Unreal Engine 3 updates

    Quote from Hourences

    I'll agree with everything you said except for this.

    Unreal is by far the superior editor out of the batch when looking at the "traditional" Radiant/Hammer/Unreal trifecta (and I'm saying this as a life-long Hammer/Radiant user), but its BSP construction is archaic by comparison (which, considering the age of Hammer and Radiant's interfaces, is depressing).

    The ironic thing is Unreal's BSP tools are by far the most powerful - extrusion, concave shapes, clean intersection/de-intersection, additive/subtractive... No other editors have that strong a geometry creation tool. But factor in still having to rebuild geometry to even preview what you're doing, switching of tools and modes in a clunky interface (the geometry mode windows are just awful), poor/slow texturing, the decreased emphasis on BSP in the engine, and its awful in-game performance, and it's all wasted.

    I've done some crazy things in Unreal BSP I'd never be able to do in Hammer or Radiant (even with patches), like mocking up radially-snapping circular static mesh templates, but it was such a chore I'd have been better off doing it in another program. Now, if someone ever takes Radiant's speed of construction - you can't get much faster measured brush creation than a single drag on the grid - and merges that with the power of Unreal's BSP tools, we'll have a glorious tool indeed.

    I agree with you there. The texturing tools are not too good and yes the rebuilding is definitly annoying. I work in wireframe all the time and I never use the builder brush, but yes that is not exactly the most userfriendly way. I agree that just being able to fly around and quickly make a cube here or there, a la hammer and other editors, would certainly be a whole lot better. My guess is that they would probably implement that in UE4, as it is one of the oldest and weirdest (go explain to a first timer what this weird red brush is) features left in the engine.

    Another big problem for Unreals BSP is the lack of smoothing. Without that, a whole lot of things are suddenly impossible to make really.

    Still, considering everything I still prefer Unreals BSP. Also for example the ability to just model something in Max, and just export/import it as BSP, in just 3 seconds, is awesome. Not that there is any need for that nowadays but whatever

    How do you create brushes without using the builder brush?

    You take an existing brush, and you just duplicate it (ctrl w). Then you just vertex/face/edge edit it a la hammer, and you drag it around.

    Also if you do wish to use the red builder brush, you don't have to drag the crap all over the level all the time. Select a brush on one end of the level, do CTRL P, or alternatively right click - Poly - To Brush, and that will move the red builder brush over to that position, and take over the shape of the selected brush.

    Yeah, I never work with the builder brush unless I'm building the first brush for a level or specifically need to add cylinders. Once you duplicate, you'll never go back

    You use cylinders?

    Also if you hold ctrl shift, and click a BSP wall, you select the brush it belongs to btw for those who want to quickly duplicate brushes.

    I do; I find it easier to drop a precisely measured cylinder from a builder than to create one by extrusion or vertex/edge manipulation, and for radial stuff it's cleaner to leave the off-grid verts so other cylindrical pieces or rotated meshes can line up properly.

    Kinda, but it creates a huge amount of very messed up cuts into the BSP around it. And without smoothing groups it looks total crap. You are prolly just building low poly gameplay levels though I asume?

    there are some rumors Epic heavily updated the brush builder tool in one of the latest UE3 builds. We might have more info during the GDC.

    Yeah, stuff like that is just for basic shells or converted to static mesh as a placeholder for a final modeled version. If the BSP walls stay, all the seams get covered with meshes. If you stick with power of two subdivisions on the cylinders, you'll get subdivisions that perfectly line up with the rotational snaps in the editor... awesome for radial sexytime.

    Which reminds me, two more amazing bonus points for unreal - manual (temporary) pivot placement, plus the local grid. So easy to build cleanly at any angle.

    the 1 finger victory salute for peris~

    but yes peris, we're not artists remember, we need to prototype levels before making it look good~! it's a darn sight quicker doing it in a bsp editor than max.maya and importing all the time.

    Thing is that working in a bsp based engine is like ten times slower then in something a little more modern. This is why i don't see bsp as something that is especialy future proof. Companys search for solutions on how to save ressources on all fronts. Earlier or later they will find the huge bottleneck that the level design workflow in bsp engines is. In the meantime the competition is already lightyears ahead. Think about it UE3 games have replaced most textures and surfaces already with modeled stuff. You could aswell get rid of the bsp structure and base your engine on models and meshes completely. Thers other things that you can do allow a decent framerate.

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