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

[radorn]

I wasn't very sure about where to post this. It seemed more fit for the Hammer subforum, since it's the main place for map making help, but this is not about hammer at all, so... Admins, put this wherever you think it should be.

Some of you may remember I use SketchUp, and some even showed some interest in it. It's nice to use, but it has some quirks. It outputs obj files but it formats them a bit strange, so after exporting it still needs manual edition in an amount directly proportional to that of the size of your map.
It should be solventable with some script but I don't know programming. I may have to learn something and craft some automated "fixer".
Anyway I'm disgressing.

For now, I'm offering you a sketchup template to start making maps for GE.

http://www.xente.mundo-r.com/radorn/ge_sketchup_template_567.rar

It consists of a model file which already includes all the original textures directly from the Editor's "romimagesfull" directory.
It also has a visualization style that helps the user keep Sketchup oddities under control, but you'll need to use your brains to realize this.

Aditionally it has a sample "room" with some familiar references to help getting a sense of proportion and so everything ends up at the right scale in game.
From what I have observed, Goldeneye's ingame 3D space units are centimeters. I reached this conclusion after measuring differen't levels door's dimensions within the original models and scaling them acording to the level scale to see if seemingly similarly sized stuff across different levels yielded similar numbers after scaling.
Seeing that they did, I just rounded things a bit.
Regular doors from the Facility are X:106 Y:240 Z:40 after scaling
Double doors are exacly double in X, 212.
These are rather wide doors compared to real life doors, but you if you pay attention, you'd see that they fit more guards than they should, so things seem to fit with the centimeter theory.
The included room has these examples with labels.

What this means is you can model stuff in sketchup using real world measures (in whatever units you feel comfortable with, be them decimal or whatever), and then just remember to set units to centimeters in the export options and sketchup will do the conversion. The resulting map should be set to 1.0 scale in the GoldenEditor.
If your level becomes too big to use 1.0 scale, you can select everything and use the scale tool, set the desired scale before exporting.
Write down the scale you set (for example 0.50) and then use that scale in the Editor. Just as simple as that. Don't forget to set centimeters as the export unit.

Well, that's it for now.
In due time, and if there's interest, I could write an actual manual/tutorial, or help somebody else write one.

Two last things.
To be able to export OBJ's from SketchUp you need to have a Pro license.
The linked file contains the template in SketchUp v5, v6 and v7 formats, so you don't need the latest version if you don't have it or can't get it...

[garbage]

yeah, a tutorial would be cool! please make one!

[radorn]

For now I won't be making it, so you are encouraged to experiment on your own, but I will try my best to answer any questions or doubts you may have.

Keep in mind that the guide I'd make would only cover up to getting OBJ files that are good for the editor, but the process of making them into goldeneye with the editor is common to any other method available so I wont be covering it, at least not initially and with no guarantees of ever doing it.

So, for now, get your sketchup, load the file, and edit away.

For an initial piece of advice:
Sketcup internally works with free form srfaces instead of basic trangles, but goldeneye wont accept that, so, upon exporting, you should mark the "trangulate all surfaces" checkbox OR you could carefully triangulate stuff manually, which is the method I prefer for an optimum result.
In order to control the triangulation process you shoul pay attention to 2 things.
One is that straight lines can be composed of more than one segment, divided by vertices, and each vertex will subsequently generate further tessellation in the surface it pertains to. To counter this I have enabled highlighting of the vertices so you can spot them and eliminate the undesired ones. To do this, simply make a new line from the vertex to erase and the erase that line. the ertex will go away with it.
Other thing to pay attention to is that, given the nature of sketchup, when lines and/or planes intersect or touch, new lines and vertexes will be created automatically in the affected areas. Unless you isolate them from each other using sub-groups.
For example:
If you want, to make a non-sqare room, but you don't want to make a floor for it that fits the contour perfectly in order to save on the amount of triangles (which is good to improve performance), or a room that has stuff in it like colums or divisory walls, you should isolate the square floor (just two tris) in a subgroup, and, like it, any intersecting geometry you want to keep from being inapropriatelly intersected.

[garbage]

ok man