Best spot for unrealed help

[DooFi]

Hey guys I'm just getting my hands dirty with this and I'd have to say it's pretty freaking fun. I watched like 7 hours of tutorials on 3Dbuzz. They are probably the best video tutorials I've seen around. After that I started getting my hands dirty and developed a few questions. So what's your favorite place to go to for unrealed help specifically? Somewhere with friendly people who give quick responses specializing in the editor.
http://forums.epicgames.com


When I start unrealed the brightness gets increased. Is that ok?
http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=307217


I'm having trouble with the undo functions. The hot key (cntrl Z) seems to only work for a handful of steps. If I manually go to the undo function it will go back further but many times nothing seems to happen. For example if I subtract a space with my custom builder brush it will take 2-3 clicks on undo for it to disappear again. Is there an undo bug? Afaik, yes xD Try not to use it, it might crap up your map or something..


Does anyone else have a problem with extra verts being created when you try to clip a tube?hmm.. never heard of that one, sorry :/


Are intersecting brushs acceptable or do I need to use that intersection and subtraction operation all the time?No, use the intersect/deintersect tools instead.


Finally my player dies immediatly when I begin the game. The player starts are away from the walls. I can fly through the map and it looks fine. Any guesses?
Did you rebuild? ;)

[Gamedev]

the brightness change when it opens is gamma adjustment. You can turn this off by adding the following to your shortcut, -nogamma.

[rJAMc]

Player dying when start usually means that the part of the player is being spawned in some geometry of the level. Typically this is the floor or the ground. Try lifting your player start a little up off the ground and then try running it. should fix this.

Contl Z does exactly what you says it does. It works for somethings, and others it will pretty much lock up the editor or destroy your map. Best advice is to save often. In time you will learn when you can get away with it and when its best not to.

Do not overlap, use the intersect tools. There are some exceptions to this, like a hallways going through a wall, though you still shouldn't do it, you can get away with it without too much problem, just not a clean way though.

http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/wiki/

[rJAMc]

I alos recommend getting the book Mastering Unreal. One of the best books with great walk through tutorials throughout the book.

One of the best books for the money in my opinion if your really interested in learning the Unreal editor.

One last comment: If you like working in 3d max or maya, the best thing to do is to build your whole level environment in one of those programs, texture all your models, then export them from Max/maya and then import them into Unreal. I find the drawing tool in the editor a bit limiting, so i build all my models in Max then move them over to unreal.

[Gephoria]

let me explain a few things from my personal experience with unreal ed as a student i have worked with the engine a little over a year now.

the control + Z undo only works in a handful of situations as it will undo any transform/rotate/move or settings (not in code view) it won't work in areas such as the material editor 2d shape editor, and terrain editor, and it only works i think a max of 20 times by default and don't know where to change this.

as for your level brightening, check your directx/opengl drivers, make sure your running direct3d i believe it is, don't quote me on this, but ur drivers could have something to do with it unless your sunlight is not giving off the right ambient shadows

as for your player dieing, move the player start up above the ground more that used to be my #1 problem with that,

as for subtraction/intersection, if you have intersecting faces in levels (let's take example the Mall of America Parking Ramp) you will have a wierd z buffer that will make your pillars look ugly, if you do the intersect/deintersect methods it can mess up the amount of faces you end up with and make it overall harder to texture, i personally recommend since unreal has such killer collision programmed into it to make very complex meshes such as caves and say 1 floor to the MOA ramp, in max and import as a mesh.

the 3dbuzz tutorials are nice i wish there were some like that for torque game engine

[JuddWack]

Thanks for the help guys! rJAMc I'll see if I can pick that book up cheap off ebay. I think you're probably right about the player start because it is right above ground level. I'm going to test it out when I get home.

I've also been refered to some maps that make excellent use of bsp so I think that will give me a good idea of what I should be creating in the editor and what I should be modeling in max.

[MrJonathan]

If you're using an UnrealEd for Unreal Engine 3, please note that BSP brushes are becoming less and less needful, and more things are being replaced by static meshes.

[JuddWack]

Thanks Johnathan. I've discovered that in the past couple days and learned a few cool tricks by looking at some other maps. I think I have a better idea now of how they can be used.

[MrJonathan]

Whereas UT2k4 was mostly BSP brushes with textures and static meshes here and there, now it's mostly static meshes with brushes here and there. :)

Oh, and if I remember correctly, you can't "undo" anything once you hit the "build" button. ;)

[Gephoria]

really? i've noticed alot of unreal 2k4 level designers to go with as little BSP as possible (just mainly boxing out the main shape/structure) and throw meshes in like mad, i've seen 2k4 levels that have been composed entirely of static meshes.

[theabyss]

Back to your question:

Best forums for mapping/unrealed questions for me was (in english):

Beyond Unreal Forums (http://forums.beyondunreal.com/)

Sites with nice beginner tutorials :

Angelmapper (http://www.angelmapper.com/tutorials.htm)

Hourences (http://help.hourences.com/)

Unreal Developer Network (http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/WebHome.html)

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