Blender for level making / into MiniB3D
BlitzMax Forums/MiniB3D Module/Blender for level making / into MiniB3D
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| Hello All, I have a question for everyone here, I decided that it would be best to use Blender for my levels, and I was trying to figure out how to use place holders for the objects and etc. in the world, or if I should make a object placer editor..? I was trying to use Minib3d to design a full level and terrain editor, but that wasn't working out very well. Any suggestions Thanks, FBEpyon |
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| World in blender and an object placer I usually find to be easiest. Parsing out the export from blender doesn't work, Ive only gotten it to export things as a single mesh, which if it had objects in it would need to get ripped out, etc. I generally use the game engine and just add functionality to place objects and save a map rather than make a whole external editor... Depends on the game, how you want to place things, how far along you are, etc. plenty of options. |
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| @ima747 That helps a lot I should be releasing a preview soon as I get some more graphics done and redo the world map in blender.. I think its nice in blender I can do up to 8 texture layers, and use shaders in the engine to control the texture laying, but I really wanted to make my own world editor, but I could get anything to work correctly as far as the terrain tools, I tired everything from editing the heightmap and then updating the map at the same time (other words every point in the terrain was setup real-time to the heightmap), if you have have any suggestions I would be in your debt. Last edited 2011 |
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| If you want to alter a mesh in real time you want to only change what needs changing. It's really easy to cycle through too many points and waste a lot of cycle time. If your game play doesn't need real time alteration however it doesn't matter how slow changes are. Updating normals is sometimes critical depending on what you're doing exactly... Poke around the documentation for stuff related to vertexes and meshes, you might find some methods that help make your ideas click. I learned a lot by making a map constructor that loads from an XML file and uses the data set to construct a world space from scratch. Overkill for most things and also way too much work if meshing is viable in blender (for that project it was better to build on the fly for some other reasons). When possible build stuff with tools designed to build stuff, it makes it much easier and faster :0) |
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| Well, Im mostly concerned about the terrain, it doesn't need to change in real time, but it does need some extra TLC, I'm working on a small RPG project and I was hoping to make it expandable so like making it easy to add in areas to the map with out having to alter them in another editor.. |
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| Don't know the scale or type of terrain etc, but personally I would look into making a mesh from a data file containing vertext heights for an area. Then when moving around in the game I'd make an editor button that lets you raise or lower the point you're standing. Save out the new point data for next time. No bespoke editor, just move around in the game and alter the ground when needed... strip that functionality for the actual release game obviously. |
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| Somebody made a level editor for B3D and I was trying to get the source, but haven't heard anything yet. I was going to re-purpose it for minb3d. Blender could export collada, and scene data is saved out in the collada file (usually at the end of the file), so theoretically you could use that for placement of objects. Warning though, collada is a damn pain with its referencing structure. |
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| Well I spoke with the creator of the sector editor and haven't heard back about getting access to it, but he did mention about getting MiniB3d and trying to get used to it, so he might be working on it.. I looked all over my drive for it and couldn't find my copy :*( |
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| I'm always against rebuilding the wheel. Blender's got an entire Python API built in that you can fashion all sorts of utilities and tools to help you arrange your own level-building environment within the software. You can code tools to help you drop actors, triggers and helpers, to export things to your own engine-specific format and a visual utility to help name your objects by taking your selected choices for the game object's behavior and baking them into a string to name this game object with: "ITEM_SPAWN_120_-1_HEALTHKIT" (so you can parse back in your game engine and have the object work as you meant). It's a matter of studying the API. Last edited 2011 |
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| Ok, thanks FBEpyon! That sector editor looked great and I thought it was open source, but oh well. I also was looking into Ogitor (the Ogre Engine editor) and maybe creating a scene manager/ importer from that file structure into miniB3D. IIRC it's XML. http://www.ogitor.org/HomePage Last edited 2011 |
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| Kryzon: Thats what I'm going now, I just have to figure out how to export the information, my brother is helping me look into building an add on for my engine using Python and then using that add on to manage objects in the world space. AdamRedwoods: We need to get together on things and maybe you and I can come up with something. |
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| This is documented in articles and tutorials. There is a wealth of information regarding Blender's Python extensions. For instance: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/Advanced_Tutorials/Python_Scripting/Export_scripts |
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| Thanks Kryzon This makes my day like no other day!! I'm looking forward to see how things work out.. Thanks AGAIN!! |
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