Sybixus
I've been using Lightwave to model my levels, but I thought I'd revisit the whole CSG scene to see if level dev could be made any quicker. In other words, a hellish journey into a world of multiple file formats and trying to string various programmes together to get a workable art path to blitz. In the end I went screaming back to LW ;-)
I didn't get to looking at UnrealED and can't confirm it can export to OBJ. But I think it'd be a strong contender given at a glance it seems to have a fuller toolset. Question is getting stuff out of it into Blitz. Unwrap3d can convert obj files - although from memory it was losing some of the UV data (texture tiling).
Looked at CShop4. Like the fact there's a direct pipeline from it to Blitz and that I can do lightmapping in CS.
Also the map is imported (into Blitz) as many children objects which allows blitz to do effective culling (?)
Found the texture tools too limited. Some object/node selection problems. No texture layering. I like the ability to set vis groups/flags in CShop which my Blitz code can then take advantage of. No polygon draw/face extrude/face resize. Basically a Worldcraft copy with overall less features but a good Blitz artpath.
Looked at Worldcraft. Excellent for rapid dev of boxy levels. Some nice texture tools for quick texturing (important). No texture layers. No polygon draw/extrude/face resize which can mean more work when it comes to more complex shapes (such as a rocky cliff face)- much too like hardwork. Also Unwrap was losing UV data on .map import so imported WC map files into CShop. Found the .map -> CShop conversion utility wasn't picking up groups or vis groups set in WC. Would have to redo manually in CShop.
Looked at a few others - DEdit, Quark - found Worldcraft the easiest to understand.
At that point I went back to LW.
Basically
I've been using Lightwave to model my levels, but I thought I'd revisit the whole CSG scene to see if level dev could be made any quicker. In other words, a hellish journey into a world of multiple file formats and trying to string various programmes together to get a workable art path to blitz. In the end I went screaming back to LW ;-)
I didn't get to looking at UnrealED and can't confirm it can export to OBJ. But I think it'd be a strong contender given at a glance it seems to have a fuller toolset. Question is getting stuff out of it into Blitz. Unwrap3d can convert obj files - although from memory it was losing some of the UV data (texture tiling).
Looked at CShop4. Like the fact there's a direct pipeline from it to Blitz and that I can do lightmapping in CS.
Also the map is imported (into Blitz) as many children objects which allows blitz to do effective culling (?)
Found the texture tools too limited. Some object/node selection problems. No texture layering. I like the ability to set vis groups/flags in CShop which my Blitz code can then take advantage of. No polygon draw/face extrude/face resize. Basically a Worldcraft copy with overall less features but a good Blitz artpath.
Looked at Worldcraft. Excellent for rapid dev of boxy levels. Some nice texture tools for quick texturing (important). No texture layers. No polygon draw/extrude/face resize which can mean more work when it comes to more complex shapes (such as a rocky cliff face)- much too like hardwork. Also Unwrap was losing UV data on .map import so imported WC map files into CShop. Found the .map -> CShop conversion utility wasn't picking up groups or vis groups set in WC. Would have to redo manually in CShop.
Looked at a few others - DEdit, Quark - found Worldcraft the easiest to understand.
At that point I went back to LW.
Basically