Torque Pipeline DIF export for Cartography Shop

#21 @Matthew - I can't say much about QuArK as i really don't know it. I know you can setup the worldspawn properties, all the light entities will export and work, and you can mark detail, collision, and portal brushes. The texturing is pixel perfect to what you see in CartShop (CartShop's own .map output is not) and you'll never have the "floating point" error. Aside from that you can do path nodes and it recognizes the NULL texture.

I pretty much looked at engine and DIF features and made sure you can get them out of CartShop.

What's it's currently missing is LOD support (to be added soon) and what seems like an old feature, navigation path info. I assume it's for bots, but could someone clue me into what "navigation path info" is? Is it worth generating anymore?

#22 If I buy CS now, will there be a charge, and how much, to upgrade to 5? Sorry if this question was posted somewhere els, I searched around

#23 You may want to ask on the CartShop forums. Josh has been asked before and has said that it won't be a free upgrade to 5, but that "something special" will be done for CS4 users.

#24 I migrated to Cartshop in order to use your plug...look forward to continued work

#25 @Sean - Very cool to hear.

I'll be releasing a beta 2 version this week if all goes smoothly with three new features:

A true .map export option. It's for those that want to use a customized map2dif path or pass the CartShop map over to QuArK or another interior tool. Note that the default .map exporter in CartShop doesn't export texture axis information correctly leading to all surfaces being mistextured.

The LOD support will be working. You'll have to save one CartShop CSM file per LOD level. You then open the 0 level lod, export using the plugin. If the lod CSMs are in the output path with the normal _0 to _N naming it will automatically be listed in the export window. Else you can drag and drop CSM files and reorder them as needed.

Finally smart texture copy from the source CartShop path to the dest interior folder. It will copy over JPGs and convert BMPs and TGAs to PNGs. It will look up the texture path for shared images and won't overwrite textures without asking.

Also we've been added to the official Torque DIF Exporter Matrix.

#26 .map exporting would be great, would really take advantage of the new map2dif rewrite coming up... that was my first concern after evaluating CShop and nearly deciding to purchase, I saw the map2dif rewrite and it looks very nice.

#27 @Matthew - Well the .map export plugin won't touch any map2dif code at all, but as soon as it's avalible to me the new map2dif code will be merged into the CartShop DIF exporter.

#28 Hey Tom, I looked around and couldn't find the fix for the texture issue. Think you can post the work araound, or point me to a post that has the solution?

Nevermind, I really need to quit staying up all night and trying to work the next day on nothing but coffee and donuts. ----Sleep, eveyone needs Sleep.

#29 @Fail66 - What texture fix are you talking about?

#30 Everytime I tried to export, it would nag about missing textures. I found the problem. I was using textures that I have in an obscure directory and forgot to put them in cshop directory. Once I did that everything worked great. Like I said Lack of Sleep.

#31 Ah... well that shouldn't happen anymore with the new beta 2 exporter. I added a smart texture copy function. If the texture is not in the export path it converts and copies it over. If a texture with the same name exists it does a CRC check on it to be sure it's the same. If it's not it tells you which one is newer and prompts you if you want to overwrite it. It should allow people to keep a texture library for use in CShop and let the exporter worry about the textures in the Torque path.

The only thing it doesn't do that i don't have a solution for is deal with shared textures. If you export the same DIF to two different interior subfolders you'll end up with two copies of the textures in the Torque path. I have to think of an elegant solution to that one.

#32 Hi Tom,

I'm planning to purchase Cartography Shop and start using your exporter. When are you planning to release the beta 2?

I've tried Quark and haven't enjoyed the interface too much. I have an old copy of 3D Studio Max (like the second release of it), and I think the CS interface is more intuitive to me.

The other big selling point for CS is the fact that you have created the exporter, which eliminates the map2dif step. Thanks for your efforts.

#33 @Dave - Thanks. I'm glad your gonna get to try the exporter.

I was planning on releasing beta 2 this week, but i have a few people on our forums who totally kick ass and have reported a couple of bugs. As soon as i work those out the beta 2 will be released. It will be sometime mid next week as one of the bugs is a hairy one.

#34 I now have CS 4.1 and am looking forward to beta 2. So far I'm really enjoying the process of creating things in Cartography Shop and seeing them in Torque immediately - very cool.

#35 @Dave - That was a big reason why i went with a DIF export insted of the typical MAP export... i want to save and immediately see results in CartShop. No command line... no batch files.. no GUI front ends to map2dif... bah... right to DIF.

The beta 2 is *so* close to being out. I'll post back here as soon as it is.

#36 I have seen sample shots from games using the TSE which have new shader textures on the walls of various interiors.

Does the Torque Pipeline for Cartography Shop DIF exporter for the TSE provide support for building interiors with these textures in Cartography Shop?

What about support for normal maps?

#37 CartShop just uses a single texture approach to maps just like TGE does for interiors. For TSE just export with the 'TSE Compatible' option checked and add material mappings for the texture names. It works just fine even though there is no accurate real-time preview within CartShop itself.

#38 Hey guys, this is the author of CShop. Tom is doing an awesome job, and we have a plan for the next version, which will be flexible enough to load meshes right from your Torque directory, and save maps that have both CSG brushes and instances of your map meshes. The next version of CShop is a lot like UnrealEd, but with the current interface style, which is more like Worldcraft.

Torque users are starting to account for a good portion of my user base, and I am interested in doing everything possible to make the editor integrate seamlessly with your engine.

#39 Excellent Tom and Josh. I came from Unreal/Half-life mod development to torque for the commercial options and having that type of pipeline again will make it a great time. The loading of meshes like Unreal static meshes is a great step and you can count me in on that. I think that Torque's main problem is its rudimentary pipeline, of course we could get off our arse and make the tools better (we have the code) but we all want to make games! THe TSE option is great and with this tool and TSE complete (sometime in the hopefully not distant future -- milestone 2 would be good :) )

Thanks for your efforts it will help to complete many projects.

#40 Hi

can i export "concave" meshes from cartography shop to .dif, if any solution u have please tell me.

thanks