Building your First
Level
with UnrealEd 3.0:
The First Room, Part
I
NOTE: If you haven't
already, it's adviseable that you read Basics
of this tutorial as it covers some of the basic concepts related
to UnrealEd
3.0.
So, let's get started, shall we?
First off, if you haven't already, open
up UnrealEd 3.0 by clicking on Start, going to your Unreal Tournament 2003
group, and clicking on UT2003 Editor. This will bring up the interface as
described in Part I of this tutorial. You'll also notice that the browsers
window is already open for you. For now, you can close this or minimize
it.
Let's take a moment to familiarize you with navigating in
UnrealEd. As expected movement in each of the viewports is done with
the mouse, along with various combinations of keys and the left or
right mouse buttons (hereafter listed as LMB for Left Mouse Button
and RMB for Right Mouse Button). It may feel a little cumbersome at
first, but after some practice, it easily become second nature.
To move your camera in the Perspective view port—the black
viewport with the blue lines—click and hold the LMB and move your
mouse backward to forward and left to right. As you can see, the
view moves along with your mouse on the X and Y plane. That is, you
can look left to right or move forward and backward.
Now, hold down the RMB and move your mouse. This allows the
camera to look left and right and up and down, while remaining
stationary. |
Tip!
If you look closely in either of the orthographic views, you'll
see a little eye staring back at you. This is the iconic
representation of the Camera.
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Finally, hold down both the LMB and RMB and move your mouse.
Moving left and right moves the camera side to side on the same track.
Forward and Backward moves the camera on the Z-axis, that is, you can move
up and down.
Movement in any of the orthographic views is accomplished in
the same way except that if you hold down either mouse button, you can
only move from side to side. Holding down both mouse buttons allows you to
zoom in closer, which can also be accomplised with the mouse wheel.
Building Your
First Room
Let's start by building an initial room
for your level. There are a few things to keep in mind as you're deciding
what size to make your initial room. First off, a room that is only 128
Unreal Units (UU) both in height and width is comfortable for a player to
run through, but it doesn't leave a lot of room for jumping, especially
with the new power jump feature in the game. A room that has a height of
256 is comfortable both for the player to run through and also for the
power jump feature. Also, it is very important to note that the editor,
and as such, the game, prefers even numbered dimensions. Said another way,
you'll keep both yourself and the editor happy if you choose dimensions in
powers of 2.
Another important note is that 1
UU = 16. That is, if you have your grid set at 16 as in the picture—found
at the bottom of your screen just under the perspective view—a cube
setting of 16 x 16 x16 will build a cube that is one unit in width,
height, and breadth. You'll notice that you can set your grid as low as 1
or as high as 4096. Lower settings than 16 are most often used when trying
to place decorations or fine-tuning your geometry, and the higher settings
are rarely used. For our purposes, unless otherwise noted, keep your grid
set at 16.
For our level, let's choos a room with a Height of 256, a
Width of 512, and a Breadth of 512. Right-click on the cube button— —to call up the properties for a cube primitive.
Click on the dimension numbers in the row labeled
Width, and enter a dimension of 512 .
- Click on the dimension number labeled Breadth and enter a dimension
of
512 .
- Now, click on the Build button.
You'll notice that once you clicked on Build, a red cube
appeared in each of your orthographic views. To make it visible in your
perspective view, simply click on the Perspective viewport.
You'll also notice that the cube you set up has no solidity.
That is, in the Perspective view, it's simply a wire-frame representation
of the cube. In order for the cube to actually become solid geometry,
click on the Subtract button—
Now, what you should see in your Perspective viewport
is a hollowed out cube with a green, bubbly texture on the walls. This
texture is the default texture, and should be changed, otherwise the
editor will issue a warning when you hit the Build All button on
the toolbar at the top of the screen.
So, with that in mind, let's change the default texture to
one that's appropriate for the floor, the walls, and the ceiling.
- First off, let's move the Red Builder Brush out of the way by
clicking on it in any one of the viewports. It should turn from a dull
red to a bright red to indicate that it's the currently selected object.
- Position your mouse in the Top viewport—it doesn't really
matter where, though it's helpful if you position it somewhere on the
Red Builder Brush.
- Press and hold the [CTRL] + LMB and move to the right.
This will move the Red Builder brush to the right.
The above method is how you effectively tell the editor to grab
whatever object is selected and move it from one position to another.
Adding Textures
In order to texture the cube we just subtracted, we need to be able to
see all six walls of the cube.
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- Move your view in the perspective view so that you're
somewhere in the middle of the cube.
- Open up the Texture Browser by clicking on the button at the
top of your screen—
- Click File on the Texture Browser and click on Open,
or simply click on the Open icon.
- Double-click on HumanoidArchitecture.utx and the
textures will load in the browser. Initially, you'll see the Bases
group of the texture package.
- Click on the drop-down box located underneath the texture
package name to show the list of available groups. You'll notice
that each subsection is made up of suggestions on its uses.
- Click on Walls subgroup in the drop-down list to bring
up the wall textures, and pick a texture you'd like for the walls
of your room. I chose wal01bHa.
- To place the texture on the walls, click on a wall in the
Perspective viewport—it will turn blue to indicate that it's
currently selected—and click on your chosen texture back in the
texture browser, and the texuture should appear on the wall you
selected.
- Repeat this method for each of the walls, then highlight the
floor and choose a floor texture from the floor subgroup, and do
the same for the ceiling of your room.
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Now that you have your first room built and textured, you'll
notice that the textures appear too large. That is because the textures I
chose were built at 1024 x 1024, meaning they would fit perfectly on a
wall that was the same dimensions. That doesn't mean we have to simply
live with these textures. We can resize the textures so they fit the walls
of the room.
With this build of UnrealEd, resizing the textures to fit
simple faces is made very easy.
Pick any wall of your room so that it is
highlighted.
- Press [Shift] + B to select all the walls of your room.
- Right-click on any of the selected walls to bring up the Right-click
menu and select Surface Properties at the top of the menu. The
initial tab is Flags.
- Click on the Alignment tab.
- Highlight Face in the selection box and click on
Align.
You will notice that this automatically sizes the textures you chose to
fit each of the six faces of your room, as in the picture below.
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At last, your first room. It's a pretty basic room, but this
process is essentially the same that you'll use with any BSP based
geometry.
Adding Lights and a Player Start to your
Room
Now that you have the geometry and textures for your first
room, you need to add a few more elements to make it a playable room.
To start, your players need to be able to see, so let's add
a light to your room. The room is small enough that one light should
suffice if properly placed.
Start by positioning your Perspective viewport so
that you can see the ceiling of your room.
- Right-click at about the center point of the ceiling and call up the
Right-click menu.
- Click on Add Light Here. A lightbulb icon will appear in your
room to indicate that a light is present.
- You may have noticed that not much has changed yet in your viewport.
You need to build the lighting in order for the changes to take effect.
Click on the Build Lighting button.
- If you still don't see any changes, you probably need to turn on the
Dynamic Light button on your Perspective viewport, highlighted
green in the picture below.
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Your lit room should look similar to the picture below.
Even though there's a light in the room, there's
still a minor problem with the lighting. Essentially, some of the light is
absorbed by the proximity of the light to the ceiling. For it to light the
room more effectively, highlight the light to select it and use the
[CTRL] + LMB drag method in the Side viewport to move the
light down to about the middle of the room, and rebuild the lighting. Now,
the room appears a little brighter, and the texture on the ceiling is more
visible.
The light you just placed very likely won't be the final light
placement for your room, but it's good to get into the habit of placing
placeholder lights so you can view your level in Dynamic Lighting mode,
and to get a feel for how it will look in the end.
Finally, to test your room in the game, you need to
tell the editor where to start the player.
- Right-click on the floor of your room, somewhere near a corner.
Clicking on the floor will ensure that the player start is located at
the correct height from the floor and keep the player from starting the
game either too high off the ground or buried in the floor..
- On the resulting menu, click on Add Player Start Here. A
joystick icon will appear with an arrow pointing in the direction the
player will face when spawned.
- With the player start still highlighted, position the mouse pointer
anywhere in the Top viewport.
- Press [CTRL] + RMB and move the mouse. This will rotate the
player start.
- Rotate the player start until it is facing into the room.
- Click on the Build All
button to apply all the changes to your level.
To give your new room a whirl in the game, click on the Play Map
button found at the top of the editor screen, next to the Build
Buttons.
You'll see that the room you just created is very simple and rather
featureless. In the next tutorial we will cover expanding the room by
adding hallways and additional rooms as well as adding static meshes.
Expanding
your new room »»
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