| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Ed War
Member
Joined: 01 Apr 2013
Posts: 7
|
 Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2013 6:39 pm Post subject: Looking for suggestion from experienced users... |
 |
|
Let me put this in as few words as possible then I'll give a short explanation as to how I got here and what my question is.
What CSG editor can I use for buildings that will let me import INTO Max for use in Hero Engine?
Early on I used The Hammer (Valve) just playing around and liked it. I went from Kaneva to Multiverse to HeroEngine trying to get a demo of my game going, it's an MMORPG. I've got models and have been making models of my own and want to stay with HE but I keep running into one recurring problem.
I can't find the right CSG editor for making buildings/architecture with interiors that will:
1) Be at least as intuitive as DeleD is. (Though I like the more simple interfaces of 3D World Studio and Hammer.)
2) Be able to delete individual faces of static objects to make the resulting converted meshes for Max and therefore HE more efficient.
3) Have the right export options for Max to properly read it.
NOTE: For Hero Engine, they have you using either Max or Maya (no other options as of yet) to re-apply HE materials to meshes/models and then go through a tedious convoluted export process to get the models into HE.
4) Utilize Alpha channels on textures although I might be able to live without that.
Anyway, can DeleD do all this? If not, is there anything that can or am I just going to have to quit taking the easy way with CSG editors and buckle down with Max?
I just went through a bunch of nonsense with the last editor I was using and it corrupted the models (in its native format even!) so I'm starting to get frustrated with all this.
I would appreciate any suggestions at this point.
_________________
There are 10 kinds of people in the world...those who understand Binary and those who do not. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Jeroen
Site Admin
Joined: 07 Aug 2004
Posts: 5332
Location: The Netherlands
|
| Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2013 8:29 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Hey there Ed,
Welcome to these forums!
I answered a mail from you on march 23 regarding the same questions.  Did you receive it? Anyway, as for the points you mentioned: I think all 4 can be met by DeleD.
As DeleD is totally free software, why not give it a try? It's always a matter of trial and error to get a good software pipeline up and running. You can experiment with DeleD's modeling capabilities, try various exporters (.obj, .3ds) to get things into Max and fiddle around with DeleD's material editor to play with alpha values.
The Wiki on our site should provide enough help to get you started, and you can always ask questions here.
Cheers,
Jeroen
_________________
Check out Figuro, our online 3D app! More powerful 3D tools for free. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
AWM Mars
Member
Joined: 06 Jan 2010
Posts: 1195
Location: Wilts England
|
| Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2013 9:48 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I use a workflow of DeleD into Max, but only when I really need a stable DAE export (having installed the OpenCollada.org plugin first) as it is only available for Max or Maya, even the Max Collada exporter is nothing to write home about.
If you export in OBJ's from DeleD, and possibly 3DS (can't 100% remember), you either export each model from your scene individually, or you have to merge all your models into one mesh, otherwise strange things happen to your polygons and materials.
Whilst most rendering engines for games support PNG, not all support transparencies correctly and you end up with a fuzzy edge, or all your textures are mirrored in all planes. 
_________________
Politeness is priceless when received, cost nothing to own or give, yet some cannot afford.
Checkout:
http://www.awm.mars.yourinside.com/
http://www.bccservices.co.uk
http://www.localtradecheck.co.uk |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ed War
Member
Joined: 01 Apr 2013
Posts: 7
|
| Posted: Tue Apr 02, 2013 3:35 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Jeroen wrote: |
Hey there Ed,
Welcome to these forums!
I answered a mail from you on march 23 regarding the same questions. Did you receive it? Anyway, as for the points you mentioned: I think all 4 can be met by DeleD.
As DeleD is totally free software, why not give it a try? It's always a matter of trial and error to get a good software pipeline up and running. You can experiment with DeleD's modeling capabilities, try various exporters (.obj, .3ds) to get things into Max and fiddle around with DeleD's material editor to play with alpha values.
The Wiki on our site should provide enough help to get you started, and you can always ask questions here.
Cheers,
Jeroen |
Hey, thanks Jeroen! I appreciate your fast reply. I may have missed your email though. I don't remember seeing it but I'll go back and look. I've already downloaded Deled to see what I can see.
_________________
There are 10 kinds of people in the world...those who understand Binary and those who do not. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ed War
Member
Joined: 01 Apr 2013
Posts: 7
|
| Posted: Tue Apr 02, 2013 3:49 am Post subject: |
|
|
| AWM Mars wrote: |
I use a workflow of DeleD into Max, but only when I really need a stable DAE export (having installed the OpenCollada.org plugin first) as it is only available for Max or Maya, even the Max Collada exporter is nothing to write home about.
If you export in OBJ's from DeleD, and possibly 3DS (can't 100% remember), you either export each model from your scene individually, or you have to merge all your models into one mesh, otherwise strange things happen to your polygons and materials.
Whilst most rendering engines for games support PNG, not all support transparencies correctly and you end up with a fuzzy edge, or all your textures are mirrored in all planes. |
Thanks for the tips Mars. I just normally do one static mesh per import. HE won't let you import it if you have more than so many materials and it's not a lot (16 or 32 I think). I've had my ups and downs with other editors but mostly downs. I was using 3D World Studio and porting it through UU3D Pro --> Max --> Hero Engine but shortly after I got the pipeline figured out (as bloated a carcass as it was it was still working) it broke. Something became cross linked with the textures and it had something to do with all the Alpha layered PNG's. They would show up as solid and when I retextured one plain with what I thought was the new one it would change ALL the ones that had the old texture on them, hence me thinking they all became cross linked somehow. I plan on blowing away my old Vid card drivers and installing a new video card as well to help bring things up-to-date. Anyway, I'm hoping that doesn't happen much with DeleD so I think I'm going to give it a try!
_________________
There are 10 kinds of people in the world...those who understand Binary and those who do not. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
AWM Mars
Member
Joined: 06 Jan 2010
Posts: 1195
Location: Wilts England
|
| Posted: Tue Apr 02, 2013 9:14 am Post subject: |
|
|
For my workflow, DeleD's strengths lie in its simplicity, yet powerful methodology approach. It doesn't overwhelm the use with menus , yet everything is right there at your fingertips.
It's weakness has to be the exporters. This is not indigenous as you probably already know, the problem lies in the industries bastardising of the formats over the years. So often the writers of the exporters, basically cover all the features they want, and a few more to make it 'standard'. Same can be said of the Importers of most programmes.
In DeleD of course, you can write your own exporters, due to the plug-in nature of the architecture.
_________________
Politeness is priceless when received, cost nothing to own or give, yet some cannot afford.
Checkout:
http://www.awm.mars.yourinside.com/
http://www.bccservices.co.uk
http://www.localtradecheck.co.uk |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Jeroen
Site Admin
Joined: 07 Aug 2004
Posts: 5332
Location: The Netherlands
|
| Posted: Tue Apr 02, 2013 7:57 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Good to see you're trying out DeleD, Ed. Let us know about your findings. It's always good to see how other people go about their software pipeline!
_________________
Check out Figuro, our online 3D app! More powerful 3D tools for free. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ed War
Member
Joined: 01 Apr 2013
Posts: 7
|
| Posted: Tue Apr 16, 2013 11:09 pm Post subject: Suggestion on beginners Architectural Tutorials |
|
|
OK, I'm now done with my second job working the graveyard shift and I'm not going to be going back to that until I end up in a literal graveyard
Since I've got more time and some days off and have been fiddling with some of the basic features of Deled I was wondering if there was a basic tutorial for architecture that you might suggest. I really want to get some of these plugged into it along with some other things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMV4y52CzfQ
_________________
There are 10 kinds of people in the world...those who understand Binary and those who do not. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Jeroen
Site Admin
Joined: 07 Aug 2004
Posts: 5332
Location: The Netherlands
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 17, 2013 6:27 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Hey there Ed,
Have you taken a look at the wiki yet? It has a tutorials page which can be found here.
And of course there's the DeleD Tutorials forum where users post their own tutorials, too.
Hope these will get you started!
Btw, that video shows a promising game. What's the current status?
_________________
Check out Figuro, our online 3D app! More powerful 3D tools for free. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ed War
Member
Joined: 01 Apr 2013
Posts: 7
|
| Posted: Fri Apr 19, 2013 4:42 am Post subject: Status is "stuck" for a short while... |
|
|
| Jeroen wrote: |
Hey there Ed,
Have you taken a look at the wiki yet? It has a tutorials page which can be found here.
And of course there's the DeleD Tutorials forum where users post their own tutorials, too.
Hope these will get you started!
Btw, that video shows a promising game. What's the current status? |
Thank you for the compliment. I found and went through some of the tutorials.
My first thought is to say that the status is "stuck" but that isn't entirely true. I've done very little the past couple months as I was working a second job. Before that and going back about 7 years now I started on a GDD which is over 400 pages and includes blue print style sketches of over 100 building and city designs.
However, just going back about a year I had some problems with all the models I created getting corrupted and was told by the programmers of this same program that the new and improved version would be out in so many months and it ended up being a year and a half. Then I found out it didn't have the export options I needed which is why I started looking for something like Deled. I think the models I did in this editor are beyond repair of any sort so I am starting over again. BTW, the ones you saw in the video were ones I did in Valve's "The Hammer" even before that but I can find no way to export the few models I did in it, even just the meshes.
During the past year I wasn't working on models very much but I was doing other things like self publishing the first of a line of short stories that describe the back story for The 5th Realm and working on some artwork for the FB pages when I could.
A couple years before that I went down to my city's local Small Business Administration pod and talked to them to see if they could help me out but they wanted something tangible like a demo to show investors, entreprenuers and the like.
So my plan is to get models into a free engine like HeroEngine, Unity or even Deled to make some kind of playable demo.
I would try to put together a group but can't seem to find anyone good enough or reliable enough to do it. If I even had just one really good modeler and an engine/coder guy to work with I think we could do wonders.
Not a short or simple answer I know but that is where I'm at right now.
_________________
There are 10 kinds of people in the world...those who understand Binary and those who do not. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
trucker2000
DeleD PRO user
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 1839
Location: Sacramento, California
|
| Posted: Sat Apr 20, 2013 3:31 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Good to see what you've done.
If you used Hammer, you have the .map files still? DeleD has a .map importer that does a pretty good job. (it also exports to .map. (torque exporter)
You could attempt to get your models into deled to fix them using that importer.
As for your game engine of choice, I cannot comment. I've always used torque. (now free and open source)
_________________
Some day I will grow up and be a real modeler.
"Never give up! Never surrender!!"
Sys specs:
asus
8 gigs ram
Invidia gtx560 video card
Windows 8 (worst op sys Ever) |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
AWM Mars
Member
Joined: 06 Jan 2010
Posts: 1195
Location: Wilts England
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ed War
Member
Joined: 01 Apr 2013
Posts: 7
|
| Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2013 5:47 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| trucker2000 wrote: |
Good to see what you've done.
If you used Hammer, you have the .map files still? DeleD has a .map importer that does a pretty good job. (it also exports to .map. (torque exporter)
You could attempt to get your models into deled to fix them using that importer.
As for your game engine of choice, I cannot comment. I've always used torque. (now free and open source) |
Thanks for the tip Trucker. Nearly all of the ones in the video were done in the HL2 engine and those are not corrupted but the ones I did in 3D World Studio are. I did not think them retrievable but it will not hurt to try. It will not do any more damage than what has already been done.
I still have the map files. It's been a while but I think I just gave up on trying to get those exported. At that time there were ".map converters" and a few ".map importers" but they never worked and I assumed that Valve was using some sort of proprietary .map file. I'll take a look at it when I get home tonight although it will probably take me a while to dig through my backups from years ago  but they should still be there.
I also had a really nice glass pyramid type building that was in the Half Life 1 engine. Is there an importer or converter for that?
_________________
There are 10 kinds of people in the world...those who understand Binary and those who do not. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ed War
Member
Joined: 01 Apr 2013
Posts: 7
|
| Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2013 7:06 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| AWM Mars wrote: |
| I checked out HeroEngine, could not find a free version anywhere, only a online $99 a year version. |
Not more than a couple years ago HE had a special deal where you could sign up and get a free account if they liked your project idea. They may not do that now but I never really looked into it after I got mine. I know some things have changed since then. Maybe it's the same type of account but now they charge $99 for it.
I'll have to go back and catch up on some reading in their forums.
_________________
There are 10 kinds of people in the world...those who understand Binary and those who do not. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
