Map Making

[Nèmèsìs»§ÇW§]

I'm wanting to know if maps like dmdeck16 where made with any external programs outside of UnrealEd. Is it possible to product a unique map just with Unreal ed or is it required to have some kind of external program. Please help!

[Krull0r]

you can rebuild dmdeck16 without any third party tool. Unreal ED has all you need for this quality of maps.

[Nèmèsìs»§ÇW§]

I've been reading a bunch of posts and see a lot of people talk about using external programs for brush building and such. Thanks for clearing this confusion up for me

[yrex .]

You can even make Unreal-like terrain with just the UEd if you know the right techniques (227 makes it a bit easier).

[Kajgue]

Hey Nemesis,

Most of the tools necessary for architectural related stuff come with Ued, but for what UEd can't do, you can model brushes using blender, just make sure to conform the brush you are modeling in Blender to an Unreal compatible grid to prevent any unwanted BSP problems (set the grid scaling to 1 and subdivisions to 1 in blender, this way you can never move a vertex off of the unreal style grid).

Organic geometry is best modeled in a 3d modeling program (like Blender).

Check my thread on the Unreal modeling subforum within this forum, it might contain some information that is hopefully useful (it contains an .ASE plugin for Blender too, ASE files you export can be converted from ASE to .t3d which is the unreal brush model format, using ASE2T3D [or whatever it was called].

Good luck!

[Hellkeeper]

I've been reading a bunch of posts and see a lot of people talk about using external programs for brush building and such.

External tools are sometimes used for extremely whacky geometry. In most cases, even the most extreme stuff can be done in UnrealEd if you take the time to do it properly.

[Nèmèsìs»§ÇW§]

Thanks for all the replies. Definitely has cleared up ALL the confusion

[Feralidragon]

I will just add the following: I never had a more stable BSP build than when I made the most complex geometry in an external 3D editor.
It seems to me that the usual way of vertex editing, clipping here, intersecting there, is not that great and causes a lot of garbage to build up in the form of small errors in the geometry itself.

While with an external editor, what you make, and then import in the editor, is as clean as it can possibly be, and this generally leads for the builds to be far more stable.

Of course, in 227 this case becomes a bit moot if you just go ahead and use static meshes instead, and just use BSP to define the overall rough playable shape of the map.

[Hellkeeper]

This does not cause problem for most maps and only comes into play for very complex geometry. Most of the errors can be fixed manually even then.

EDIT: To clarify, Feralidragon is right, but this does not cause problems for a beginner. It'll be harmful to care about this at the start and I'd strongly discourage the use of an external tool as you begin making maps. You'll encounter problems only when you have a firm grasp of how the editor works and venture into ambitious projects. Then it will be time to care about this.

[Feralidragon]

Yeah, I did not mean in any way that one should start building stuff in an external program from the start.
I am with Hellkeeper there, most of your maps will actually not really need any of this, and there's also a downside to using an external program that I forgot to mention: many 3D programs will only export to triangles, and this is especially an issue for lighting and texture alignment in BSP surfaces.

Only programs like Blender support quads and such.

Furthermore, my latest map, which I made last year, is probably the most complex map BSP-wise I have ever built (for UT99), and yet I felt no need to use an external editor for it, since the number of shapes added to the complexity, but they are very simple by themselves.

Generally an external editor is best when you really want to do really odd or complex shapes with a lot of polys and have as little problems with BSP as possible, but as I mentioned previously, at that point you may want to opt for static meshes instead in Unreal 227 (in UT99 you really have to use BSP though, at least for most things).

[Nèmèsìs»§ÇW§]

Ive been working on this one map here and there . I guess the logic here is practice makes perfect If i ever get the time i will post a download for it.

[Kajgue]

Ive been working on this one map here and there . I guess the logic here is practice makes perfect If i ever get the time i will post a download for it.

Cool, good luck with the map!