Mapping in Blender Questions

[SephFF]

I mainly use Net-radiant custom for all my mapping needs. I feel like I understand it enough to make half way decent maps, but at the same time it feels extremely limited. I also searched through the forums looking for tutorials or guides but there is so much scattered, its hard to figure out what workflow I would need to do. With mapping its fairly easy to spend 20 hours on a minor detail only to realize you can't make it work and have to try a new approach. So what I am looking for are any guides or tutorials for a workflow that mainly uses blender for the level creation aspect. I guess I can try to explain a few things I don't know, I should know...but also there is the aspect of what I just don't know that I should be asking. So I hoping someone can point me in the right direction.

• Can full levels be made in blender?
• How to make JKA shaders work in blender to include system shaders?
• Advanced Alpha blending in blender
• Terrain optimization
• Importing from blender to Net-Radiant Custom, import small parts little by little or full blown levels
• Baking light maps from blender into the game
• Known limitations such as polycount or conflicts.
• how to ensure -vis works (I'm assuming block out with caulk but not sure if that works inside of models.)
• There might be a million other questions I don't know to ask lol

What I do know mainly amounts to RichDiesal's JK2Radiant Mapping University, Szico VII's tutorials, and what @mjt has taught me under his wing lol. I can use Blender, photoshop, illustrator. I use to have access to substance painter but I cant afford to subscribe to it lol. I am a IRL graphic designer so that helps with making my own textures. I also have a minor degree in game design I just do this as a hobby though. I guess the goal for me is to figure out a workflow that mainly uses blender. ATM I feel fully comfortable using only Net Radiant Custom but would like the maps I make to be higher quality. Another aspect is speed, where I can make something in a few weeks, not a few months. (Wife, three kids, 2 dogs, working keeps ya busy)

Personally I would love to make guide about all this stuff someday... Just with so much information scattered its hard to really nail down a solid tutorial with all the new tools we can use today vs back in 2003. Also I do have ADHD so I'm already a scatter brain lol.

 

[Bubbles]

I'll try and answer it but I am no expert. @SomaZ being the creator of the Blender bsp plugin knows probably more than anyone about this stuff. @mjt Is also pretty much an expert with this sort of stuff

 

 

• Can full levels be made in blender?   No, as far I know you can not. You can block out levels sure and create more complex structures to be exported as models ye. You can also  bake the lighting in Blender with Somaz's plugin but some stuff requires NRC.
• How to make JKA shaders work in blender to include system shaders?  Ideally import a bsae map  into blender and just look at a base map with shaders and you will see how it is done

Your other two questions I'm not sure, never messed about much with Terrain.

• Importing from blender to Net-Radiant Custom, import small parts little by little or full blown levels.  https://discord.gg/CbHD93GSZS  This is the link for the blender  bsp/md3 exporter/importer. Currently Somaz recommends Blender 2.9.3 I believe.
• Baking light maps from blender into the game :   It's doable with the plugin for sure, although I've never had a need to do it, There is an import option you have to tick then you can just bake in blender and export I believe
• Known limitations such as polycount or conflicts.   I have yet to run into an issue with max tris. I am sure there is one but I've yet to find it. For example I can import a model with a millon tris and it will load into the game. It will just tank the fps for me from like 300 fps to 30 fps.  That being said, this can be improved upon greatly by using a modern renderer like Rend2, Vulkan and Xycaleths updated Opengl 4.0 renderer I believe.

 

A guide would be an excellent idea  now that most people have more modern PCs I think mappers should be making more use of custom models made in the likes of Blender to improve their maps. Yea, previously it was avoided because of the fps hit but nowdays with better PCs and people working on improved renderers the fps hit is really not that bad.

[OCD2]

These are all things I wonder about as well,   especially since learning blender opens up so many more opportunities.