begginer questions about unrealED Thread

hello, id like to start level design for unreal 2k4 and UT3. Im starting off with unreal 2004 and im finding it hard to get used to the editor, being a hammer level designer ive found it quite difficult so it would be great if someone could help me out with a few things.

heres my list of questions:

1. once you have made a brush, is it possible to resize it? i have to edit un-do if i dont like it
2. are you able to delete brushes?
3. do skyboxes work in similar ways to that of the source engine ?
4. clipping brushes, how on earth do you do it ? i select the took but i cant get it to do anything !
5. same with clipping faces, no idea how to do it.
6. texture application, tips on making it a faster process ? in hammer you are able to select a face with a texture on, then hold ALT and push right click to copy the exact same texture with the scales onto a different face, ive read this is possible with unrealED but ive done it once but cant get it to do it again, whats the proper way to do this ?
7. how do i manipulate vertexes?

I hope some of you will be able to help me out with this, it would be most appreciated, Thanks much

In canse you are still in this forum or anyone else have those questions:

1. Yes, vertex drag or brush properties -> scale (brushes in UED are in fact, actors). Note: UED renders map realtime, but it doesn't rebuild BSP realtime, that would kill any CPU.

2. Yes. But the BSP doesn't recompiles realtime, as I said above. In hammer / radiant you see brushes scaling and moving realtime because the editor doesn't render the map realtime, it just shows the brushes and textures, there is no BSP in there, it's like modelling. I think this is more confusing than the subtractive x additive world building process.

3. I think what is called a 3d skybox can also be called a portal skybox, whereas old games use simple parallax or panorama pictures to create the illusion of an infinitely distant sky

4. There is a slight difference in here. In quake / half life you place the clip marks, see a clip plane on the 3D view and press a key to clip. But in UED you must select one of the 2D viewpoints as your active viewpoint, else it doesn't clip anything. And that's another difference, depending on which viewpoint you are currently active, it'll clip in relation to that viewpoint's plane. And a third difference, depending on your brush's pivot position, the brush won't clip. Don't forget to have the brush highlighted.

6. UED texture alignment buttons doesn't help much. There's a tool called texalign which calculates scale and panning for perfectly fiting textures on surfaces. By default UED comes with Texture lock on, which prevents texture alignment from being reseted when you scale a brush. It's on advanced options, editor, grid.

7. Click on a vertex while holding alt to drag. Or enter vertex mode, which makes all vertexes gray colored. The vertex mode in UED2 is kinda broken, it's impossible to highlight a vertex, no matter how many times you click it keeps placing the red pivot there instead of selecting that vertex.

Edited by: zero_k

If you are getting heavily into vertex manipulation, you may find it easier to build those pieces of the level in Max/Maya/etc and import them as static meshes. For complex geometry static meshes give better performance too

Gibberstein wrote: For complex geometry static meshes give better performance too

Of course if this is 2k4 we're talking about, it also lights like crap vs. BSP

Edited by: AJ_Quick

thanks for your responses guys. The idea of creating static meshes puts me off a little because of the texturing and UV mapping, its so time consuming. Can you texture static meshes in unreal ed? i think you can convert it to brushes, texture it then reconvert it into a static mesh, is this possible? thanks

Hay people
another good way to improve your maps try adding karma objects
these are physic based objects that come from static meshes (no longer static)
its heaps of fun to play with