gameSpace - 3D game tools

by Andreas Cocq

In this tutorial, Andreas Cocq guides us through the use of the Level Exporter from Greenbriar Studios. He shows us some of the do's and don'ts that need to be kept in mind when creating geometry that will end up as a level in a game, as there are some rules that apply for levels that don't affect other types of game model!

Introduction

Ok, so now you have the Level Exporter plug-in installed and are ready to go - but where do you start? Does gameSpace look different to you in comparison to the game editors that you are used to? And what is all this about BSP, legal blocks and Booleans?

This mini-tutorial is intended as an introduction to the Greenbriar Level Exporter. It covers basic steps for creating level geometry in gameSpace and exporting it into Conitec's 3D GameStudio (3DGS) game engine. Since it serves as an introduction to the subject matter, it will cover the entire process in broad strokes, and describing things in detail will be beyond the scope of this tutorial. However, this should give you a great grounding in using the Level Exporter!

It is assumed that the reader has a reasonable understanding of the way gameSpace and 3D GameStudio work, and that they are familiar with the naming and terms used in both. Therefore terms such as WED, .MAP etc. will not be explained.

Because of the differences between the .MAP format and Conitec's adaptation (the .WMP format) certain information (for example, the grouping of blocks as in WED) can not be provided during level export. This should be kept in mind when looking at the result in the WED!

Now we are almost ready to start... right after this disclaimer: The process that is described here is one way of reaching the goal. It is not the only way and it may not be the "best“ way (if there is such a thing!). Also this tutorial is not about how to become a better level designer - it's focus is on the technical details of using the Greenbriar Level Exporter.

With all that in mind, it is time to begin!

The man with the plan ... (some general comments)

Many of you will know the phrase "the only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.“ Well, the same applies to gameSpace and the Level Editor.

First, make sure that you have an idea what you want to design in gameSpace before you start. Maybe you have a floor plan of a building you would like to see in your 3D engine, or perhaps you have plan you sketched out on paper?

Is that essential? No.

Will it help you move along quicker? YES!

While we are on the subject of planning ahead, do take some time to think about what kind of textures you will need for your level. We will not cover much in terms of textures in this tutorial, but for your work on your own level, it is something worth considering before you start the work.

For this tutorial, I happen to have a hand-drawn floor plan from an adventure idea I had a couple of years back already scanned into my PC, so that will be my starting point. For textures, I will only be using the textures that Conitec delivers in the STANDARD.WAD file.

A simple floor plan (click for larger image)

In gameSpace, create a Plane primitive – size is secondary at this point, as we will adjust that after we apply the texture. Then using the material editor, select the Texture Map color shader (the one with the Caligari logo). Select the proper texture file (for example, Level Exporter_Tut_Level.jpg) and assign the material to the plane.

Switch to a TOP view and resize the plane so the proportions look right (alternatively, if you are working with a specific scale, adjust the size precisely via the object info box). Once it looks OK for you, put it in a separate layer and lock that layer, which will make life easier! You won't be able to accidentally select or change this plane which is just there to hold the background image we are working from.

The perspective view can distort your image, so modeling is best done mostly in the TOP and SIDE views.

When working with a background image like this I prefer to set the Draw Object As option to solid, to make sure it's always nicely visible, even if I switch to a wireframe mode for modeling – cool option, thanks Caligari!

The world is ... a cube

Illegal geometry... sounds gruesome! But what does it mean?

Many of the current 3D engines use BSP (Binary Space Partitioning) tree culling for calculating visibility. You will find a lot of information available on the internet that goes into the mathematical details of what this involves and means. For our purposes, what is important to keep in mind is that BSP only allows convex blocks, which limits the modeling to objects with planar faces.

A picture speaks a thousand words, so here is an example:

Legal Geometry - a normal cube object, where all faces are planar - a technical term for "flat"

Illegal geometry - one vertex on the top face has been moved down, resulting in a non-coplanar (non-flat, twisted) face.

The problem can be illustrated in the real world with this example: imagine a thin, rectangular metal sheet laying on a table. There is no way to lift a single corner of this rectangle from off the table without lifting at least one additional corner off the table as well. If you want to move only one corner you will have to either bend the metal plate (which is what we are not allowed to do in a BSP engine) or cut the rectangle into two triangles (imagine this as a "hinge" diagonally across the metal sheet, so you are not bending the metal sheet - also note at this point that the direction of the diagonal "hinge" affects which point you can lift up from the table!)

So when working in gameSpace, make sure that all the blocks are BSP legal. The easiest way of achieving this is to avoid moving single vertices – always work with edges or faces.

gameSpace offers a large set of functionality for multiplying and altering edges and faces. In addition, there are some great tools for deforming geometry that can save you a lot of time compared to working in WED – we will be using some of them in just a little while.

gameSpace also offers two functions that can help you with your level design and avoid gaps in your level. First, there is the setting for what type of collision is used during modeling (for example, Collision With Floor, Collision With All ...) - by using this option, gameSpace can let you now when your blocks are lined up. Also, different "snap to“ modes are available (for example Snap Vertex To Face) which can help you with the alignment of your blocks.

Booleans are evil!

Since gameSpace offers wonderful tools such as Boolean Subtract, it is very tempting to use them to create doorways, windows, and so on. The simple truth is... DON'T!

This shape does not conform to the BSP standard, because it has a hole in it

In his book "[digital] Character Animation 2 / Volume 1“ George Maestri said "Booleans are evil“ - this is essentially true! Whenever Boolean operations are performed, the software has to go through a process of approximation, which can lead to unwanted geometry being added. While gameSpace does a good job with Booleans, the resulting object is very likely to be not BSP-legal . For example, if you Boolean Subtract a cube from another to create a "window“ (as seen in the image on the left), you get an object that's fine in gameSpace but leaves the Level Exporter baffled as to where the "breakpoints“ for dissecting the geometry are supposed to be.

That is not cause for alarm though. You can still easily achieve the same effect without using Booleans, and it is wise to start thinking in this way when modeling for levels (it is also useful when modeling for export to other 3D packages, not just game-related ones, as many other packages are not flexible enough to robustly handle geometry like this, even through gameSpace has no problem with it).

The solution is to use tools such as Copy, Move, Resize, Snap, etc to achieve the same result (see image on right, where a window has been created that will export easily and correctly).

This does conform to BSP standard, as it is made from four separate blocks

Building a simple room

Having loaded up our floor plan, we are ready at last to do something constructive!

First wall segment

With the units of measure set to meters, start by creating a simple cube and scale it so it is 0.5 meters thick, 2 meters wide and 2 meters high. Give it a meaningful name (for example, "WallSegmentMaster“) - this is our block that we will use as the original and will copy later. If you already have some textures imported from a WAD file, go ahead and assign the texture you want. If you don't have any textures imported, look here, or just go with the default grey (drab as it may be!).

As you will see, I am using some textures from the STANDARD.WAD file that is delivered with 3D GameStudio.

Next, copy the cube, rename it (e.g."Wall01“) and place it on top of the floor plan. You can switch to the wireframe display to make positioning the wall easier (you did remember to set the Draw Object As..“ to Solid for the floor plan, right?).

Now adjust the length of the wall segment to the desired length and create, place and scale additional wall segments, building on our sketch, as seen below :

Simple Room, top view

Simple Room, perspective view (click for larger image)

And there you have it, we have a simple room! It still lacks a ceiling and a floor, but those are easily created from cubes that are added above and below the walls.

One tip here : I found it easiest to assign the game UV scale (via Greenbriar Studio's GameUV tool) while I am doing the modeling, rather than wait until at the end, because that ensures the cubes display with a good-looking texture in Solid mode (otherwise, the textures may appear stretched or distorted - this is not a problem, other than that it does not look so nice when working with it!)

Although we do have a way in and out of the room, it is not really what people would call a doorway, right? The simplest solution is to add another cube over the place where a door would be placed in WED. Since we know our wall height is 2 meters, we can make this section 0.2 meters in height, 0.5 meters thick and vary the length according to the available space. Luckily, we can use a copy of our WallSegmentMaster and scale it to our needs.

Simple room, now with "doorways" (click for larger image)

Before we get into more intricate things, another word of advice. Use gameSpace's Object & Scene Libraries to save copies of your wall segments and scene WIPs, just in case your PC decides that the middle of your editing session is a good place to roll over and play dead! These will also be great for re-use later in the project, or even in other projects, allowing you to build up your own personal collection of pre-made objects to drop into your levels!

Adding More Cubes

A more complex wall segment

Great, we have walls! But they are not very exciting, are they? Let's fix that now by adding some extra detail to bring things to life.

We can create some trim on the wall segments and avoid steretypical 90 degree (perpendicular) corners to break up visual monotony!

First, we create our new "WallSegmentMaster“ by adding some cubes to the top and bottom sections of the wall. Here it is vital that the cubes have exactly the same width and are aligned properly (snapped to edge), because if they are not then the chances are that gaps will appear during later manipulations (sweeping, bending etc) and that would spoil the effect. Precision is of the utmost importance, and gameSpace allows you to achieve that!

When you are satisfied with what you have created, then save a copy of the object in your object library for later use in other scenes. This is a great way to build up your own libraries! You will soon have a set of unique but instantly reusable content to meet your needs!

Why Not Add Edges, and Sweep?

If you are an experienced gameSpace or trueSpace user (or even if you have just read the manual, and know the tools well enough to see this alternative way of working!), you may frown at the operations above and ask "Why not just add edges & sweep?“

Well, I'm glad you asked!

Not everything that can be created in gameSpace can be exported by the Level Exporter. As a modeling tool, gameSpace allows the addition of edges to a single cube, and then manipulation of the newly created face. While this looks fine in gameSpace, the Level Exporter cannot "dissect“ the object because it can only add start or end faces (or caps) to an object (in technical terms, a multi-segmented block can only be divided along the edges and then one or two faces added in order to make the resulting shape BSP legal).

For example, let us show how you MIGHT think about modeling the above edge to the wall without the apparently "clumsy" method of using 6 different cubes to do it. In the first image, a single edge was selected on our regular cube (our wall), and the Slice Object By Selected Line/Plane tool was chosen :

With a move of the mouse, an additional face was created and selected, as seen in the second image below :

After using the Sweep tool on the face a few times, while altering the size of the final face, we can get the result in the third image :

Looks so much quicker than modeling 6 new cubes yourself to make the interesting shape for the wall, right? However, the Level Exporter cannot deal with the result of this manipulation, as it there is no way for it to know how to divide the object up, so when exported to WED it creates 8 blocks instead of the expected 3 blocks, with a large portion of the object being broken into several thin blocks. In fact, the end result is a large hollow block! The two smaller cubes would be exported correctly (the Level Exporter would add one "cap" to close off the outside cube, and two "caps" on either side of the inside cube)

So what's the solution? Create this object by using three separate cubes, just as we did in the previous section. Sure, you can model using the Edge and Sweep tools as seen here, and the Level Exporter may even be able to export BSP-legal geometry, but even in that best case scenario, most likely it will be a lot less efficient than if you planned and created the model with the BSP format in mind.

In general, keeping your objects as simple as possible pays off when the time comes to export it to WED.

How About Those Curves?

Next, it is time to add some nice curves – something everyone sorely misses in WED. It can be done there, certainly, but it does take some time!

There are several methods available in gameSpace and we will look at a couple of them. Here is the "swept away and RSVP (Rotate, s'il vous plait)“ method, as I call it!

Make a working copy of our fancy wall segment from above, and select all the faces on one side. Use the Sweep tool once and exit the sweep mode by selecting the Point Edit: Faces icon – this is important because otherwise the rotate in the next step will not work properly!

Rotate the (still selected) faces - depending on how you configured gameSpace, you would use the rotation diamonds, the manipulation widget, or the object info box (to input the rotation degrees manually). Move the faces to position them where they need to be. Repeat this a few times, until you have the curve segment (e.g. corner of a room) that you want.

Depending on how fancy you want to get, you can introduce some nice curvature into an otherwise rather flat world:

This is already pretty good. But wait, how about method number two?

The second method is the "Let's twist (bend) and shout“ approach – well, shouting is optional, although once you see the result you may want to verbalize your appreciation for the tool!

We start, as always, with a working copy of our wall segment and sweep the faces on one side, creating about 15 segments (depending on the scale of your wall segment, you may want to adjust the sweep length and number of segments to suit your needs).

Options panel for the sweep tool

Segmented wall, ready for bending

Press Sweep again and you will see that 15 segments have been added to a total additional length of 7 units (alternatively, once could have swept 15 times to create the segments individually, but there's no real benefit unless the segments need to have different lengths).

Now, use the Bend tool to add a curve to the wall segment. Again, use the manipulator directly or the numeric input option for more precise control. Adjust the rotation parameter in the Bend options panel to align the tool properly, otherwise you will be bending the wall in the wrong direction! Since I want to use the base wall segment as a "stub“ to connect to other walls, I want to limit the bending occurring there and thus move the bend manipulator to the edge of the wall before bending.

Curved wall using the Bend function in gameSpace

Curved wall segment in perspective view

Now I move the faces of my base segment so the base segment is straight again and I've created a nice 90 degree curve. Save a copy in your object library.

As you can see, it is easy to create curved objects, and when used properly, the gameSpace tools speed up the creation of interesting and varied level elements. You just have to think ahead and remember about BSP-legal blocks while using the tools, as they are powerful enough to let you make something that cannot be correctly or efficiently exported - but used with care, they are a great time saver!

Textures - Did Someone Say Textures?

So you already have some textures in a WAD file that you are eager to use? There is a tool for importing WAD textures into gameSpace!

Use the Import WAD Files plug-in to extract the textures out of the WAD format so that they can be used in gameSpace. When called up, the plug-in dialog requests that the user selects a WAD file and proceeds with the Open button. The plug-in extracts individual textures and creates corresponding (lossless) TIFF-files and puts them into the default gameSpace texture directory – because of the TIFF-format, they require a lot of disk space, so keep that in mind!

After that, use the material editor and select Texture Map as the color channel. Pick out your favorite texture, assign it to the object and presto, it is done....well, almost! Like many other 3D packages, gameSpace allows different methods for projecting textures onto objects (e.g. cube, cylinder, spherical, planar). Depending on your object, some look good, but others do not. Most game engines basically use a planar projection based on a world coordinate system. In addition, the scaling of the texture is rarely ever transferable one to one, which means that what you see in gameSpace will not perfectly match what you will see in WED.

Luckily, the friendly folks at Greenbriar Studios have created a brand-new, handy little plug-in to assign the game engine projection and scaling to gameSpace objects on a face by face basis. Generally, this means that what you see is what you get!

When you are ready to assign the "right“ UV projection and scale to an object, call up the Game UV plug-in. With it you can assign scaling and UV projection to all of your objects at once or individually, as you see fit.

Here is a screenshot of our curved wall with a standard Cubic UV projection applied. You can see the places where the texture is discontinuous or looks "odd" or "not right".

Curved wall with "odd" texture mapping

GameUV dialogue box

Now we use the Game UV tool to fix that. Call up the plug-in and select Apply To All, to make sure that all of our blocks are included. One word of warning - if you have already assigned a UV mapping with a different scale to some of your objects, that will be overwritten! Adjust the scaling value until it meets your expectations.

Using the above techniques, from modeling to UV mapping and texturing, here is a more complete level built on top of the floor plan sketch. This one is almost ready for exporting into 3D GameStudio! You can see a larger version by clicking on the image below. Note how I always kept in mind the end result and how it would need to be BSP-legal.

I have already added some more walls, moved some rooms to a higher elevation and added ceilings for some rooms. Also, I have put more lights into the scene, which brings me neatly to the next section!

Placing Lights

Since the default lights in gameSpace are most likely not what you need in your game engine, it is time to place some lights in the scene.

It is quite possible to place the lights in gameSpace in such a manner that you will be able to use them "as is“ once exported to 3D GameStudio's WED. You can adjust the position, color and intensity to make your setup look the way you want it to, and all this will be transferred to WED.

That said, be sure you remove any infinite lights, as they will add no value in WED (they will most likely show up as point lights that are "stuck in the ground“).

Exporting to WED

The level is now constructed, textures have been assigned and adjusted, and the lights are placed. This is a good time to save a copy of your scene into your scene library.

Call up the Greenbriar Level Exporter plug-in and enter the needed fields (the documentation that accompanies the plug-in covers all the fields in detail). Since the export is fast, do not worry about having to export more than once. As a matter of fact, there is nothing wrong with exporting a partially finished level, to have a look at it inside your 3D engine and maybe get some pointers as to what needs tweaking back in gameSpace.

The following fields are the most interesting to us right now:

Files
These options specify some of the filenames that the Level Exporter needs in order to export your level. The Level Exporter remembers the values next time around.

Output Dir - in which directory on your disk will this file be saved

WAD Dir – where are the WADs to be located (in case you want to create one)

MAP File Name – what will the name of the MAP file be

WAD File Name – specifies the name of the WAD file that will be referenced in the MAP file

Output Options
Here we select the output options for out level export.

Create WAD – the Level Exporter can create a WAD (using the name specified above) in which it will export all needed textures for the level. If that is what you need, just check the box. Warning : the Level Exporter will overwrite an existing WAD file without verification, so if you have "STANDARD“ as your WAD file name, chances are that you do NOT want this option enabled as you could overwrite WADs that came with your games!

Round Points – with this option enabled, the Level Exporter rounds the coordinates for vertices to integers since some engines (e.g. 3D GameStudio) can only deal with integers. Using this option can help avoid gaps. Since the rounding takes place after scaling, depending on the complexity of some of the geometry and the scale of the level, using this option can create some problems with the resulting blocks. Try first exporting without this option, and if you experience problems, try with this option checked.

Scale – is in essence a multiplier that influences how large your scene / level will be when it arrives in your target system. For our level, a scale of 75 is a good value. Set it to 300 and the rooms have the height of gothic cathedrals. According to the manual, this also influences the lights.

Base Light Level – a "standard“ or default light in gameSpace will be transferred to WED with this range

Texture Scaling – used to turn on / off the scaling of exported textures. Check the Level Exporter documentation for more information about it's use.

Selection Only – when checked, the Level Exporter will export only the currently selected object(s) into the specified MAP file.

Geometry Breakout Options
These Options tell the Level Exporter how to break apart or dissect your level geometry. They can be used to optimize the number of exported blocks for your level.

Assume Legal – forces the Level Exporter to export objects with less than 33 faces as a single block, without breaking them apart. Unless you are creating some special geometry that requires it, just leave it unchecked.

Column Search – tells Level Exporter to treat objects that are named beginning with "Cyl“ as columns and treat them accordingly during export. If you have columns, use it to keep Level Exporter from creating "hollow tubes“ rather than solid blocks. This is a good one to experiment with, if you ever need to create a large hollow pipe (such as a tunnel).

Block Search – when checked, the Level Exporter will break the geometry into six-sided cubes. Leave this switch enabled.

Connected Search – as the manual says : "Used to look for sets of connected faces under the 32 face limit." In effect, it is an Assume Legal that is activated AFTER the breakout is done, which allows you to force breakout of any objects with less than 32 faces that can be broken out, before the engine assumes that what is left is legal.

Flush Inside – tells the Level Exporter that you want the (broken apart) objects to be built up so that the interior faces are butting up against each other for a smoother look. This can be useful when your are creating complex objects within which some of the game action will take place. If left unchecked, Level Exporter will use the exterior faces to create smooth surfaces (see example below).

Thickness – in game system units, the depth (thickness) of each block during creation of "hollow objects.“

To illustrate this, here is a sample, 5 sided cylinder (including a couple sweeps / bevels) in gameSpace :

5-sided beveled cylinder

Setting thickness to 12 and NOT checking column search & connected search, I get these results in WED (the top block that is created has been moved out of the way in WED to show the inside - it was exported as a 'cap' flush to the top of column) :

Exported object with Flush Outside option (click for larger image)

Exported object with Flush Inside option (click for larger image)

If you try this and do not get a hollow cylinder, check the "Column Search“ & "Connected Search“ options and make sure it is not enabled.

Target System

This identifies the game engine for which this export is meant. Since I am using 3D GameStudio, the choice is simple. Now, press OK and Level Exporter starts going to work, and very quickly, you get an informational dialog box such as the one on the bottom.

Now, press OK and Level Exporter starts going to work, and very quickly, you get an informational dialog box such as this:

Congratulations! You have exported a MAP file (in this case with 421 blocks and 10 lights).

Supported target systems

Time for some WED-ing

Open up WED and call up the Open File dialog box, make sure you select Level Files as the file type, and then select the MAP file you just exported. Depending on where you stored it, you may have to navigate your hard disk a bit.

Ideally, the level should load just fine. If you get an error message, then this means that WED found a block that is not BSP-legal. Load the level anyway and try to identify which block(s) are missing, and see if you can figure out why they are illegal by looking at them again in gameSpace.

Exported MAP file (skybox added)

One thing you will notice is that all the blocks are listed one underneath the next one, and that there is no grouping of blocks. This is due to the fact that the standard MAP format does not support grouping of blocks. For any project that has more than just for fun and experimentation, you will have to do the groupings manually in WED.

Next, I added a skybox to surround my level. Also, I selected the upper and lower parts of my fancy wall segments and set the Detail flag under Properties in WED. And last but not least, I had to assign a sensible texture to the floor object, since the floor plan texture used for modeling in gameSpace certainly is not part of the Standard.WAD file!

Be sure to set the ambient lighting first (a value of 32,32,32 is a good starting point) before going on to building the level, otherwise too much of it will be pitch black (if you have lights defined).

I have added a position object as well as an existing model file into the level, created a script file and added an appropriate action to the model, so that I can actually walk through the level and see what it looks like "in game". If you just add the position, you'll be able to do a "fly through“, which can be fun too!

Now, it's time to press the BUILD button, start the compilation process and get a cup of tea (or whatever other beverage tickles your fancy). After a few minutes (anywhere between 7 – 30, depending on how much of the level you built and how fast your PC is) you'll hear that reassuring "ding“ to let you know that the Map Compiler has finished.

And the level is ready to RUN!

In-game shot 1

In-game shot 2

Final Thoughts

This short tutorial has shown some of the things that can be done with Caligari's gameSpace and the Greenbriar Level Exporter. They are both good tools and they can assist you in your game creation. However, having exported a level from gameSpace to your game engine is only one step in your creative process, as no piece of software can do everything for you. At the end of the day, there will always be some places where work is required!

The level shown here was created in gameSpace in less than two hours. I tried doing the same things in WED and found that after two hours I was nowhere near finished. This is – from my perspective – a true gain in productivity. The effort required to manually group and maybe rename blocks is not considered, because most of that would have to be done even if all modeling was done in WED, so this step is the same whether the level is built in gameSpace, or in WED.

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial and wish you lots of fun and success in your creative endeavors!