Ay suggestions?

Many thanks

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[This message has been edited by LAVA (edited November 21, 2006).]

Milkshape?!? :O
Have you ever tried gameSpace? Sometimes it goes on sale for $150 which is worth it for what you get. If you register for the gameSpace demo they will send you an email with an exclusive monthly deal offer. http://www.caligari.com/gamespace/ If you never worked with gameSpace or trueSpace before, there are some really good video tutorials on how to make an elf at www.3dbuzz.com

Milkshape will do what I need. I need a basic modellor that can do animation and export into B3D, and it's uber cheap.

I will consider TED, I tried the demo, but the interface was a little restraining and slow (even after disabling the sky and water), is there a way to fix this?

I'll check out Gamespace too.

Thank you

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[This message has been edited by LAVA (edited November 22, 2006).]

As for the slow interface, no I haven’t had any issues one way or the other. Maybe you are slim on RAM or VRAM?

The price, eh? Well I mentioned gS since you were requesting a terrain editor for about $100 but T.Ed is $30 usd which would allow more resources to be put into a modelling package which you will appreciate more down the line. The major downside with milkshape is that it has no Boolean functions. So you cannot add, subtract or intersect using Boolean operations. gS also exports .b3d and the .b3d animations work well, too. The demo exports .x which is great for the price, free! …though there are other limitations on the demo.

Other than that I’d recommend Silo @ $100, it is very much like Wings3D but it has Boolean operations, though it does not have any texturing tools or animation.

If you are not sure what Booleans do, lets say you make a model of a house with an interior and exterior. Instead of spending hours trying to make holes for the windows and doors, you would simply create a cube, place it where a window would go and run a subtraction on it which would leave a perfect window hole in your model. Many things can be done with Booleans

Yes, I have used Booleans. I used Strata quite a bit before I found Wings, it used Booleans.

What I plan to do is make my models in Wings, (which doesn't use booleans BTW). And then export into Milkshape, animate and then export into B3D to Blitz, a little bit long of a process, but eh. I am used to that sort of thing. But GameSpace is still in consideration, and I'll look at Silo, I prefer Wings than most modelling programs, but I am open minded.

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You only have a month to decide? lol good luck! These are just my recommendations amoung a list of many choices out there.

quote:

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Originally posted by LAVA:
My parents let me choose my Christmas presents, and I want something that will further broaden my game development experience, so I have planned to get Milkshape, and a new mouse. And I am thinking of getting a Map Editor, which would be a good one? I need one that can lightmap, make terrains, import existing models, and export in at least 3DS. I am open to any suggestions. Price would have to be at $100 or lower.

Ay suggestions?

Many thanks

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Terragen can generate both height maps and terrain textures however it doesn't generate a model file from what I know. However all you need is the height map(gray-scale image) and a texture map. Most games/engines generate the the terrain at runtime or use engine specific terrain. In both cases they will only ask for a height map and a texture map.

You can also use Terragen to generate skyboxes.

T2 is a free tool that generates texture maps and 3DS models. It doesn't generate hight maps and it has a few bugs here and there but overall it's very good tool to get started. I used T2 to make the terrains in DreamCity.
http://www.toymaker.info/html/texgen.html

I wouldn't spend money on a terrain generator. You can generate the height map with the free version of Terragen and use another free program(i.e T2) to make the texture map.

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My projects page

'As there are plants which will flourish only in mountain soil, so it appears that Mercy will flower only when it grows in the crannies of the rock of Justice; transplanted to the marshlands of mere Humanitarianism, it becomes a man-eating weed, all the more dangerous because it is still called by the same name as the mountain variety.'
The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment
by C. S. Lewis

Amusing thing is that .tgw will import/export into L3DT, then you can export... forget the format... to Bryce in which you can export to .3ds or into .obj which can be imported into DeleD and exported into .b3d!!! ...well what's left of it at least

Yeah, don't worry about generators or even height map tools, a good terrain editor is the best thing to work with. http://www.blitzbasic.com/toolbox/toolbox.php?cat=7

If the engine/game you're working with doesn't accept height maps and you can't add a terrain engine of your own then using models in the only option.

However most engines (Torque, Irrlicht, Ogre, OSG, etc.) use height maps to generate terrain. You can also add your own model in any of these engines and use it as terrain however using a height map has several advantages: The most important one being the terrain LOD. Usually height map built terrains have progressive detail reduction, that means that as the distance from the camera increases fewer triangles are drawn. That gives a noticeable speed increase and you can't do that with models. Another advantage comes when you want to use paging for your terrain since most terrain paging managers use height maps.

Now I agree using a terrain format that is commonly accepted by most engines would be the best way. Problem is there are no commonly accepted terrain formats yet. Each major program/game uses it's own terrain format. So for now the only viable options are the ones I outlined above.

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My projects page

'As there are plants which will flourish only in mountain soil, so it appears that Mercy will flower only when it grows in the crannies of the rock of Justice; transplanted to the marshlands of mere Humanitarianism, it becomes a man-eating weed, all the more dangerous because it is still called by the same name as the mountain variety.'
The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment
by C. S. Lewis

I can use Blitz maps, they do work very well, but I want to lightmap them, and make my terrain where my models are, so I can taylor the map to my models.

I am thinking of going with TED. Being that you are someone I know that uses Blitz has used TED and said it worked for you, and even more advanced programs do not do what I want, which TED seems to work the best the way I want.

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[This message has been edited by LAVA (edited November 22, 2006).]

Here is a flash movie for anyone that missed this post before
http://s111.photobucket.com/albums/n159/l33tace/?action=view¤t=coffeehouse.flv
It's two sections, exterior and an interior. Something like 20MB if I remember correctly. I'll eventually make some better movies inthe coming months, mostly terrains since my mini-mmorpg project is mostly outdoors. This video is from my main project.

Oh, here is another terrain video I happen to have uploaded already. It's very old and is the inside of a dungeon. Actually I made it by taking/making the heightmaps from Ultima Online for the Dungeon Shame level 1 and made my own rendition of the dungeon. I have no plans to actually use it in a final game but it's an interesting video, and the dungeon really didn't take long to construct (though baron). 8MB right-click and save as..
http://www.s92544685.onlinehome.us/stuff/dungeon1ev.wmv
DX7 lighting :P

[This message has been edited by Faith_Warrior (edited November 22, 2006).]

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So without patch modelling, you are forced to move each vertex or face independently, were as with patch modelling all the surrounding vertices will morph along with the one you are moving. Most of the non-free modellers allow patch modelling so it's much easier to get smooth terrains, but in the case of making a city or town tile/area terrain, you have more ridged geometry which is much easier to manipulate and can be done with most any modelling package.

Good terrain editors are nothing more than specialized modellers, they simply focus on patch modelling functions. This is nice though because it keeps the modelling package at a low cost compared to regular modelling programs while including more specific tools for the task. Best of all, they allow for painting on of the textures, this saves so much time and adds far more texture detail than what is often offered with traditional modelling applications.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, that dungeon terrain was a regular blitz terrain, I simply pancaked two terrains together and inverted the ceiling.

[This message has been edited by Faith_Warrior (edited November 23, 2006).]