- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
I bet y'all can't wait to make maps wend H2 Vista comes out, huh?
From the Halo 2 FAQ
Why doesn’t the toolkit include a 3D modeler or texture editor?
There are several extremely good 3D modeling and artistic programs on the market, including some available at no cost. Bungie itself uses third-party tools for modeling and texture creation.
Now, personally, I think that this is a very questionable decsion. As far as I can tell, there are very few modlers here, so let me explain why :
The more mianstream 3D apps cost anywheree from $2,000 to 16,000. Bungie is fooling itself if they thik that anyone of us would be willink to fork out that much money.
Of course, there are free packages out there. The one that I highly suspect they are referring to is Blender. Yeah, it's free and it has an incredible, feature packed rendering engine, but here's the catch. he interface is FREAKING INCOMPREHENSIBLE. I mean, it'll take someone anywhere near 2 months to learn it. Here's a screen shot of the mess :
http://www.bretschneidernet.de/images/blender.png
Please, note that quite a few of those buttons open up submenus or change the whole layout to a new set of 100 buttons (wheeee.)
The solution? Supprt for Wings 3D
www.wings3d.com.
Wings is the easiest 3D app to learn IN EXISTENCE.
Also, textures aren't very easy to create so perhaps the H2 editing kit should include a couple dozen for us to use?
Another thing is that there are some things that are unadressed in the "customization" section of the FAQ :
1) Materials. Which one of the tools let's us set materials? That's right, procedural materials. For all you newbies out there, this is what makes you're level look all shiny and fancy. I would like to see the following properties/channels supported :
* Diffuse
* Specular
* Emmisive
* Caustics (this is a rather general, all inclusive term so let's just go with photon mapping)
* Irradescent.
* Light refraction.
* Transparency.
* Normal map.
* Fresnels
2) Lighting. I'de like to see the following light sources supported (each, of course, with numerous adjustable properties like color, strength, etc) :
-Ambient light
-Light cone
-Photon light (used with caustics)