I know there are many high quality modeling programs out there that can ultimately be converted over to work in Med with 3DGS. I've also heard rumors of there being other programs that can create levels that work in Wed as well, but I have not been able to find anything. Does anyone out there know of any compatible editors? The bsp collision tree system that A6 uses seems to be the main problem, but I simply cannot believe that there isn't another editor somewhere out there that works with bsp.... you know, bsp being used in most any 1st person shooter ever made and all.

for my levels i use a combination of programs.

1. make level in sketchup pro (taking care to make it all convex)
2. export to .3ds file format
3. downloaded and installed Gmax
4 downlaoded and installed Tempest (quake III plugin for Gmax)
5. load tempest and select all the level
6. right click and convert to editable brush
7. export to .map
8. import into 3dgs and scale it to correct size

i havnt yet figured out how to export to 3ds import using tempest and export to map with all textures.

another alternative is icex 2.0 which was made for 3dgs but i havnt bought it

Wait... sketchup pro? As in Google Sketchup Pro?! I've been trying to figure out how to convert files from that successfully for ages! I gave up on it a while back. Please post again if that is the program you're using! I love that software.

What do you mean by your last statement regarding figuring out the conversions and the textures? Please specify.

And thanks so much!

you can use valve Hammer Editor.You can save the level as .map file and import it into 3dgs

Btw if u want to use the Valves Hammer Editor, u must have HL .WAD Texture Files... If u doesnt have this Files u cant Build anything...

cYa Sebastian

yes i have sketchup pro, i currently use it trying to create my town to use in my driving simulator.

To succesfuly save a .map file you need to export sketchup to .3ds

you then use Gmax and the Tempest plugin

select all of the model and right click it to get the menu and click Convert to: editable brush (not doing this will cause nothing to import to 3dgs)

then in gmax tempest plugin export it to .map

and import it to 3dgs.

as for textures, i havnt figured out how to keep the texture i done in sketchup, it gets lost somewhere between exporting the .map and importing it to 3dgs.

have you figured out how to keep sketchup texturing when importing a mdl file, when i export to .3ds and import it into med the textures get all screwed up. perhaps you can figure out how to do it with .map also.

i love sketchups fast and effective texturing capabilities instead of taking 30 minutes to texture a house in other modellers wich sketchup can do in 1 minute

I love sketchup too, but I've had no success with the converting. I got it to work on some smaller projects, but the geometry always wound up wrong, aka holes disappearing into the surfaces I cut them out of and such. As for textures... I never had even one texture transfer, the level always just became gray colored... sorry... I'll try your way of doing it as soon as I have time, probably this weekend. I'm really interested in seeing how this works.

Please try Fragmotion, it can import 3ds files, and also exports to mdl. I hope that fragmotion will handle it efficiently.