Wow how nostalgic… legendary QE/GTK Radiant from the old times. I used that editor for good 5 years I think. It was extremely fast to do level designing. That’s why I chose QERadiant instead of UnrealED that time. Working with bsp was nightmare for me even though I liked UT better (and Unreal 1 is like a god to me:P). But with the advancement of technology and changing the way we design games, now we use standard 3D packages also used in motion picture industry. That’s ok for me 'cos I jumped to post production after working on Quake level editor.
BUT… (yeah, a big but)… Sometimes working with BSP brushes is still fast and nice. Or should I say, would have been fast and nice. Though UE4’s BSP brush capabilities are great and very useful, they are extremely slow. I think the biggest problem to use BSP in UE4 is the performance. One time I was sick of configuring bsp brushes and I converted them to static meshes. Bam. Lightmap went crazy and I had to redesign the whole level from start on Maya.
Of course static mesh building is like a standard in nowadays games, still we should have the freedom to make “some” design choices on BSP. For example now I am building a sky level for my flight game. I already designed detailed meshes on Maya. But I would have designed more common buildings which seem like an Egyptian tower or pyramids on BSP and in engine. I don’t know the rest of you but although I did work as a mattepainter, I’m not a texture artist and I’m in very deep trouble about UV’s. So I have a couple suggestions:
For better static mesh integration:
- UE4 can automatically create better UVs for models. Currently there are lots of issues about .
For BSP:
- Manipulating the vertexes, adding subtracting etc. are cool. I think BSP is great but it kills the performance. If their performance is solved, then making simple geometry would be faster on Unreal and we wouldn’t have to design&implement&UV everything, everything! on Maya.
See here, there are some very crude buildings in my level. Everything is static mesh here but giant arches and that tower-like buildings would have been easily bsp geometry if the BSP wasn’t a performance for me. And also it would have been granted me nearly a week and I’d be further on my schedule. Alas, not.
Edit*: By the way the first video by is superb. Hammer seems like even better than Quake Editor. It would be extremely fast and if Geometry 2.0 will be fast and smooth like that.
