Hey guys,

We're hoping to find some sort of reasonably priced software for building 3D worlds, and have some special needs. We need features similar to what you might see in Crysis or Torque's level editors. Here are some of the things we need:

*Good tools to manipulate terrain and fine tune it

*Ability to paint textures onto terrain with brush
- Not required, but it's a bonus if we can set texture
constraints

*Ability to use "splines" for making roads, rivers, etc

*Ability to export the world into a usable format for engine or even Maya (basically cross-compatible anyway), BUT we need the textures to be exportable as well.

This is what my friend says he needs to effectively build the huge environment for our project. He's used to using things like Crysis, and WED doesn't have those sorts of tools.

He feels "apprehensive" about using 3DGS because WED doesn't have these tools. But what I've noticed is that engine's are a tradeoff, like most things. It seems the engines that have great design tools for artists have a yucky scripting language and limited programming functionality/libraries/etc. Then the ones that are great for us programmers don't have the fancy art tools. Some people even make games with VS C++, so how the hell do they design levels?! Lol!

Hoping someone can point me in the right direction with this. We need to design a *massive* world with lots of detail. I don't know a lot about level design either (he's the expert). Any advice/help much appreciated.

I would say that there is a reason that the CryEngine costs that much...
Honestly, I don't think that such a tool, even if it would work with A7, would be cheap; I also think that it would need lots of work to make A7 compatible with such an editor.
But I could be absolutely wrong.

What about Bryce? I've seen screenshots of things made with it, and it looks awesome.

Bryce is usefull for creating heightmaps...nothing else so far.. perhaps also skycube rendering, but I use only this awesome heightmapgenerator (Bryce 5.5)

To be honest, I'd be looking at getting a dedicated modeller using a proper 3D package, like 3DSmax, Lightwave, etc. and actually understanding the model format he will be exporting for in the final engine.

All full 3D packages have exporters, and what you want is a good pipeline for assembling blocks into levels, (which you could do in MED).

Get him to experiment a bit - collada, fbx, obj formats may all help get textured models across, and between the team you should be able to agree on specifications for models/artwork and full levels before really starting to commit to any engine and 3d pipeline.

Don
have a great day

Well, we already have Maya '09 Unlimited. I see a lot of problems with using it to build the whole world though. Namely, it doesn't have the tools that make a world builder a world builder. You can't paint textures onto terrain (afaik), and placing 3D objects will end up making it part of the terrain. Of course, we could do object placement in WED, but we do need to be able to manipulate terrain and place objects in the same program. This will be crucial when building towns, cities, roads, etc. We'll be needing to modify/flatten certain parts to make buildings "fit", and we'll need to be able to make trenches, foxholes, etc in the actual world.

Btw, we aren't planning on making different "levels", but instead, one monstrous world. So practically everything will be built of models, not blocks. We're going to have to break up the better part of North Africa into segments, construct it, edit it, and reassemble it the engine with proper coding techniques to make a seamless world.

How about torque's editor? haven't used it, but it has a road and a river tool from what I understand...

You can alway write your own Leveleditor, that uses the ingame rendering engine.
Because then you have the tools that fit to your style of game.

Exerything in a 3dgs Level, except the "BSP Blocks" could be create with our own editor.

If you are really working on an ambitious project.
Using your own leveleditor, or at least a "level refinement" editor
is the way to go.

Well, I have NO experience writing that sort of software. And it would be a huge waste of time imho.

But that DOES give me an idea. Maya is very modular in design, and it's not too difficult to write plug-ins for as I understand. So it seems probable that a small team could write a Maya plug-in for building 3DGS world with all of these features. Then it could export straight to engine formats, and tighten the workflow pipeline even further. I know there is one tool similar to this out there, but it doesn't have these features, and I've never heard a review of it. Maybe it could be a good starting point if it's author wanted to further its development though. It would also be great to have an integrated shader editor in it, which would let you work with things like terrain multi tex while you're painting terrain and doing other things. That would be like the ultimate tool if it also had a good water editing system.

Maybe I should contact the person who wrote the other Maya plug-in, and see if they'd be interested in spurring it on. Would be great to turn it into an open-source project for the whole community (and be FREE).

Only downside is that it would take a long time, and I fear that we don't have that time to wait.

IceX 2.2 + IceX Street Tool

Would be perfect for what you requested

check the videos on their website
http://www.stonehill-online.de