Ahh... I understand. I apologize, then, if my reply to you was harsher than necessary.. I took your response as being a bit sarcastic and rude.. I see that wasn't your intention. My mistake.
On topic... I have tried other options and they really just didn't grab me much.. that's why I said in my initial post that I was "down to two", TerraEd and A.L.E. I had tried, but eliminated the consideration of others.
Here's my dilemma...
Each of the two will create terrains and, to different degrees, allow the placement of objects, etc. They'll both provide, basically, what I'd like to accomplish, even though they're categorized differently.
The key differences between the two, as I understand it (and please feel correct me if I'm off in any way), are:
- TerraEd 2 works with a native B3D format that will take advantage of real-time LOD in-engine, but cannot be modified or light-mapped (e.g. GILE[s]) by an external program because it's height-map based, not mesh-based.
- A.L.E. will work "directly" with terrain meshes, in a way that is *very* reminiscent of Torque's editor, which can be further edited, lightmapped, etc.. outside of the editor because they are actual meshes. Painting in layers of up to 6 textures isn't a bad thing either :-).
I really like the flexibility of the TerraEd 2 system, but at the same time, I like the option of further tweaking a mesh outside of the editor itself...
I'm gonna have to continue working with each for a bit, I guess and really push to see what each can do..
On topic... I have tried other options and they really just didn't grab me much.. that's why I said in my initial post that I was "down to two", TerraEd and A.L.E. I had tried, but eliminated the consideration of others.
Here's my dilemma...
Each of the two will create terrains and, to different degrees, allow the placement of objects, etc. They'll both provide, basically, what I'd like to accomplish, even though they're categorized differently.
The key differences between the two, as I understand it (and please feel correct me if I'm off in any way), are:
- TerraEd 2 works with a native B3D format that will take advantage of real-time LOD in-engine, but cannot be modified or light-mapped (e.g. GILE[s]) by an external program because it's height-map based, not mesh-based.
- A.L.E. will work "directly" with terrain meshes, in a way that is *very* reminiscent of Torque's editor, which can be further edited, lightmapped, etc.. outside of the editor because they are actual meshes. Painting in layers of up to 6 textures isn't a bad thing either :-).
I really like the flexibility of the TerraEd 2 system, but at the same time, I like the option of further tweaking a mesh outside of the editor itself...
I'm gonna have to continue working with each for a bit, I guess and really push to see what each can do..