What world modelers do you guys use. i want to be able to model a world, output it to a file, and load it in my graphics engine. is this possible with anything? thanks

"i want to be able to model a world, output it to a file, and load it in my graphics engine" Wow, you make it sound so simple! There is no simple answer (To my knowledge), so AFAIK you are going to have to write custom applications OR plugins for other applications (Prefferably 3D modelling apps ) in order to save the world in a file format which your engine can read

Oh yeah, obviously you could support a ''standard'' format such as Quake3 levels - but I think you''ll find yourself ending up with levels with a very Quake3 type look to them?



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I don''t know about loading into your scene, but Bryce is an easy to learn lanscape modeller- you might be able to find a demo version of it somewhere.

??? what format do quake 3 levels lok like

i mean what format do they come in

There are two kinds of level files for Quake III:

*.bsp
This format is what ships with Quake III. It is compiled, and contains the BSP tree, PVS, and lightmaps. It is a binary format. Tutorials are easily found on the net.

*.map
This is an ASCII format file that is output by Quake III map editing tools (namely Q3radiant and the newer cross-platform GTKRadiant). It is compiled to produce a *.bsp file. The *.map files can easily be dissected using notepad. The only tricky thing is the representation of the brushes. A brush is stored as a collection of planes; each plane is defined by three points. These three points do not need to be brush verteces. For a tutorial on the *.map file format, go here.

hmm ill look into it :D

TerranFury: The link you gave is cool, but do you (or anyone else) know of a description of how quake3''s curved surfaces etc are layed out in a q3radient .map file?

Thanks,

Dan