GoldenEye 007 Nintendo 64 Community, GoldenEye X, Nintendo 64 Games Discussion

[monkeyface]

What we'd need, is an editor that lets you work with triangles, directly. Also, you should be able to paint the vertices and easily export it into an .obj file.

However, once you learn Hammer, and learn the tricks on how to optimize it correctly for Goldeneye, it's easy enough. But it's still sad that I have no idea on how to get the exact shadows that I want. You can't control the triangulation process, and therefore you can't do exact shadows.

[SubDrag]

Hmm, I can't control and let you rearrange triangles, but you can manually (not quickly) one by one change vertice colors. How would a shader tool work? Would you like a color picker, than a "fill tool" that every one you touch changes to that? Still that wouldn't give great shadows. And you'd have to export every single room, actually that feature should be added: "Export all rooms to original vertices" and use saved names. But what did you have in mind?

[Dragonsbrethren]

radorn: I agree with most of what you've said, and I agree that it's really wasteful to do a full BSP only to use the geometry portion of it, but it's still (in my opinion) better than any of the other model editors I've used. I want an editor that lets me model my architecture realistically, like Hammer does, and then automatically removes anything that can't be seen.

I've already mentioned how I like the compiling process, those maps you looked at without geometry removed must not have been compiled properly. The first (and only released) version of Office was not compiled properly, if that's what you looked at. The tools we use are pretty efficient at generating tris, our maps are usually more efficient than Rare's in that regard (Rare had extra tris for lighting though).

monkeyface: Here's a thought, create your shadows as part of the level architecture using a dummy texture. When you import, change that dummy texture to the real texture you want used there, and use the setup editor's vertex color editor to do your shadows. Not the most time efficient method, but I think it's the best we can do with Hammer. Reminds me of mapping for Doom where each lighting change has to be its own sector.

SubDrag: A shader tool sounds like it would be really useful for lighting. I like that darken the entire room feature you added, but it's still really time consuming to add shadows and lighting after doing that.

[radorn]

Dragonsbrethren
That 3D World Studio looks like a CSG+BSP based editor, Like Hammer.
I recognize the technical superiority of these: Among other things, if GE supported BSPs, we would not be doing clipping, rooms, portals... But since it does not, I'd rather go for older tech, such as triangle meshes .
I really see no point in going for another BSP editor when there's already hammer, for which there's already a documented procedure, community support and it's for free.

What I (we?) really want is a good, "classic" mesh based program, not forgetting about advanced features and editing tools, of course, but focused on editting meshes, plain non-solid geometry, not exotic volumetric entities.

[monkeyface]

Ah, clever, Dragonsbrethren. Never thought of that. That solves, half of the problem, actually!

SubDrag, a shader tool would be perfect. I know I've been buggering you about this, but it would really save a lot of time.
Something like this, Jungle, for example.




Hundreds of vertices and hundreds of right-clicks and repetitions, and you're not even sure if it will look good. And then there is the clipping, the same thing here, hundreds of right clicks and you're not sure of what you're getting. Most of the time, the clipping and the floor vertices are exactly the same, after Mr Stan Convertor they're still pretty much the same. It would be wonderful if you could paint them at the same time. I know I have bothering you with this picture before, but it's the optimal tool for this, in my opinion.



A simple stroke with the pointer and you paint every point (within a ratio) the same colour. The eraser would set every point it passes to default. The alpha, I think, is impossible to do like that. The two checkboxes would determine what layer of the map you're painting. I'm not the/a programmer, so I can't give you any practical help other than my crazy MSPaint screens...

[SubDrag]

Ah, now I get it. You want it on a *point* basis, not a triangle basis. That makes a lot of sense. Honestly it's going to take some time to do this, but I will do it during the holidays most likely, if you can wait. I'm not sure if I have enough free time until then. But yes, you will get it!

[monkeyface]

SubDrag wrote:

Ah, now I get it. You want it on a *point* basis, not a triangle basis. That makes a lot of sense. Honestly it's going to take some time to do this, but I will do it during the holidays most likely, if you can wait. I'm not sure if I have enough free time until then. But yes, you will get it!

Sounds great! It took me nearly a year to finish my project, take your time. We can wait.

[SubDrag]

Oy I just found out I'm really busy for holidays, and even worse Jan to Feb...I'm hoping to take time off sometime, but we'll see if I have enough time over holidays. I'll try!

[monkeyface]

Don't sweat it. There's enough work to do with the maps, outside of the GE-editor. In Hammer, for example.

[radorn]

No objection to the vertex coloring matter being discussed, as I¡m also interested in it, but if you don't mind I'd like to get back on topic with OBJ importing.

I have already assumed that I need a new editor as sketchup is not up to the job because of the subgrouping requirement, and it causing issues even if the importer is modified, so well, I'm not coundint on it, although I would like it to be added.
Anyway, deviating the matter just slighty.
Does the editor currently support importing secondary indices from OBJ?
If so, how should it be labeled?
Also, looking at the textures used in secondary stuff, I observe that black pixels are the ones nulled out, but that's just what I can deduce by looking at the textures. How does it actually work?

[SubDrag]

If the image type is transparent, it nullifies the all black ones. I think the editor though, puts images not in transparent mode, so you'd have to go to the hex patterns themselves in the file. I can't remember offhand, but it's a trivial hange.

Your files can actually import primary secondary.
You do g Room01
then g primary
stuff
g secondary
stuff

g Room02
etc

Try exporting a full level as .obj, and then match the format