So I think the main obstacle is the user interface, and I believe there's a huge potential (and I mean this industry-wise not in terms of my own project!) for 'intelligent software' to become a virtual assistant that helps you to quickly assemble a streamlined tool out of a large 'bin' of level editing functionality, for example by mining examples of your project for consistent logical rules, and assembling something to help you create it quicker. I think the usual way it goes is that for high-level editors (whether it's texture or script or modelling) it's often something of a logarithmic increase in clunkiness/difficulty as you try to access more precision, whereas for a 'low-level' editor (such as Blender) it kind of starts at a certain difficulty and stays there (or at least the increase is much shallower). I can't imagine that Houdini would be all that easy to use (but I may be wrong!). For example assembling a greeble map in Substance Designer using shapes is a spaghetti nightmare, whereas in Blender I would easily and quickly create the greebles and overlay them for normal baking. However I can't imagine what a useable generic solution for this would be, so I'd probably have to do it myself.Īlso I don't like noodle editors, I find them very cumbersome. I don't really have any problem with using blender to create geometry, it can be very fast once you get to know it, but assembling it is something I think I would want a tool for, to be able to do it easily in the editor.
make a lot of assumptions) and therefore very hard to standardise across genres and specific game features. However, it's important that this would not be the same as a 3D modelling tool, and as such would be high level (i.e. It exported all the light placements and vertex colours for me to work with. I did it in a couple of days but that included code, modelling and writing the max plugin. Dabbled with maya on and off - but it essentially it does the same job in a different way.Įven some of my oldest stuff uses custom exporters I developed in 3dsmax like this old demo from 2000-ish on dx7 using an alpha build of blitz3d before it came out. I kind of want to make a modern game with modern poly counts though so we use max.
It appears to be faster if you want box rooms and don't know how to model, I guess). The reason this is preferred is IMHO workflow is quite a bit faster than old style hammer editing (never understood why anyone would want old school hammer style editing. We wouldn't want it in Unity because Unity can't catch up to 20 years of max. Unity is for adding pupose, props, content that the engine needs to run the game with, and that includes the base geo from max. It remains the best all round level editor and we have several tools/plugins in place for terrain and so on, tailored to the game. We've used it for many years in game development. If I was to create a point and click adventure I'd probably have no use for. Level editing on the other hand has specific rules that you have to tell unity are there in the first place and will probably not be halpful to others.
A geometry editor like ProTools for Unity is still a very good addition for editing end prototyping a wide variety of tjhings that can later be improved to a level editor by the individual creator maybe. If I was to create a point and click adventure I'd probably have no use for Doom's SnapMap editor.Īs I said: lines are blurred between the two things but in the broad definition it's just a too specific thing to be reasonable to have. Nothing Unity can be too concerned with because the external programs do it just fine. Modeling is very advanced in most current 3D applications and as such is a very specialized field. Where the one thing ends and the other one starts is again project/application driven again. Where those places are can be more specific to the project again (look at the box structure of the first Tomb Raider engine for example) and can thus blur the line between level editing and modeling again. Modeling is simply the process of creating good looking geometry in the right places. Dependencies with your character, obstacles and interaction. Level editing has to do with project specific logic and functionality. What you are describing is not Level Editing.