World creation tools in OGRE

tngcto · Post by **tngcto** » Tue May 10, 2005 4:22 pm

Hello everyone. I've been using OGRE for quite some time and I think I can now start my game project. So far, I have a good grasp of the fundamentals of the engine like loading meshes and some maps. But if I am going to serious game programming with OGRE, I need advice in creating worlds. Right now I can make BSP maps and load it up to OGRE using the bundled code. Ok, one down. But what if I need to create other kinds of worlds? Which tool should I use? For now, I have this rough breakdown:

1. Indoors - According to our community, BSPs are the way to go and I can see it renders fast. I'm using GTKRadiant for this one.
2. Outdoors - Height maps for terrains. I'm lost in this one. What tool must I use?
3. More outdoors - Dotscene and Octree maps. Nature and grass. Just like above, what tool must I use to create cool outdoor OGRE compatible maps?
4. Generic demos - Nothing!

It's inevitable that I'm going to use one of the cool outdoor scenemanager OGRE has but I don't know where to start in making maps of that sort.

I made research on the forums concerning the tools to create outdoor levels but most members mention to use heightmaps, create octree or dotscene maps. Some people referred to the art section for advice but I only found concepts mostly. There is no straight example of the tool to use to do them.

OGRE masters, please don't angry at me on this post. I really want to learn to make outdoor maps for the other scenemanagers. I want to use the engine's other abilities besides indoor levels.

Mr. Turner · Post by **Mr. Turner** » Tue May 10, 2005 5:19 pm

For outdoor maps, I'ld (also) suggest to use heightmaps in combination with dotScene.

For the heightmaps: there's a WIP of Lucky_Luciano that is getting better and better at doing this.
http://www.ogre3d.org/wiki/index.php/PGLM-MapEditor

Some people also generate their heightmaps with FreeWorld3d (http://www.freeworld3d.org)

For dotScene there are currently 2 options:
Chronos (http://chronos.digitalsentience.com/)
Ogre Toolbox (http://ogretoolbox.sourceforge.net/) (Terrain editing is going to be something in the next version, but you can load it by manually editing the dotscene file)

Hope that gets you going

Mr Turner