[quit]

Hey all,

I've been using radiant for some time now, and managed to come up with a more-or-less playable map. I was planning to add some details (flowers, vines, decaying walls, you name it) but given that HD is the way forward, and that to take advantage of the new VBO possibilities most stuff should be done with models, I'm going to ask: what should I do to satisfy that requirement?

That is, how do I split the work between radiant and my modeling app (blender)? Should I layout some fully caulked structural brushes in radiant, and then cover them entirely with detailed 3d models? Or should I just setup everything in blender and -- then what? Are there any special techniques required? Restrictions? Is there any tutorial around to help me get started with the new HD way? I'm not too sure I understand the proper way to set up the scale for interoperating blender and radiant, for once.

Thanks!

[CMM|banksy]

Your best bet is to create your map in either 3dsmax or Maya
All models should be created in the above these 2 programs as well (saved as .ase)

[FS HappyDay]

Hey quit,

I'm using both radiant and blender and it works like a charm. You need at least a .ase export script for blender to get your models into radiant. To get your scale right you can build the basic layout in radiant and import it to blender. So you also want a .ase importer for blender. Check here for those scripts http://www.katsbits....php?topic=147.0 (You might have to switch to a slightly older version of blender if there's no script for the current one.)
Here's the command lines you need for q3map2 to compile your map as .ase:

"C:\...\q3map2.exe" -meta -patchmeta -fs_basepath "C:\...\UrbanTerrorMapping" -fs_game q3ut4 "C:\...\q3ut4\maps\mapname.map"
"C:\...\q3map2.exe" -convert ase -fs_basepath "C:\...\UrbanTerrorMapping" -fs_game q3ut4 "C:\...\q3ut4\maps\mapname.bsp"

Once you imported your map from radiant to blender you should merge all objects (cause every single face is an object) and "remove doubles" (vertices).
Now you've got your map ready in blender to either build the whole map in blender or to make your details with the proper scale and export them one by one.

Depending on what you're aiming for I'd say you don't need to build your whole map in blender (yet). Urt HD still seems years away.

If you want to create your map for HD you might find this interesting:
http://www.urbanterr...ng-with-lights/
This also might be handy if you have problems unwrapping your models:
http://www.urbanterr...lay=5DUhmTl8DEY

I hope this helps :)

[quit]

Hey,

thanks for the quick reply. :-)

banksy, on 22 August 2012 - 12:54 PM, said:

Your best bet is to create your map in either 3dsmax or Maya

Am I to take that the whole map (minus details) should be modeled as a *single* model? Doesn't that imply that the whole thing will be rendered by the engine all the time? And what about texturing? Is the model to be assigned a single *large* texture or what? What about vis calculation? These are probably silly questions, but I don't get how to build the map otherwise. ;-)

[FS HappyDay]

quit, on 22 August 2012 - 02:07 PM, said:

Am I to take that the whole map (minus details) should be modeled as a *single* model? Doesn't that imply that the whole thing will be rendered by the engine all the time?

You don't want to have your whole map as one model. Like you pointed out, you will render everything at the same time. You can build your whole map in one .blend / .max but you want to export parts of the map individually. Maybe I should mention that your models need to be clipped in radiant with brushes and you use some of those brushes for your vis stage like you would if you build your map in radiant. So you want to split up your whole map model according to your vis calculations.

quit, on 22 August 2012 - 02:07 PM, said:

And what about texturing? Is the model to be assigned a single *large* texture or what?

You can assign multiple materials to one model. So you can texture your models just like in radiant with repeating textures or for more detail use textures that have exactly the size of your uv maps (I guess there's some fancy term for this). You can also use the same texture space on different models or for different parts of the same model.

[ValkoVer]

Once you complete map in modeling program and import it to radiant, you must separate sections of map using solid caulk blocks and then vis it. Use textures like you used them in radiant, though for small objects that don't have seamless textures, you could try using one big texture (well, its impossible in radiant because of it's limited texturing capabilities). And im not sure if its possible to make map as one single model, because 3dsmax (idk about maya) has limit of textures (it may be possible to override it somehow, but im 3dsmax n00b )

[quit]

Everybody: thanks for the help. :-)

Happyday, on 22 August 2012 - 02:36 PM, said:

You can build your whole map in one .blend / .max but you want to export parts of the map individually.

I see, that makes sense.

Happyday, on 22 August 2012 - 02:36 PM, said:

Maybe I should mention that your models need to be clipped in radiant with brushes and you use some of those brushes for your vis stage like you would if you build your map in radiant. So you want to split up your whole map model according to your vis calculations.

So basically I build the whole map in blender, then export the various buildings (or other pieces) as ase and add structural brushes and hints in radiant, right?

Happyday, on 22 August 2012 - 02:36 PM, said:

You can assign multiple materials to one model. So you can texture your models just like in radiant with repeating textures or for more detail use textures that have exactly the size of your uv maps (I guess there's some fancy term for this).

I guess I'll have to learn a bit more about blender to figure out how to do that. :-)

Happyday, on 22 August 2012 - 02:36 PM, said:

You can also use the same texture space on different models or for different parts of the same model.

Sorry, I don't get it. :-P

Now I'm looking for a decent way to convert from .map to .blend -- looks like there's an exporter plugin that goes in the opposite direction (.blend -> .map) but nothing useful for my task.

I was thinking of something like .map -[q3map2]-> .bsp -[decompile]-> .ase -[voodoo magic?]-> .blend. The voodoo ritual is still missing though. ;-) I'll see if I can cook up a python script for that or something.

I can't wait to not be constrained by some ugly grid!

[FS HappyDay]

quit, on 22 August 2012 - 03:52 PM, said:

So basically I build the whole map in blender, then export the various buildings (or other pieces) as ase and add structural brushes and hints in radiant, right?

Correct.

quit, on 22 August 2012 - 03:52 PM, said:

Sorry, I don't get it. :-P

Hmm, actually what I said there is a pretty simple idea put in a pretty confusing sentence :D. All I wanted to say is that you can overlap your uv maps and use the same part of a texture on different models or parts of the same model. Which is the same thing you do all the time in radiant with brushes.

quit, on 22 August 2012 - 03:52 PM, said:

Now I'm looking for a decent way to convert from .map to .blend (...).

I was thinking of something like .map -[q3map2]-> .bsp -[decompile]-> .ase -[voodoo magic?]-> .blend. The voodoo ritual is still missing though. ;-) I'll see if I can cook up a python script for that or something.

The missing voodoo ritual is an .ase import script for blender that you can download by following the link I posted above (katsbits.com)

quit, on 22 August 2012 - 03:52 PM, said:

I can't wait to not be constrained by some ugly grid!

This reminds me to say that you want to adjust the blender grid (which by default uses 10 subdivisions ) to use 8 subdivisions like radiant does. This way certain parts of your models that you snap to the grid are also on the grid once you import them in radiant.
-> in the 3d view press n -> display -> grid floor -> set scale and subdivisions to 8

[quit]

Happyday, on 22 August 2012 - 04:59 PM, said:

The missing voodoo ritual is an .ase import script for blender that you can download by following the link I posted above (katsbits.com)

Alas, on katsbits there's only an .ase export script for the blender version I use (2.63a). I managed to achieve the same effect using the 'assimp' tool, available on sourceforge. So the entire pipeline was:

map -> bsp -> ase -[assimp]-> obj -[blender import script]-> blend

Edit: ase -> ply -> blend works much better. :-)

Happyday, on 22 August 2012 - 04:59 PM, said:

This reminds me to say that you want to adjust the blender grid (which by default uses 10 subdivisions ) to use 8 subdivisions like radiant does. This way certain parts of your models that you snap to the grid are also on the grid once you import them in radiant.
-> in the 3d view press n -> display -> grid floor -> set scale and subdivisions to 8

Neat, thanks for the hint! :-)

This post has been edited by quit: 22 August 2012 - 06:38 PM

[FS Frankie V]

Word of caution if using Blender to make map objects is it's tendency to export data that makes it difficult to maintain the integrity of the original model if the need is to import the finished model into an application like 3ds Max or Maya.

Internally we have attempted to included Blender as part of our preferred application pipeline with the idea of creating an off the shelf editing environment for our content development that caters to the experiences of our content artists as well as mapmakers with out the need to relearn a new edit environment from scratch.

The fundamental problems we have with including Blender as part of the preferred list is it's tendency to follow it's own format specifications that are not part of any format standard of any of the applications currently in our preferred list. The tendency is for objects made in Blender is the need further processing once injected into our asset pipeline in such a shape that they need further processing to get them back to their original shape that is equal or some times greater in time and effort than it would be to create such items from scratch.

Working as an individual Blender is a fine edit solution but if the desire is for a much larger group of individuals to work on team projects as part of a development of a “super” map Blender creates an application dependency that makes it difficult to included other application solutions with out the need to redo work that has already been done.