couldn't get it to do it.
Yes, please enlighten us.
Trying to replicate the look of sky light coming through a window with spotlights is tedious and ineffective.
Trying to replicate the look of sky light coming through a window with spotlights is tedious and ineffective.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Max confirmed (long time ago) that this feature is planned.
PLEASE fix objects shifting in their position by exponentially small amounts when being moved even along (what should be 100 accurate) gizmo axis.
Copy/paste/extrude mapping relies on continuity of the original mesh. Currently everything slowly works its way off the grid and a couple extrudes later it's bad enough to be noticeable. Shouldn't happen at all.
Also, a tool which snaps verts back to their nearest whole number to fix existing displacement from this bug.
Second most important:
Extruding as a group along a gizmo axis OR by each faces' normals. Apparently this is already in development?
:)
Yes but this is not good enough. If you have an irregular (IE not rectangluar) object and you want to rotate about a point inside of the rectangle (something else I was trying to do) it is incredibly difficult and tedious to do so.
scale tool, drag the blue and the red lines from any view. it saves you from having to input values.
and I have this one problem when I move objects they like to flip there axis.
Also I would like to see the skybox in the render. Just to make sure the lighting is all looking good.
agreed, but toggleable from the dropdown menu like "show edges" but "show skybox"
What about also the ability to see animations work on props.
QFT.
- I would really appreciate that Eye dropper tool will also copy texture scale, shift and rotation (or make them optional by a check box). Will save a lot of mouse clics!
- Please also fix the texture lock, realigning all the geometry after every slight move is really time consuming :-(
- Mirroring geometry should also affect texture aligment (just multiply all angles by -1, that could do the work)
think it happened working on the level rather tired and messing up the hold right mouse before moving or whatever.
spark is easier by far at least so far in my experience over hammer, but i do miss a lot of the entity classes and the ability to create brushes and move them as a solid brush also tie them to a detail entity and group them.
All I know is that clicking through a list of 30 layers so I can explore a map is incredibly tedious.
think it happened working on the level rather tired and messing up the hold right mouse before moving or whatever.
spark is easier by far at least so far in my experience over hammer, but i do miss a lot of the entity classes and the ability to create brushes and move them as a solid brush also tie them to a detail entity and group them.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And texturing things quickly and painlessly with alt+rmb.
And radiosity(waiting a few minutes to compile is WAY more convenient than spending hours faking radiosity with manually placed lights)
And temporarily hiding the unselected.
And not having things work themselves off-grid all the bloody time.
And leaks and point files(!!!); a hole in your map is an error you <i>must</i> fix, and they keep finding their way into official maps. Silent errors suck.
And smoothing groups.
And sensible implementation of subdivision surfaces(displacements).
true... it's so hard so create brushes. as from Rudy.cz's tutorial, it would appear brushes are made from lines from the start.
<img src="https://developer.valvesoftware.com/w/images/3/34/Block_tool.png" border="0" class="linked-image" />
Also the ALT+drag selection to snap it to another vertex is SICK! Thanks Steven, snapping stuff to other stuff and to grid and axis is so awesome!!! Now if only I had time to map :(
It would be pretty cool for a lot of players, who have low fps, if the mappers would have a possibility to make some lights optional. The players will need a option in the menu to turn optional lights on/off.
Some lights are only needed for a little better design but cost a lot of resources. We (duplex) just tested a version of summit with minimal lights in it and everyone got ~+20 FPS. Slow<Slower<Swalk, who has a low machine had about +30 FPS.
As much as it seams like an excellent idea this is probably not the way to deal with the issue. The mapper should be the one who just works out how to light properly with the minimum number of lights. A mapper can be too literal and use many light entities for a single source, or he can go for feel and use one light entity for multiple sources. The middle-way is what he should seek.
It is one of those constraints of mapping. You have probably seen the thread on ns2 limited map design compared to ns1. This got me thinking that ns1 was released on a well known engine and ns1 maps were on the limits on goldsrc capacities as much for players as for the compiling process. Ns2 on the other hand, well, things are much more complex now and it is hard to pinpoint the limits, and the variety of hardware is so greater nowadays, and visual expectations of high-end users combined with market competition.
So there needs be a consensus about the load a map should not exceed on the user, swalk as the unit of measure.
Filter for selecting faces will turn off when switching to paint tool (what use is the paint tool when I cannot select any face ?) - this should be fixed years ago!
Maping of paint tool's center, left, right, bottom aligment commands to WASD keys
Newly created face should face the camera
While I have no intention of switching back, there are two very basic things that you could do in Hammer that you can't in Spark.
<ul><li> Reliably cut through geometry to create a face, or create a face where none currently exists. Such a pain in the ass in Spark - occaisionally it does what I want, occaisionally I spend 5 minutes trying to create a face</li><li> Copy textures - simply copy textures with settings between faces. I know I'll have to readjust them most likely, but having to reselect the texture and enter basic settings for nearly identical geometry is damn inane</li></ul>
While Spark could use a lot of improvements, I think it's best to start at a very basic level and address these issues. Followed by snap/alignment tools and a fix so that it's impossible to have a vertex off grid.
-You can already copy a texture having the original face selected in texture mode, holding alt and click on the new face.
Why ? (you can drop the model into the map easily)
If you have 1 screen only, its easier (in my opinion) to double click (the model image in the model browser)
to view the model. In the viewer the view is always centered to the model (you only need to hold the right mouse
and move the mouse to change the angle) and a quick click on the X (to close the viewer) is faster and way more comfortable.
Test-Application: was working (time to implement: 1 day - btw: i am java programming noob, so it should be possible for the devs to do this in < 1 hour)
Test-Application: double-click & open viewer - code:
// each label has an image: each image has an event label.addMouseListener(new MouseAdapter(){ // label has the model image // how to react: to an mouse-click-event @Override public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e){ // mouse clicked on image System.out.println("ClickCount: "+e.getClickCount()); if (e.getClickCount() >= 2){ // check if double clicked JLabel tmp1 = (JLabel) e.getSource(); // get the clicked object ImageIcon tmp2 = (ImageIcon) tmp1.getIcon(); // get the clicked image try { String strModel = new File(tmp2.getDescription()).getName(); // get model-image-link //example: models_alien_fade_fade_view_model_256x256.jpg System.out.println("begin: "+strModel); strModel = strModel.replaceAll("_256x256",""); // remove unecessary parts strModel = strModel.replaceAll("_model.jpg", ".model");// remove unecessary parts strModel = strModel.replaceAll("_", "/");// get the "real model" // path is hard coded, needs to be read from registry String strFileCheck = "c:/Games/Steam/SteamApps/common/Natural Selection 2/ns2/" + strModel; // check if model-file exists // example: models/alien/fade/fade/view.model while (!new File(strFileCheck).isFile()){ // need to add infinity loop check: if no "/" found = break System.out.println("Check: "+strFileCheck + " ? No"); String strTmp1 = strModel.substring(0, strModel.lastIndexOf("/")); String strTmp2 = strModel.substring(strModel.lastIndexOf("/")+1, strModel.length()); strModel = strTmp1+"_"+strTmp2; strFileCheck = "c:/Games/Steam/SteamApps/common/Natural Selection 2/ns2/" + strModel; } // changed to: models/alien/fade/fade_view.model strModel = "./"+strModel; // changed to: ./models/alien/fade/fade_view.model System.out.println("end: "+strModel); // call: viewer -game ns2 ./models/alien/fade/fade_view.model File f = new File("c:\\Games\\Steam\\SteamApps\\common\\Natural Selection 2"); ProcessBuilder pb = new ProcessBuilder("cmd","/c","start","viewer.exe","-game","ns2",strModel); pb.directory(f); Process process = pb.start(); } catch (Exception exception) { exception.printStackTrace(); } } } });