[WIP] Q3ME: a 3ds Max Level Design Plugin

[AshuraDX]

That's what I thought @@AshuraDX. I know radiant likes all the vertices lined up to its grid. So I will stick to exporting as ASE files are so much smaller than MD3.

I like how everyone just assumes, that it would be difficult to build things aligned to a grid in 3d software. Most if not all 3d modeling programs I worked with offer a variety of snapping options.

 

The problem with importing q3map2 .ase files is that q3map2 converts brushplanes into individual meshes. So in a worst case scenario you end up with 500 individual objects that consist of 1 to 3 triangles each. Which is a pain to work with bevause you'd either have to carefully merge surfaces and weld overlapping vertices to make the thing even slightly comfortable to edit.

[Ramikad]

The problem with importing q3map2 .ase files is that q3map2 converts brushplanes into individual meshes. So in a worst case scenario you end up with 500 individual objects that consist of 1 to 3 triangles each. Which is a pain to work with bevause you'd either have to carefully merge surfaces and weld overlapping vertices to make the thing even slightly comfortable to edit.

 

In these cases what I generally do in Blender is merge everything into a single object, then use the command to automatically merge all overlapping vertices (Remove Doubles).

[AshuraDX]

In these cases what I generally do in Blender is merge everything into a single object, then use the command to automatically merge all overlapping vertices (Remove Doubles).

While that certainly works and I have done it this way before, this has one major flaw:

It may merge vertices that you don't want to be merged. Depending on the program this could generate non-manifold geometry, which can lead to all sorts of troubles later down the road.

 

let's assume you had something like this in your .ase file:

 

If you now attach everything together and weld duplicate vertices you can end up with spots where it does this:

The Problem with things like this is, that they are not instantly apparent when they happen.

 

Let's say I wanted to move one of the corners of the green cube that touches the blue cube, and end up with this annyoing thing:

 

 

Which would obviously not be something that you wanted to have.

 

With simple geometry like this, it's very easy to manually go back and fix these problems - but for larger and more complex meshes it's going to be a real pain.

[AshuraDX]

@@IrocJeff @@Noodle @@RAILBACK

Are there any things in Particular you would like me to do a tutorial on?

What are some of the things that annoy you the most when you are working with GTK Radiant?

Are there features you allways wanted radiant to have?

[RAILBACK]

@@AshuraDX, For features, most definitely. I would like it if you could edit patch meshes on a finer level. It would be nice to merge mesh or even separate them. You could do so much more with meshes if you could manipulate them more. Unless thats an engine limitation... Having an ASE / MD3 option when it comes to misc_models. UPDATE the old help menu with some more (forgotten) shortcuts that still exist. Sheer repetition over the years that I remembered them.

 

As far as tutorials, I'm not sure. I'll think about that one.

[z3filus]

nvm

[Noodle]

@@IrocJeff @@Noodle @@RAILBACK

Are there any things in Particular you would like me to do a tutorial on?

What are some of the things that annoy you the most when you are working with GTK Radiant?

Are there features you allways wanted radiant to have?

 

> More than focusing on anything in particular I'd like to see your workflow while doing a map with moderate complexity. It'd be interesting to see how you implement lighting and other entities like waypoints and such. 

 

> The main thing that annoys me when working with GTKRadiant are the way patch meshes are handled and how light effects them differently than ordinary brushes. 

 

> I'd like to be able to make maps as big as I please.

[AshuraDX]

> More than focusing on anything in particular I'd like to see your workflow while doing a map with moderate complexity. It'd be interesting to see how you implement lighting and other entities like waypoints and such. 

 

> The main thing that annoys me when working with GTKRadiant are the way patch meshes are handled and how light effects them differently than ordinary brushes. 

 

> I'd like to be able to make maps as big as I please.

 

1.Sure, if you have any concepts you'd like to see me tackle with this just post the images here.

 

2. How does light effect them differently? I have a theory what you could mean but I'm really not sure about that one.

 

3. That is sadly not something that I can do, you will still be bound to limitations from q3map2 or WZmap which extendeds the limits for bsp but has broken light and vis stages.

 

@@AshuraDX, For features, most definitely.

 

I would like it if you could edit patch meshes on a finer level. It would be nice to merge mesh or even separate them. You could do so much more with meshes if you could manipulate them more. Unless thats an engine limitation...

 

Having an ASE / MD3 option when it comes to misc_models.

 

UPDATE the old help menu with some more (forgotten) shortcuts that still exist. Sheer repetition over the years that I remembered them.

 

As far as tutorials, I'm not sure. I'll think about that one.

1. Patches are sadly just simple rectangular point matrices with a maximum size of 15 x 15 points so anything that goes beyond that won't be doable at all. Currently I have no support for curved aptches in my tool due to the fact that I have not found a way to get them to behave close to the way they do in Radiant in regards to their interpolation/smoothing. I could relatively easily implement a method to export simple "cage" objects which would represent the unsmoothed patches in 3ds max but would be handled correctly by radiant and q3map2, but since we can easily create complex 3d models in 3ds max and use those as misc_models in their place I don't set an urgent priority to this.

 

2. as far as I know you could always use both of those for misc_models. misc_model_static does not accept .ase but other than that I can not think of any further limittations and that is again something I can not change without having to edit other applications.

 

3. what help menu? Radiant has a help menu?

[RAILBACK]

 

2. as far as I know you could always use both of those for misc_models. misc_model_static does not accept .ase but other than that I can not think of any further limittations and that is again something I can not change without having to edit other applications.

 

3. what help menu? Radiant has a help menu?

Sorry, I meant model_static. Yeaa... it has a basic help menu. Was that a test? 

[AshuraDX]

Sorry, I meant model_static. Yeaa... it has a basic help menu. Was that a test? 

You should know that I could never bother to use Radiant for building geometry. Whichg was the main for me starting to develop this plugin

 

EDIT: I just took a look at that thing and most of that will be obsolete anyway. Since 3ds Max handles navigation and Manipulation much differently.

[RAILBACK]

@@AshuraDX "anvigationm"?? Navigation? Lol

I use radiant for speed since navigating in other programs is much slower. I'm gettin better though.

[AshuraDX]

@@AshuraDX "anvigationm"?? Navigation? Lol

I use radiant for speed since navigating in other programs is much slower. I'm gettin better though.

Yeah. Navigation. I can't type...

[IrocJeff]

@@IrocJeff @@Noodle @@RAILBACK

Are there any things in Particular you would like me to do a tutorial on?

What are some of the things that annoy you the most when you are working with GTK Radiant?

Are there features you allways wanted radiant to have?

Sorry for late reply.

 

I would like to see how something can be exported to gtk radiant, like a room, or terrain, or whatever and how it matches to the grid.

 

Anthing to do with terrain.

 

Pipes or railing. I always wanted smaller diameter stuff that was actually round. Radiant sucks in that regard.

[AshuraDX]

Sorry for late reply.

 

I would like to see how something can be exported to gtk radiant, like a room, or terrain, or whatever and how it matches to the grid.

 

Anthing to do with terrain.

 

Pipes or railing. I always wanted smaller diameter stuff that was actually round. Radiant sucks in that regard.

no worries about the time!

 

You have made 2 points I was gonig to show anyway and about the third:

How small in diameter? If yo umean things like small handrailings I would do them as models.

The issue with round objects at smaller diameters in radiant does not come from radiant but from the limitations of the geometrical systems used by radiant.

[IrocJeff]

no worries about the time!

 

You have made 2 points I was gonig to show anyway and about the third:

How small in diameter? If yo umean things like small handrailings I would do them as models.

The issue with round objects at smaller diameters in radiant does not come from radiant but from the limitations of the geometrical systems used by radiant.

 

Now that makes a bit of sense with the geometry stuff. Was that by design or just practical for the time and technology?

[AshuraDX]

Now that makes a bit of sense with the geometry stuff. Was that by design or just practical for the time and technology?

I'd assume a bit of both.

[RAILBACK]

 I always wanted smaller diameter stuff that was actually round. Radiant sucks in that regard.

 

I love any diameter stuff that's actually round! Phong shade helps.

The poly count on all Ravens models are low. When I make models, you can see the difference in file size as soon as you double the polys. Going from kb to mb if you use MD3! The ASE files are much smaller.

It makes sense as to why they did it that way.

If we can do away with Radiant all together, I think building without limitations is preferable.

[DerFürst]

I'd love to see a version of this released soon. I completely agree with the premise of this thread. Radiant is abysmal to work in on its own, and I'm much more used to 3D modelling programs. I can already see some excellent applications for this. It'll certainly make terrain look better for less effort (clearly showcased in the dunes video), and having the proper visuals and scale for 3D models will make them much easier to integrate seamlessly in the map.  Very good work.

[AshuraDX]

I'd love to see a version of this released soon. I completely agree with the premise of this thread. Radiant is abysmal to work in on its own, and I'm much more used to 3D modelling programs. I can already see some excellent applications for this. It'll certainly make terrain look better for less effort (clearly showcased in the dunes video), and having the proper visuals and scale for 3D models will make them much easier to integrate seamlessly in the map.  Very good work.

I'll try to losen myself from adding more and more features to this and finally get out a release with a few basic tutorial videos, I actually wanted to do the latter this past weekend but caught a nasty cold and didn't feel much like narrating a tutorial video.

 

So I have spent a bit of time developing this:

 

This Small UI helper greatly improves working with textures for terrain:

 

-you can now setup the multimaterial that I use in 3ds max to assign multiple textures to an object (which had to be manually built beforehand) by simply copy & pasting shader names and adding them to the list.

-you can use the list to assign textures to different face selections by either double clicking or use the list as a palette for the new Paint Tool.

-you can select and deselect faces based on used textures

-you can select faces based on their facing direction and slope, which is a great way to quickly select all faces on a cliffwall or similiar stuff.

-you can generate alpha poles along texture borders in a single click.

 

Besides this I have also added a new Config option that allows you to quickly switch between Metric Units and standard Radiant Units (Inches). For those wondering: 1 meter equals roughly 40 Radiant Units.

[RAILBACK]

Dude.. what kinda sick terrain stuff you got going on there? Will you have sprites as well? I would love a plant planter. Radiant doesn't have one for JK games.

[AshuraDX]

Dude.. what kinda sick terrain stuff you got going on there? Will you have sprites as well? I would love a plant planter. Radiant doesn't have one for JK games.

sprites will depend on the shaders you use afaik, keep in mind that I am pretty new to mapping and I'm mostly developing this to get into mapping.

I just couldn't get myself to use radiant at all.

 

What does that plant planter do, well it's obvious what it does, but how does it do it?

Does it allow you to click and place plants where you want them or does it randomly scatter them over the surface of your terrain?

 

3ds max can do both by default.

[AshuraDX]

We have Icons!

a set of Toolbar Icons for different components of the script.

[AshuraDX]

Finally found a way to draw entity target relations in 3ds max!

not yet perfect, as the line draws voer top of everything and I cant seem to find a way to fix that.

[Lord Grievous]

Very nice

[IrocJeff]

Very nice

 

From what I've played around with so far this is really cool. I was able to setup 3dsMax easily with the game and entity file paths, got the textures loaded, and even exported a 32x32x32 cube into Radiant. Entities were also searchable but I didn't mess with those but they are there.You can't, however, create geometry that is not supported. So making a pipe that is 4x4x64 with 12 sides will give errors in Radiant as I tried several times  . Guess those have to be models.