What editors do the contest mappers use?

[Deleted]

.....QuArK editor.....for a long time.

[Null]

I use a custom version of Trench Broom

leray.proboards.com/thread/3529/trenchbroom-simplest-editor-quake2-addon

[thehappyfriar]

Have to go with what I know: Radiant. Not the time to try to learn something new.

[NIN-Kitsune]

I use Trenchbroom as well, it's what made doing this entirely possible at all for me! I have to work entirely in 3d like that in such an ease of use to pull off what I do without too much hassle. It's worth learning as easy as it is, if you feel you have the time of course. Though I learned it in as little as a week or two with no experience in other editors and made that first map of mine which was quite detailed and I'm a slow learner.

[fifthelephant]

I'm using an official version of Trenchbroom (version 2) that has native Quake 2 support. It's still in beta at the moment though.

[spirit]

Radiant

[ace]

bsp (not the file name) www.bspquakeeditor.com/

[thehappyfriar]

Just tested last night, Blender 2.49 (not sure about more recent versions) can export to map. Awesome.

[spirit]

Keep an eye on r_speeds and grid alignment when using Blender, and also note that it does NOT know anything about structural/detail brushes, of course.

[thehappyfriar]

No textures either.

I was actually hoping Blender would export to a .map with solid brushwork, not hollowed. It had a snap to grid option but with working in Doom 3 I realized how useful the snap to grid shortcut can be.

What I've done In the past is export my map as a .obj, import in to blender, do my model work, then export my model work for my doom 3 or q2 map. Blender done some things easier vs Radiant (like curves & the like), so I'm excited to see what I'll wind up doing with it!

[Null]

Blender is good and it's free, but if you like other alternatives, there's also 3ds Max, which has many more powerful features.
It also happens to be the game industry standard nowadays, which uses it for anything ranging from level design to model editing.
Here's something I've been working on:

3ds Max Map/Bsp Importer/Exporter


The neat thing is, with the latest version of max you can use the quick snap to surface placement options for things like brushes or props.
In the above screenshot I was playing around with random sign placement
More on this new max feature:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePmIAoT2p58

[thehappyfriar]

That's an AWESOME feature! I actually learned blender because both 3DS & Maya went (back to in the case of Maya) yearly license fees vs buying a copy. Plus my wife said "no" to buying Lightwave.

I don't know if the newest Blender has a features similar. I still use 2.49 because of the working Quake 2 & Doom 3 import/export (best D3 exporter I've seen too!).

Blender 2.49 (and newer) has something similar that allows you to set a model as a particle, then you can place an individual particle or paint a bunch of them and get similar results. I've used that to do grass & trees in some experimental Quake 2 maps with Berserker. I've found over the past several years there was a LOT that modders could of done with Quake 2 in the several years after it came out that nobody ever did. It's pretty amazing tech!

[Null]

Feb 3, 2015 7:46:36 GMT -5 thehappyfriar said:

That's an AWESOME feature! I actually learned blender because both 3DS & Maya went (back to in the case of Maya) yearly license fees vs buying a copy.

There's still Gmax, a free lite version of 3ds Max available that you can use:
Download: www.turbosquid.com/gmax (For Registration Code sign up here)

I might be able to port my BSP-MAP importer/exporter to it, if Gmax's scripting side isn't severely limited and use a script relative of the object planter

[Null]

Turns out Gmax can't export but only import, but there might be a work around :-)

AFAIK Discreet removed "fopen write mode" from the scripting language (and other stuff too) to prevent people from developing plugins that save in a million different formats, so that people using GMAX have to save in a format supported by one of the game bundles. Discreet charges the game developers megabucks to create a bundle for "their" model format.

So the md2 importer worked fine:
forum.tastyspleen.net/quake/index.php?topic=17252.0

But the md2 exporter gives an error:
Runtime error: Feature not available: "fopen write mode"
If I modify the exporter, there might be a real hacky work around using copy and paste from the listener
Worldcraft3 dex-mdl exporter and mdl->mdx converter work like this. Verified in Viewer

www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/3d-modeling-tutorials-282/gmax-exporting-tutorial-95857/

Gmax doesnt use the exporter, instead in Dex you have to press Print to Listener. From the listener you then copy all the text lines (except for the top 4 and one on the bottom), and put them in a blank text file, change the extension to mdl

If I modify the exporter to spit out ASCII, a similar route can be used to export md2. For Bsp/Map exporter it's another story though, which requires external dll support. Still for basic Quake 2 specific 3d modeling Gmax might just work

[ace]

Played around with trenchbroom 2.0 today, pretty wild. Really liking the way it works. Trying to learn new shortcuts is annoying as ever though.