Time to help me out! Here's a VERY alpha version of the new editor. Very little works here; but it does import older maps and turns them into mesh, and shows the views.
Please read ALL of this to show what you can do to help!
http://homepage.mac.com/ggadwa/Misc/dim3...or.app.zip
Grab a copy,
RENAME IT, and then put it in your regular dim3 folder (rename it so it won't overwrite your old one). It won't break anything and doesn't even have the ability to save so nothing will get damaged (unless you forget to rename it, then you'll have to re-download the older version
).
OK, here's where I want help. Liquids aren't working right now, but everything else should translate up. The more primitives you have, the better the translation to meshes. You might end up with some big, full-portal meshes.
- Does the translator work for all your maps?
- Does it do a good job turning them into separate meshes (based on segment type and primitives)
- Is the new "normal" view what or closer to what you guys are looking for?
- The light blue mesh overlay -- is this a good thing? Should it not "bleed" through the other meshes?
- How about when you select a mesh? (click on it)
- (Not working, need suggestions) When you click a mesh (not a handle), should you drag the entire mesh or the polygon (and distort the other part of the mesh.)
- How would you do the opposite (i.e., drag the mesh instead of the polygon?)
- What's the speed like? I have no idea, it could be too slow, it's doing a lot of work.
Thanks ... this is VERY early and pretty much a rewrite ... so don't get either to excited or depressed. I'm just trying to get it "right" the first time.
[>] Brian
Great, Brian. Here's what I think:
1.) Yes, translates my maps beautifully.
2.) Converts primitives to meshes file, I see selecting and moving objects is broken, as well as moving segments.
3.) The new 'normal' view is not right. There should be 3 2d views (top, right, front) that are only outlines and no depth and one 3d view. in my opinion, anyways. The screen would be divided into 4 and windows scalable. I am not familiar with what you guys have been talking about so I don't know if this is in fact how everyone wanted it.
4.) Holding a modifier key should change how selections are handled. Or possibly different selection modes -- Mesh Selection, Face selection, Vertex selection, etc. Self-explanatory.
5.) So far the speed seems fine to me. In fact, it runs maps with a bunch of polys (and zoomed way out) extremely fast. However, importing old maps which have a lot of primitives, etc is terrifyingly slow. If it's one-time thing, no big deal.
-- Also, there should be a button to see the wireframe through faces or not.
teh1ghool Wrote:-- Also, there should be a button to see the wireframe through faces or not.
by the way:
i still have the icon template ofcourse.
no problems about new icons/buttons used for new functions.
i agree with teh1ghool in every point.
Wow, Brian, this is great!
The only thing besides teh1ghools stuff is that the view seems to only able to go in one direction. Even when you turn.
I couldn't edit anything though; probably not the main problem right now.
#Patrick
teh1ghool Wrote:Great, Brian. Here's what I think:
1.) Yes, translates my maps beautifully.
2.) Converts primitives to meshes file, I see selecting and moving objects is broken, as well as moving segments.
3.) The new 'normal' view is not right. There should be 3 2d views (top, right, front) that are only outlines and no depth and one 3d view. in my opinion, anyways. The screen would be divided into 4 and windows scalable. I am not familiar with what you guys have been talking about so I don't know if this is in fact how everyone wanted it.
4.) Holding a modifier key should change how selections are handled. Or possibly different selection modes -- Mesh Selection, Face selection, Vertex selection, etc. Self-explanatory.
5.) So far the speed seems fine to me. In fact, it runs maps with a bunch of polys (and zoomed way out) extremely fast. However, importing old maps which have a lot of primitives, etc is terrifyingly slow. If it's one-time thing, no big deal.
-- Also, there should be a button to see the wireframe through faces or not.
I agree with most of this. However I don't like the idea of a default 4-view window. I never like having more then two open in any 3D modeler, and having 4 would be kind of overkill. I would like to be able to choose though, to have 4, 3, 2 or 1 window ports if that's not too much trouble. And also the 3D top down view is really cool! I think the 3D views should all be Orthographic switchable, so you can change it with just a key stroke.
It looks really good Brian, and a fantastic start for sure.
I couldn't really test it, (since it doesn't run on a Wii
) but I was able to take a quick look at it on my brother's computer because he's not home yet.
So far, I like it. A lot. :D
It's already far better than the old editor (at least the optical part, we will see about editing).
It would be good to have a button that switches from "real" 3D to ortographic mode.
Maybe an option to show all the portals and ignoring sight paths (only in the editor) would be good too.
A way to hide certain meshes would be nice. (Like hiding vertices in the animator.)
That's all that I can think of right now.
I better get away from this computer as fast as possible before my brother comes home and kills me. :x
Great -- good input so far. What I'll probably attempt is to do both what teh1ghool wants and the normal view as two separate selectable views; each paned-view is a separate path so it's easy to make in any combination.
So, I'll have what we have now, plus one with wireframe top/right/front + 3D view.
I can certainly go a long way to speeding up the drawing, also, I'm was trying to get it done before making it fast.
I'm doing as much work as possible to make sure all the code is cross-platform, also. Don't have any plans (making all the dialogs and stuff would be ugly work
) -- but if anybody really wants a different version in a different OS the work should be easy.
I'm glad to see I was at least near the right track!
[>] Brian
Just wanted to add some more stuff here, after a closer look Brian. I also like Bink's ideas.
My thoughts:
• The 3 port view is REALLY nice, I do like it a lot, and I think that I would be very happy with it as an option for me to use, however, not being able to turn the camera in the side views is annoying, so that should be fixed.
• I love having all the segments outlined, but the outlines should be switchable X-Ray or not, so they won't show through the segments, which is something I have trouble with.
• It runs at a buttery smooth frame rate on my computer, so any speed enhancements would REALLY make it a killer.
• For texturing, is this version going to have the ability to COMMAND or OPTION drag a wall to move the texture around? Because I love that feature from forge, and it would be swell in Dim3.
• Oh I forgot! I would seriously like the ability to move the camera in the different views
separately. I never liked having the 3D view move the portal view around, and vise-versa, being able to move each view independently of each would be a big + for me.
That's all for now, I'll look at it more later.
Awesome! No problems with translation to meshes, and it runs at a great speed.
But I would like to see the horizontal views rotatable though, as it would render some pieces of a map difficult to edit if you can only look in two directions.
you could have a polygon select/point select cursor (like back cursor v white cursor in Photoshop/illustrator path selection), or toggle it with a modifier key.
Having the ability to detach the portal view would be handy as the new 3-split doesn't let you zoom out enough on large maps. And those of us with 2 or more screens are loosing out on the potential of the extra monitor.
Maybe changing the primitives into a library of meshes with previews (pre-rendered) would be more in keeping with the new direction of the editor.