6 réponses à ce sujet

[Driggan]

So I have a few level editing questions after working with the toolset for a bit, and I can't find the answers anywhere on the wiki. I'm currently trying to make a Ferelden Human Interior level.

1. The doors and wall models all one sided, so if you look from the opposite side there's nothing there. So how do you make rooms with walls with textures on both sides? I recall several rooms like this in DAO. It would seem you could just turn off snap to grid and move another model of a wall or door slightly away from the first, so that you have a wall / doorframe facing each way, but that feels a little awkward. Is there another way to do this?

2. How are roofs dealt with? Are they generated automatically or do they have to be placed?

3. The stairs don't seem to fit together with the snap to grid, does this mean you can't, say, climb some stairs to the next floor in FHI? Or do you just build the other room separately then connect them to the stairs by taking the level off the snap grid?

4. Rooms. I understand the rooms are for individual lighting purposes and performance so not too many rooms are animated at once,  but the whole concept feels a little bit vague. Are hallways and corridors also part of one room? Should you divide the rooms with corridors to help performance? Where do you make the divide? Like, at the start of the hallways or between them, where two rooms connect at hallways.

5. Are there ways to change a level in an area you've already made without having to redo all the placeables / NPC's?

[Driggan]

Well, I see now that ceilings are made by hand, though I'm not sure how they make the kind of ceilings they have in game.

[Driggan]

Anyone know any of this?



So far Ferelden Human Interior has been a real headache. There's always some tiny piece of the outside peaking through, and I'm having a hard time getting roofs that don't do that. I have ceilings, but the uppershort wall models don't seem to snap together correctly.



Are all the sets a nightmare?

[Nodrak]

If you see the background through the meshes in the editor, turn off the frame buffer effect, its a toggle icon on the 2nd or 3rd bar on the left side.



The snap can be prohibitive, especially the 'lock to plane' or whatever. Lowering the snap size can make it much more flexible, but requires more precision lining things up.



I didn't look much at the roof yet, but I did notice that there is a toggle button that will cut the roof away so you see through it, its a circle like icon.

[st4rdog]

Hopefully some .lvl files will be released within the month so we can see how Bioware did them. Try looking at some of the levels in the Area editor in the meantime.

[stuntpope]

I think what Bioware did with the two sided walls was to use two models, one facing each way. Once you have one pair set up then you can group them and copy and paste and rotate to get the others.



I have found that one of the best ways to align things in the level editor is to use the object inspector and set the X, Y and Z coordinates and rotations there. It gives you total control.



Also you can have bits and pieces sticking out of the area all over the place and it doesn't matter (e.g. bits of floor or half a model that sticks beyond a wall). Once you finish the level you can surround the whole thing with the black box models to ensure you have a completely smooth black exterior.

[stuntpope]

Another trick you can use is that if a join or corner looks a bit wrong then cover it with a pillar that is half set into the wall or corner. Many of the interior sets seem to have some kind of pillar that can be used for this.

And as st4rdog said, you can examine the Bioware area layouts to try and see what they did.