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  1. #1
    TeamAmerica.'s Avatar Banned
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    [Future Suggestion] Asset Editor: Ability to Slice Asset Objects and Shapes

    Asset Editor: Ability to Slice Asset Objects and Shapes

    Similar to "Fracture Mesh" in Unreal Editor (i think it's avail. in UE4) and make crumbled sections of Assets, specifically (and probably the best and only solution would be) to carve Generic Shapes so that a Mapper can make the Generic shapes almost infinitely more unique.

    Also: Ability to merge meshes (place them together) in the Asset Editor, so that a Generic Shape can be carves (sliced) to fit to an exact match of the next Generic Shape it is being sliced to fit with.

    Mappers' thoughs on this? IMHO it would be amazing and lead to a wealth of more creativity.

    Off-Topic: I'm still dragging my feet over the whole "Black Hawk Down" map, i am going to drop the Black Hawk Down tag, as i only named it BHD, i watched the movie again and a lot of the buildings can be built with Generic Shapes, however the more intense sections of the movie require a bit more detail and Frankly, it isn't worth the time to build a BHD map without destroyed sections of buildings.

    I will continue to build a Middle-Eastern/African styled Shanty Town ala' Ghost Recon Advanced Warfare, but in stone and wood... It still irks me that i have to build only perfectly intact structures and cannot slice a Generic Shape into a bombed out building or even open a hole for a crawl space, or ladder hatch up/down, or in some cases a building which has been hit by mortar/missiile, etc...
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  2. #2
    I think it would be more easier for the devs if it was only shapes to start with, so yeah good idea of course, i remember back in the days of Crysis Sandox editor, there was a solid tool available and you could make all sort of shapes with it, triangles, cylinders, cubes, rectangles, slice them and even assign different textures to each plan, with different tiles. (iirc)
    But it was quite heavy for the memory budget (tris/drawcalls)
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  3. #3
    Good idea. But why just slice existing assets. Why not just have the function of making an asset using very small generic pieces which can then be saved as our own asset and can be put into a folder or library of our own assets.

    For example, lets say I build a small house using 260 generic pieces. I could then highlight the whole collection of generic pieces and save it. Then when I start a different map, I can just select it from my library of (saved) created assets.

    The current map editor is really awesome as it is, the addition of generic pieces plus being able to select textures is really one of the biggest steps forward for the Far Cry map editor over the years. The next step, I believe, would be something along these lines. So a huge range of textures and some really small pieces of various shapes (as well as all the current ones), and then of course the ability to save a collection of pieces as one asset which can be used in other maps.

    Hopefully, the way the engine works, this will also be a good option to save memory budget i.e. a saved asset will use less memory than the total of its pieces.

    One more point. Being able to rotate the textures at 90 degrees. What I mean is, I place a generic wall as part of a roof. I get to a corner of the roof and have to use a triangular piece. Unfortunately, adding a mono-directional texture means that the texture is "going the wrong way", by 90 degrees. Being able to have a function to simply change the rotation by 90 degrees would be good - it doesn't have to be incremental by degree, just to have the texture this way or that.

    @ForceReconNeo. Keep working on BHD. Do not let inspirations die. I like your idea about using an erosion tool on generic pieces - that would also be awesome. You mean like an ageing tool? So you have a nice clean white wall and you use an ageing tool on it, it becomes more dirty, a bit cracked, a little bit distorted. Sounds fantastic. HAHA imagine building a squeaky clean house and then using that tool on it, it eventually becomes a dilapidated old monstrosity with vines growing everywhere.
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  4. #4
    TeamAmerica.'s Avatar Banned
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    FlyingSpiritus, and Sabotur you're exactly on-point. Building a structure from generic pieces with a slicing tool (Edit: or better yet an erosion tool, as Sabotur suggested,) with ability to select 'faces' (the newly cut selection that would then be exposed) and texture them with any available texture would be great, like a drywall being cut on X,Y, and Z Planes, so that is is sliced into part of a doorway that looks like an explosion hit it, then texturing the newly exposed sections with a separate texture would goo a long way towards building a truly unique map.The Budget is a factor but it should be stated in a warning before as you open the editor for the first few times than the slicing or erosion tool is taxing on budget, and shouldonly be used in moderation.

    And Definitely needs a "Save Selection to Asset" function, good thinking, i just use the selection tool as it is and freeze any unwanted assets atm... making a new map with the Asset would be Great!

    And yes an erosion tool would reduce the steep learning curve a slice tool would have... Very good ideas here.

    And Thank You about not giving up on BHD... i'm not going to keep it a BHD map, i've given up because while generic shapes would give the map plenmty of breathing room and interiors, ii might just give up on a Black Hawk Down Map altogether because i want destruction lol... but BHD will be a good Middle Eastern Map with lots of passageways, i put 10-12 hours into it (i may have exaggerated just a little in the promo, but npot much, and there is an updated version, i will add AI when i am done with the structural building so i can properly make a Bounty Hunt and Capture Map.

    I am currently on a map with 2 versions: evening and night vision, called "MOH Early Access TDM" for evening, and "MOH Early Access NVG" for nightvision. I am building it off of the Intro from Medal of Honor (Singleplayer, 2010) Intro in Gardez, Afghanistan, and i have about 60% of it in place, but it doesn't seem to need much tweaking, just more content. I am sticking with MOH until i feel satisfied, and SWAT Village will be revamped with decorations and climbable railings and windows, i just figured anything at waist height would be climbable via the Dunia Engine

    BTW, Sabotur, i made a tutorial on Structure building from Assets that are just pieces, and included in the tutorial is a terrain sculpting section where i build a tall hill and use erosion to make it striated and it gives so much more realistic effect than a simple 'bump' tool and 'smooth' tool. need to record narration as it didn't capture my mic in the XBox Overlay, so i will watch the video on WMP, and record narration in Adobe Audition while i watch. Will upload as soon as i'm done.
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