Multiple Viewports in mission editor
by penbit · in Torque 3D Professional · 10/20/2009 (5:03 am) · 4 replies
Hello everyone;
I searched on this topic, nothing came out. I would like to have multiple viewports in mission editor. One just like the perspective we have now and three more for top, side and front views so that I can set these three to wireframe. Almost all level editors come with this option, I'm sure torque3d supports this but I couldn't find any posts/documentation about it.
P.S I'm really happy with the lighting/renderer and the art-pipeline. Kudos GG, I really like what I'm seeing the more I play with the tools. Just my two cents since, this is my first posts in this forum.
I searched on this topic, nothing came out. I would like to have multiple viewports in mission editor. One just like the perspective we have now and three more for top, side and front views so that I can set these three to wireframe. Almost all level editors come with this option, I'm sure torque3d supports this but I couldn't find any posts/documentation about it.
P.S I'm really happy with the lighting/renderer and the art-pipeline. Kudos GG, I really like what I'm seeing the more I play with the tools. Just my two cents since, this is my first posts in this forum.
#2
It's not a deal breaker in the early stages of making a level: throw a terrain and some rocks and some trees here and there but when things get complicated, I would for sure need multiple viewports.
If you try to make a "real" level and by real I simply mean number of objects according to today's standarts, object placement might become really cumbersome in one viewport only. Is it not possible, yes possible, but cumbersome.
Think about the warriorcamp level and the tower ruin mesh. Let's say you want to add chest on the floor of the tower and 1 potion, 1 arrow and 1 dagger inside the chest. It will become extremely slow process to do that in one viewport, you'll have to change camera speed, fly around the items all the time with w,a,s,d just to the align them. Can it be done with one viewport, sure, but takes longer. But with top and side views enabled, it takes few seconds.
Or, try to align two torches to that ruin mesh on its wall. It takes 1-2 second if you jump into top view. Or imagine a "haunted house" level where you have to align tons of picture frames on the walls.
Bottom line is, it's a matter of workflow and I'm kinda baffled nobody has made any request about this up to now.
I'm enjoying my terrain level at the moment, throwing a few houses here and there and one viewport will be enough to work fast for now. But when I start decorating inside of the houses, I for sure would want to work with multiple viewport for faster object placement and aligning.
Simple question: What is the best way to do this now, with one viewport if I want to put a table on the floor and a book on the table and a key on the book and a candle on the table etc.etc...I know I can do this with level editors that support multiple viewports in few seconds. In torque3d, I'm circling around the meshes, looking from different angles all the time to make sure they are aligned properly.
Multiple viewports might mean an unnecessary request, I sincerely hope you understand my point. It's not useful for objects alignment and placement only, imagine you're trying to make a huge city level. Just like an architect, you'll want to switch to bird view instantly from time to time to design your city
Also let me add this: All the "famous" engines, almost all indie engines and some other "triple a" engines which are less known that we have evaluated but can't name them due to nda, have all multiple viewports enabled. Only torque3d doesn't have it...
Thanks for reading, have a nice day:)
10/21/2009 (6:29 am)
Hi Tom, thanks for the reply.It's not a deal breaker in the early stages of making a level: throw a terrain and some rocks and some trees here and there but when things get complicated, I would for sure need multiple viewports.
If you try to make a "real" level and by real I simply mean number of objects according to today's standarts, object placement might become really cumbersome in one viewport only. Is it not possible, yes possible, but cumbersome.
Think about the warriorcamp level and the tower ruin mesh. Let's say you want to add chest on the floor of the tower and 1 potion, 1 arrow and 1 dagger inside the chest. It will become extremely slow process to do that in one viewport, you'll have to change camera speed, fly around the items all the time with w,a,s,d just to the align them. Can it be done with one viewport, sure, but takes longer. But with top and side views enabled, it takes few seconds.
Or, try to align two torches to that ruin mesh on its wall. It takes 1-2 second if you jump into top view. Or imagine a "haunted house" level where you have to align tons of picture frames on the walls.
Bottom line is, it's a matter of workflow and I'm kinda baffled nobody has made any request about this up to now.
I'm enjoying my terrain level at the moment, throwing a few houses here and there and one viewport will be enough to work fast for now. But when I start decorating inside of the houses, I for sure would want to work with multiple viewport for faster object placement and aligning.
Simple question: What is the best way to do this now, with one viewport if I want to put a table on the floor and a book on the table and a key on the book and a candle on the table etc.etc...I know I can do this with level editors that support multiple viewports in few seconds. In torque3d, I'm circling around the meshes, looking from different angles all the time to make sure they are aligned properly.
Multiple viewports might mean an unnecessary request, I sincerely hope you understand my point. It's not useful for objects alignment and placement only, imagine you're trying to make a huge city level. Just like an architect, you'll want to switch to bird view instantly from time to time to design your city
Also let me add this: All the "famous" engines, almost all indie engines and some other "triple a" engines which are less known that we have evaluated but can't name them due to nda, have all multiple viewports enabled. Only torque3d doesn't have it...
Thanks for reading, have a nice day:)
#3
10/22/2009 (7:41 pm)
I'm also having problems with object snapping, a search on the topic leads to no results, looks like object snapping is broken at the moment, am I correct? In this case, multiple viewports would help to align/object placement.
Associate Tom Spilman
Sickhead Games
IMO i'd rather see the issues which make you need multiple viewports to be fixed by other means.