DeleD Community Edition

d1dave · DeleD PRO user Joined: 20 Apr 2006 Posts: 10

I've been trying to make some modular pieces to make buildings with (varied wall sections, corner pieces, stairs, etc), and save them all as prefabs so I can just plug them all together to make up some complete buildings without having to do each building from scratch. I have been making each section using cubes basically like lego's and deleting all of the non visible faces of each cube and then merging a whole wall together and saving as a prefab. When I do this it looks fine and each piece seems to export to blitz and show up in my game with no trouble. If I don't merge the pieces and I try to export to blitz to view in my game then I get a memory access violation error in my game so if I just go back and merge it and re-export then it loads up fine and looks fine in the game. That is for each individual piece I build.

The problem comes when I try to put the pieces all together after they have been saved as prefabs. I load up four walls and four corners and line them all up snapped to grid and everything looks great. Then I try to select everything and merge it all together so it will work in my game and it all goes crazy. Some of the walls disappear completely, and sometimes just some of the pieces so I see like the four corner sections partially but nothing else.

If I make all of the pieces seperate just exactly the same in one session without making them prefabs and then line them up and merge them, while still in the same session, everything seems to work fine and export into my game fine but that is not really much of a time saver unless I build all the pieces in one file so that when I open it I can just use what I need then delete all of the extra pieces but that doesn't seem like the right way.

Things I've tried:

Not deleting the non-visible faces and saving to prefabs....same problem

Tested it with the pieces triangulated and not.......same problem

Built the pieces all in the same session and put them together not as prefabs....worked but not practical really

Tried the union option since I didn't know what it did...collapsed everthing into one cube

I am very new to modeling, ok complete beginner, and I may be doing everything wrong from building it, to merging it, to texturing it. Can anyone tell me where I'm going wrong here or how I can accomplish this? I just want to use DeleD to make some buildings complete with interiors to use in my game. Once I see that I can complete a whole building and get it into my game properly I want to buy the full version because subtraction would make life much easier and it has been the easiest modeler I've used to far. Tested Milkshape, Blender, Gamespace, and Wings and DeleD has been the most user friendly but I haven't quite been able to get it to do what I'm hoping for.

Thank you,

Dave

granada · Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2006 3:49 pm Post subject:

Hi there Dave.

Have you downloaded the latest version !.

Dave
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Jeroen · Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2006 3:57 pm Post subject:

Hey there Dave, and welcome!

Indeed, have you downloaded the latest version of DeleD, including the latest version of the Blitz exporter?

I'd very much like to take a look at your prefabs and see if I can reproduce this problem here. Would you mind sending them to my emailaddress specified in my profile? Thanks!

d1dave · DeleD PRO user Joined: 20 Apr 2006 Posts: 10

Wow, fast responses. Thanks guys. I'll try the new version tonight when I get home and see what happens and update this thread. I am currently using the previous version I downloaded a couple of weeks ago. If I still have the same trouble I will send you the prefabs. They really are just some simple block sections made up of smaller blocks to form windows and moulding and stuff. I know I can do the moulding with custom skins or something but it made it so much easier just to make it a separate object and these buildings will be so low poly to start with it doesn't really hurt in that area and my art skills stink. Should I be saving them WITHOUT textures as prefabs maybe?

Thanks again,

Dave

Jeroen · Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2006 6:54 pm Post subject:

d1dave · DeleD PRO user Joined: 20 Apr 2006 Posts: 10

Ok, new problem. I updated my DeleD Lite with the new version from the link on the front page. Version 1.42 LITE it says in the software. I opened a new project and dropped in my prefabs, lined them up and hit merge and nothing vanished but at that point I realized the wall sections weren't quite lined up to the grid. I thought maybe it was because those prefabs were made in a different version so I performed the following test.

Opened a new project.

Pressed 2 to set my grid size.

Created a cube 40 squares wide, 20 tall, and 2 deep all snapped to grid.

Exported it as a DeleD prefab.

Opened a new project.

Inserted the prefab cube I created and it doesn't snap to grid anymore. All of my prefabs did before I updated DeleD. It seems that the object has grown very slightly as well.

Ok, tried one more thing, if I select the prefab object and tell it to snap selection to grid in object mode it doesn't work but I can use edge mode and work around it sort of.

Any ideas?

Dave

d1dave · DeleD PRO user Joined: 20 Apr 2006 Posts: 10

More testing. Snap to grid - selection doesn't do anything with the previously created cube prefab. I have to use snap to grid - entire scene to get it to work.

Dave

Daaark · Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2006 2:25 am Post subject:

d1dave · DeleD PRO user Joined: 20 Apr 2006 Posts: 10

Jeroen · Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2006 8:14 am Post subject:

granada · Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2006 10:44 am Post subject:

d1dave · DeleD PRO user Joined: 20 Apr 2006 Posts: 10

Thank you everyone for the assistance. I'm so new to this all that when I have a problem I wonder is it me doing something wrong first or the software second. I understand why you wouldn't want to snap some complex items to the grid but it would be a nice option in some cases so I'll be looking forward to that addition. My prefabs are fairly simple at the moment so the buildings don't look all that great, but now that I've got the kinks worked out I'll build a full set with better detail and make some buildings and get some in game screenshots soon. Now that I know DeleD will work for me I'll be buying the full version. Hopefully nothing gets messed up when I install it.

As I said previously, I changed the snap method on my prefabs to center. The other two options were none and vertex I think. What is the difference? Should I be using vertex instead? When I create a new cube it is set to vertex by default I think.

Thank you all,

Dave

Edit: Yay me, proud new owner of PRO version. Can't wait to get home and try it.