[Swamp_Thing]

It´s just a doubt i have. When you guys make levels (like a Quake level or HL2 level), how do you set it up? Do you build all the geometry and then flip all normals? Or do you make a giant cube on wich you carve out the inside?
Suppose i wanted to make a hallway with a few doors and other rooms, what´s the procedure? If i flip all normals, it works fairly well, but the lighting get´s FUBARed.
In Unreal Tournament´s UnrealEd, you start out in a negative field, of wich you carve out the interior and move the camera from the inside. But with TS or 3DS Max, the camera is on the outside, and all operations are made from the outside. So how is it done?
I want to build a little something.

[aldo_14]

It would depend on the level... um,  my tendency would probably to build it through a combination of box-modelling and welding.  Matter of preference, though.

[Swamp_Thing]

Originally posted by aldo_14
It would depend on the level... um,  my tendency would probably to build it through a combination of box-modelling and welding.  Matter of preference, though.

You mean like bulding each individual wall and then glue them together? Or maybe a "U" form for the walls and floor, and then add a rectangular form as the ceiling? That sounds way too much work. And maybe redundant.
Building a large cube and then subtract the main forms out of the interior, it could work. But texturing it would be a royal pain, and the lighting wouldn´t work right.
Any other ideas, anyone?

[Nuke]

youd be better off carving out. the brush technique will boolean everything in the level on compile and generate lightmaps and vis tables. i remember i did a quake 2 level with proper lighting and it took 3 days to compile. just start with a primitive, flip the normals and start by reverse extruding your level, you will probibly need to do a few booleans to join hallways, dont overdo them or try to boolean anything too compliated as bad geometry will result, and thats a nono if you want proper clipping. a cube through a single, flat square face will do, and then modify your geometry off of that.

keep in mind freespace is not optimised for big levels like an fps game. fps games use portholes to cut up the level into sections that are typically rendered one at a time. textures are progressively loaded and unloaded as you enter different rooms. if i remember correctly freespace will try to render everything in front of you weather its visible or not. none the less you could probibly pull something off with about the quality of a medium-small descent 2 level. the interior of a big destroyer for example.

[Swamp_Thing]

I´ve been reading a few tutorials and pages in the Caligari website, and allthough i couldn´t find an answer to what i´m asking, i found some other stuff. For example, i found a picture of a level made in TS, and it looks like it was made using the "flip all normals" system. I´ve been playing around a bit, made a basic hallway to test it.
And look, who do you think that man is? It´s Bosch, planning his next escapade.

[Nuke]

just use the same techniques you would when doing a cocpit interior, the only difference is your working on a much larger scale. i have about 20 km of tunnel in the ssj dante, most of which is a very simple hexagnal tunnel and at either end it splits into 2 triangular tubes. im gonna use bob's docking bay feature to detail the tunnel a little bit more,  and throw in a reactor and a fighter replicator (as seen in decent).

[Taristin]

Just try to make it one object, unlike some of the ships Lighty wants me to fix...

[Swamp_Thing]

Originally posted by Raa
Just try to make it one object, unlike some of the ships Lighty wants me to fix...

Nag, nag, nag...

[Taristin]

You're not the one having to fix them.