Bezier Curves/patch support?

#1 what's patch support?

#2 Quake3 uses quadratic bezier patches for smooth curved surfaces

have a read of this for more info on patches

http://members.nbci.com/3dcoding/curves/

#3 Worldcraft is own and maintained by Valve Software so patching support directly into it would have to be done through them. Currently, I don't believe there is any support for curved surfaces in the dif (buildings, structures, interiors) file format so you would have to first alter the file format and capabilities of the engine to support them. After you had done that, you might could fudge around with some custom entities in the v12 game definition file and put in some kinda workaround where you manually alter parameters to create a curved surface which wouldn't be visible at all in Worldcraft but would show up in the v12. This would be a major pain and make editing curved surfaces time consuming beyond belief (edit parameters in Worldcraft, convert .map to .dif, load v12, load mission, check out curve surface, close v12, repeat).

However, if you were to add patch support to the dif format and the v12 engine, then going the route of using q3radiant might be a good idea. As anyone who has taken the time to learn UnrealEd or q3radiant knows, Worldcraft is a great tool for learning and doing basic stuff on but it quickly becomes cumbersome if you do complex work. One of my little pet projects is creating a t3d (UnrealEd text export) to dif convertor so that people could use UnrealEd instead of Worldcraft. Maybe a q3radiant to dif convertor could also be created? It would be an interesting project =)

#4 Thanks for the input Matt,

I would love to see Q3rad support for Tribes2. I have used worldcraft before and personally I dont like it.
I originally used Quark for quake2 and some quake3 editing but was forced to use Q3rad eventualy because of the superior patch editing.
I really see them as the next step for 3d engines, the type of geometry you can create with patches is incredible.
Im working on a medieval type rpg and curves would be extremely handy to have. Doing things like pillars, towers and arch ways really require a high number of polys, or patches.

So, Anyone wanna work on a Q3radiant support for V12 ?
:)

for more info on this editor check out

http://qeradiant.com/
http://plugins.qeradiant.com/coding.html

Caliban

#5 Q3 Radiant erghh about the most user unfriendly editor on the face of the planet. Personally I'd ignore curves to use Worldcraft.

Owen

#6 I'm interested in getting GTKradiant to work with V12 engine. (Import, Export) Guess I will wait for the engine code first though :)

#7 Its not a completely impossible idea to add Q3Rad support to the V12 toolset.

I wonder what will happen when Valve update Worldcraft to support curved surface support and terrain control (which I think theyre adding to TF2).

Phil.

#8 Matt,
go for that .t3d export! I am a long time user of UnrealEd and would love to be able to export .t3d's and use them with V12!

-Tony "Wolf" Garcia
http://unreal.gamedesign.net

#9 I didnt know they had that planned for TF2. I havnt heard much about the game for ages. I was actually wondering if they were even working on it still..
But either way, worldcraft or Q3rad (gtkrad), patches would make life easy.

#10 Wow! So you are the "Wolf" whose tutorials I used not long ago to learn UnrealEd! Awesome! Thank you very much for your tutorials! I had played around in UnrealEd a few times in the past and never really got anywhere but after a few hours with your tutorials I was an UnrealEd convert. I will work all that much harder on the t3d2dif convertor =)

#11 Noone knows anything about TF2 or it's engine, other than it's a new inhouse one. You could ask valve, but I doubt you would get an answer.

#12 Well, the guys at valve are a very capable bunch, and they certainly were playing with some nice stuff when I was over, but that was a long time back.

I dont quite understand why they havent shipped yet, maybe feature creep's got em bad.

Anyway, I think for now, most people can be quite well catered for using WC, if *I* can use it, anyone can.

How about lithtech dedit support? :))) hahaha..

Personally, I'd prefer to do support for something like 3dsmax or maya produced levels, but I'll have to see the portal/sector generation in the V12 first before I know if its workable.

Phil.

#13 Yes, that is me...that Wolf :) I have seen another Wolf on these forums, but that is not me. Anyway, a t3d2dif convertor would be awesome. I have gotten so comfortable in UED that it is hard (not impossible, but hard) to get used to anything else. I recently started using QERadiant again for a project I am helping out on and the re-learning was more difficult than I though!

Keep us posted on that converter :)

-Tony "Wolf" Garcia

#14 Matthew-

You also have my vote for the .t3dtodif converter. After a crah course in WorldCraft from a friend and some practice on my own, I finally got the hang of the editor. But having the choice between 2 editors would be much nicer as I hear UnrealEd is superior in the areas of lighting and UI. If I must get down on my knees and beg, I will!

I hope this converter wouldn't be too much trouble for you because it would benefit so many level designers.

Food for thought. :)

#15 Worldcraft can make curves, it takes some effort but it can make them. Take a cube, clip it repeatedly in the top (x/y) veiw to make extra faces, then use the vertex tool to form your curve. To make an inverted curve carve another block of equal size with the curved block. Once that's done you can save them as prefabs to use again. It's more difficult than a few clicks in GTK radiant, but it gets you what you need without patches.

#16 ack, use max, that's what I do ^_^ it has a lot more features than any world editing tool

#17 does anyone know much about the performance of Quake3 patches?
Ive done tests with them and they seem to run extremely fast. you can make a whole level out of curves and the framerate is quite high.

Is there much of a difference between making a heap of polys as opposed to using patches? dont they calculate a smooth line?

I havnt used UnrealED so im not sure about the benefits of it. But it would be really good to see some more options for level editing out there.

#18 I have been burned everytime I have tried exporting a curved surface created with the vertex editing tool out to a .map file. For some reason the vertices don't always cleanly export.

#19 is that using UnrealED? or Q3radiant?

Although im an artist and not programer, ill be happy to help test any plugins or converters you write for other editors.

#20 I've found that when the vertices on the top and bottem of an object don't line up correctly it leaves you with missing faces when the map is run in Half-life, it's probably the cause of your problem, as I can export my curves to a .map file. Here's my test map, "The Overly Curved Room", http://www.geocities.com/sup0rd00d/8.txt . Rename to .map.