Level Editor Tutorial

Building your room (Interior Level)

How to create/lightmap a Level for use in an Interior Area: Objective: Following along with this tutorial, you should be able to create a simple room from scratch in 10 minutes or less

This was lifted from a posting by St4rdog http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/8/index/150840
It needs some additional formatting love, but is as good starting place for people to create usable interior levels

File > New > Level > Room Level

• Create a player start. Click flag icon next to lightmapping icons > click anywhere on ground. This is the starting location for the pathfinding algorithm. Make sure you place it somewhere where you expect to be able to walk.

• Click on "New Area" in top-left list > Object Inspector in bottom-right > Layout Name > anything under 8 characters no spaces or strange characters.

• Right-click in 3D view and select Insert > New Room.
• Click Models (blue box) in the Palette in the top-right. These folders contain everything such as floor tiles/walls etc to build your rooms.
• Enable Grid Snap with the magnet icon to make sure they line up.
• The "prp" folder contains things like beds/barrels to clutter your Level.

Hint: Use DATool (3rd party tool downloadable at http://social.bioware.com/project/41/ )to browse through these quickly to find the floors/walls you want.

Note: If you get "Cannot spawn models into the selected parent object" when trying to place a model then you don't have "New Room" selected.

Adding lights

• Right-click on "New Room" in top-left list > Insert > New Light

• Move it up off the floor a little. In Object Inspector > "Color

Intensity" 2 or more > "Light Type" Point - Static (lc) > Choose any bright color.

• Copy and paste. In Object Inspector >"Light Type" Ambient - Baked (this light stops your shadows being pitch

black) > Choose a dark blue colour and keep the Color Intensity under 2/3.

Note: I'm not sure what the mix of Baked/Static light is supposed to be. If you just put a Baked + Ambient it complains about not having Static, but if you put a Static + Ambient it seems to work fine, but the wiki says Static is the most expensive.

Rendering Lightmaps

• Press the Render Lightmaps icon (you need ActivePython 2.5 installed to default location). When it's done click the Display

Lightmaps On/Off icon in the top-left to refresh the results.

• Uncheck the "View Models Fully Lit" icon in the lop-left. You should see shadows from any objects you've dropped in.

note: Lightmap-atlas messages might appear the first time you render. That seems normal.
Sometimes re-rendering the lightmaps messes them up badly when Display Lightmaps On/Off is on. It doesn't seem to use the latest lightmaps. Try pressing Display Lightmaps On/Off a few times to update it. If they're still messed up sometimes one of these fixes it (don't know which)unloading/reloading your Area or Level/changing your Area's layout property/posting your Level to Local.

Exporting

• Press the Do All Local Posts icon to the right of the lightmapping icons. It will export the name you typed into the "New Area" "Layout Name". If there's a complaint about walkable/player start then delete your old start then place a new one on a flat area.

• Save your .lvl file. It's not used by the game and the name/location doesn't matter. Only the exported/posted files are used.

Using this in an Area

File > New > Area > Any Name

• In the Object Inspector > Area Layout you should get a "..." box (make sure it's Checked Out) > click then select your "Layout Name" which should now be there.

• Now you have a pretty level lightmapped level inside an area.

Building your terrain (Exterior Level)

How to create/lightmap a Level for use in an Exterior Area: Objective: Following along with this tutorial, you should be able to create a simple terrain from scratch

File>New>Level

• Choose Terrain (Landscape) Level and then click Next

• Accept the default values for the purpose of this tutorial and click Next and then click Finish. You can learn more about what the different terrain options do at the Level editor page.

You should now see a flat, dark piece of terrain. To move around you hold down the mouse wheel. If you want to rotate the view press the Alt key while holding down the mouse wheel. You will want some light so you can see what you're doing, so it's good to generate a light source next.

Lighting:

Now that the terrain is lit we can modify it.

Modifying Terrain

The Terrain mesh tools allow you to modify the terrain by changing elevations, smoothing edges, flatting terrain, or painting textures.

Water

Doesn't work yet so don't worry about it.