Tutorial #1: Basic UnrealED (click to download .UNR) | Author: Dr. SiN | Last Updated: May 24th

Unreal Tutorial #1 Getting to know UnrealED (revision 5.24) Introduction: This is the first tutorial in a set I’m working. It’s actually an update of one I released late yesterday. We have found out a lot more information about the editor and the effects.

In this tutorial, we will go over some of the basics of Unreal Editing, how to use the engine, the tools, etc. We will also cover some of the terminology. Some of the information may be incomplete as we are just figuring everything out myself. If you have any suggestions, corrections or additional information please drop me some email at

mrsin@creativecarnage.com. It’s my hope that tutorials like this will help us all figure out UnrealED faster.

The Editor:

When you first start UnrealED, you will be presented with a complex set of windows and toolbars. That will look something like the following…

(click on the image to view full size)

Now your screen layout may very (ie: I’ve changed mine around to suit me). The first thing you will notice are the 4 view windows on the left. These are Top (upper left), Side (upper right), front (lower right) and 3D view (lower left). It’s in here you will see the actual blueprints to your level.

On the very right edge of your layout is your browser. Here you can view the differnet objects within Unreal. By default, this browser shows you all the textures you have currently loaded.

Between the views and the browser is your command toolbar. Here is where you select any of the action you are going to perform. Everything from rotate to adding/subtracting a brush is selected from here.

Finally a standard Win95 menu bar is found on the top of the screen.

The Command Toolbar:

The command toolbar is very important. It’s here where you will go to select how to interact with the level you are designing. Many of the icons are self-explanatory and some of the more dificult ones will be covered in later tutorials. Let’s look at the most commonly used icons:

Move/Move Faster: These 2 icons reset the controls of the editor to their default (move). I don’t suggest ever using Move Faster as you tend to lose whatever it is your working on.

Rotate Brush: Select this icon when you wish to rotate your current brush.

Scale Brush (No Snap): Select this icon to scale your current brush without snapping it’s movement to your current grid size.

Scale Brush (Snap): Same as above, but snaps it to your current grid size.

Constrained Scale: This icon allows you to scale an object from a given edge.

Skew Brush: This allows you to skew a brush in order to deform it’s shape.

Position Texture: This icon allows you to quickly reposition a selected texture move scrolling it up/down/left/right.

Rotate Texture: This icon allows you to rotate a selected texture.

Use Cube/Sphere/etc: These icons (the bottom 8 on the very right of the toolbar) are used to select which BRUSH you are going to be working with. The place down very basic shapes that can then be used to design your world.

Add Brush to World: Click on this icon to add a brush to the world. What this actually does will become very clear in a minute.

Subtract Brush from World: This will remove a brush from the world. Like the icon above, it’s purpose will become clear in a minute.

Controls:

The first thing you need to learn about the editor is how to move around in it. There are some specifics that you need to know and they will be covered here.

Scrolling around your map (2D views): When you are in one of the 2D views (top, front, side) you use the mouse to move your viewpoint. Simply click (left or right) on the map and move the mouse to change your view. If you wish to zoom in or out, you need to hold both mouse buttons down.

Scrolling around your world (3d view): The controls to move around in your 3D view are a bit different depending on which mouse button you use. If you press the left mouse button, horizontal mouse movement will turn you left and right while vertical mouse movement will move your viewpoint in and out. If you press the right mouse button you will be locked in place, but be able to turn in any direction (left/right or up/down). This is good for reorienting yourself. Finally, hold down both mouse buttons and you now strafe in the direction you move the mouse.

So the mouse buttons effect how you move around in the view… well how do you interact and move brushes/actions? It’s simple… you use the CTRL and ALT keys!

Interacting with Brushes/Actors: To interact with a brush/actor, select it then hold down CTRL while performing a function upon it. In this mode, your mouse buttons restrict the directions in which you can modify the brush. For example, to scale your brush, select it, click on the scale ICON, hold down CTRL. You are now ready to scale it. If you hold down the left mouse button, you can only scale the brush left to right. If you hold down the right mouse button, you can only scale the brush up and down. Hold down both buttons and you can scroll them in any direction.

Notice I stayed away from X/Y/Z! When you make an adjustment to a brush the adjustment is relative to the view you are using. For example, on the side view, up/down motion makes the brush taller while on the top view, the same up/down motion makes the brush wider.

ALT

is an EXTREMELY important key used to modifying brushes. This toggle allows you to directly modify the vertexes that make up the brush. You will use this feature to create slopes and other strange shapes.

WHAT... Only 1 Brush?

I know many of you reading this have been building Quake and Quake 2 levels for years… working with UnrealED is VERY different than building a level in Q/Q2! UnrealED works much more like the Build editor that came with Duke Nukem (made by 3D Realms). Unlike Q/Q2 editors you do not simply place polygons in space and hope you don’t have any leaks. In UnrealED you start with a huge solid mass and carve rooms out of it.

Think of it this way.. instead of building a house of cards (like in Quake/Quake2) you have a huge block of clay. You create your level by cutting rooms out of the block of clay. Of course at any time you can add clay in to the empty spaces you created.

With this said, you really only have 1 brush. This brush is more like a cookie cutter in that it is used to shape the world before you delete (or add) part of it. Confusing… a little but once you start working with them, everything will become clear.

The best difference between UnrealED and Q/Q2 editing is little to no compile time. A huge map in Unreal takes less than 1 minute to rebuild on my P2-333 where even a medium map in Q/Q2 would take 20-30 minutes. Of course with UnrealED you also see exactly what you are going to get.

On Tap for Today:

So now that we have a good idea of how to use the editor. What are we going to do with it. In this tutorial we will create 2 rooms connected by a hallway. We will go over basic editing principles, learn how to add lights and actors. We will also take a quick look at altering the geometry of a brush through vertex manipulation. So, let’s being.

Building Our First Room:

Let’s place down our first room. On the command toolbar, select the Use Cube Brush icon. A cube will now appear on your view windows. Move your view until you see the cube brush. You will probably want to move the cube to a new location so click on the Move icon, select your brush in one of the 2D views and hold down both mouse buttons. Position it until your happen. Remember to adjust it’s position in all 3 views.

Once you have your room where you want it, you need to carve it out. But before we do this step, we should decide what texture we want to assign to them.

Picking your Textures:

It’s a good time to take a look at the browser. On the very right side of the layout you have the browser. It’s here where you go to pick textures or select actors to add to the game, etc. To select which set of objects to browse you use the pick list at the very top. By default this list is set to TEXTURES. The other types are Classes (actors and effects), SoundFX (sounds) and Music. For right now we are concerned with the Textures so let’s talk about them.

When you select textures, you will be shown a listing of the textures in the current texture set. You can use the scrollbar to view them all. Underneath the pick list for the browser (when browsing textures) is a pick list that will display all of the textures groups currently being used in this map. You can quickly use this to jump between the different texture groups.

To load a new texture group (so you can pick textures from it), you want to click on the LOAD button at the bottom of the browser. You will then be given a list of .UTX files. These are Unreal TeXture files and have the graphics stored in them. You can use textures from inside ANY of these files.

You will notice on the browse that right above the display of textures there are 6 buttons. The middle 3 determine how textures are displayed in the list. either 1 at a time, side by side or several at once.

Now that you know how to pick textures, let’s finish off our first room. Load the texture group STARSHIP.UTX. Now pick a nice wall texture. For our example I choose BLUE1. Highlight Blue1 and then click on the Subtract from World icon. BOOM… you should now see a room on your 3D view. This is a good time to practice moving around in the 3D view to get used to how it works. In time, it will become very natural.

Changing Textures:

We now have a hollow block (ie: a room) that’s all one texture. Preaty damn ugly. Well it’s very simple to change the appearance of a wall, etc. Let’s start by changing the ceiling to a better texture. In the 3D view, click on the ceiling of the room. Notice how it highlights. Now go to browser and pick a new texture. For this example I chose BASE_SHD. Double-click on the texture and you will see it change in the 3D view. But wait… UnrealED scales the texture to fit the whole ceiling and now it’s too big.

To alter the scale or rotation of a texture, select it, right-click and select Surface Properties (Alt-P). You will be given a menu with 6 different options.. Effects, Rotate, Pan, Align, Scale and Editor. For this example, we are only interested in Scale so click on it. The quickest way to scale the texture is to use simple scaling. This will adjust both the U and V scale by a given percent.

It’s important to remember that UnrealED trying to fit the texture to the plane. This means the numbers you see here the first time you come to this menu MAY or MAY NOT be correct. In our case, they probably are not. So click on Apply under the simple Scaling and see what it does. Ah... much better. Take some time and change the floor to something better.

Ok, so the ceiling are floor are now preaty but you don’t like the texture you chose for the walls. It’s ok.. changing them is just as easy, especially since UnrealED allows you to select and work on more than one surface at a time. In the 3D view… move your viewpoint inside of the room. Point at the first wall and click on now. Now rotate around and hold down CTRL while clicking on all of the other walls. You will notice that they will all get selected and you can now work on them all at once.

What some of your textures on the wall didn’t line up? There are 2 icons on the command toolbar that are used to align textures. These are Position Texture and Rotate texture. Take some time and play with them and get used to how they work.

On to the Hall:

Ok we built and textured our first room so let’s keep moving and build the hall. Remember that with Unreal you only have 1 brush and that brush is probably already on the screen. Click on the Move icon and select the room you just build in any of the 2D views. You should now be able to move the brush to a new location.

Reshape the brush so it’s hall shaped (a long cube should be good and position it where you want the hall to go. Make sure one end of the cube touches one of the walls of your first room. You also want to go to the side or front view and make sure the hallway sits on the ground or close enough so the player can get in to it (for this example, place it right on the ground).

Once your brush is in place, pick a texture and Subtract Brush from World. You should now be able to see in to the hallway from your original room. If not the rooms where not touching. If you made a mistake, press UNDO and try it again.

Two rooms with a view:

It’s time to create the second and final room. Follow the steps above for a hallway, but this time, don’t line up the floors. We the hallway to enter this room above ¼ of the way up the wall (you will see why in a minute). Remember it’s important that the room touches the hallway at the points of intersection.

Vertex Manipulation:

At this point.. SAVE YOUR MAP! Vertex manipulation in UnrealED is buggy at best. I suggest always saving right before you do any. The biggest bug is that you cannot drag a vertex on to another vertex. Try it for kicks.. crashes the editor toot-sweet!

Right now you are probably wondering why I had you make the hallway enter ¼ the way up the wall. Simple, we are going to build a ramp that allows a player to walk up to the hallway. This is an important step since it’s teaches how to do Vertex Manipulation.

Vertex Manipulation allows you to modify the shape of a brush. You can make a cube in to the slope, etc. So how do we do this! You should already have a cube brush selected. Click on the MOVE icon and move the brush so one end of it touch the wall connected to the hallway. Now Scale the brush until it is grid block higher than the lip under the hall. Stretch it out a bit to make a subtle slope.

Once your block is set, you need to perform some vertex manipulation to make the slope. Click on MOVE then click on the brush until it’s selected (you might have to slide the mouse slightly while holding down CTRL). Once the brush is selected, go to the upper corner that is furthest away from the hallway. Hold down ALT and click on it. You should notice a little + sitting on that vertex. This means that vertex is select and you can now move it.

While holding down ALT, drag the vertex until it is 1 grid above the floor. While your doing this, you will notice a diagonal line will be drawn. This is showing the change in the brush. You will also notice you may not be able to move it all the way down (you run out of mouse space). That’s ok… just reselect the vertex and move it again! Keep going until it is one grid above the floor.

You should now have a box with a line going from the vertex closest to the hallway to the close to the floor. You need to pull down the other vertex to make a true slope. Try it now. Hold ALT and click on the other vertex and drag it in to place.

For some reason, you must have 4 sides on the cube. Everytime I tried to make a perfect slope through vertex manipulation, UnrealED would crash. This is why we left the 1 grid square block at the bottom (and why we started 1 square above the lip). Move the block in to position so it starts right at the top of the lip.

If you did everything right, you should now have a slope the go 1 grid square under the floor. Because we don’t want to waste this space, we want to Deintersect the brush with the world. Click on the 4 icon down and the further to the right (see the list above). Bingo, your brush now fits the room perfectly.

Now what.. well we need to add material back to the world. So click on the Add Brush to World icon and your ramp will be added. Texture to taste!

The Rebuilding Process:

So you have created your 2 rooms and a hall, textured them and now it’s time to compile your level. GOD... don’t we all just hate compiling… I had one Q2 level that took hours on my P2-333 to recompile. Well.. forget it! Rebuilding in UnrealED takes seconds. I suggest rebuilding after you build each room or so.

Press F8 and you will be presented with the rebuilding menu. Click on the rebuild button and bingo.. your done!

WAIT.. my level disappeared from the 3D View. It’s ok.. read on..

Let There Be Light:

The reason your level disappeared in your 3D view is because it’s pitch black. The 3D view by default shows the level with Dynamic lighting on. Since we haven’t put in any lights, you can’t see anything.

Go to the 3D View and select mode. The first two options on the mode menu are Dynamic Lighting and Textures. Select textures and bingo, now you can see everything again. I tend to work with just Textures on, then switch to Dynamic light when we place the lights. Switch it back to Dynamic lighting.

So how do we place a light. It’s really simple. Pick on room on one of your views (I suggest using front or side) and right click. Select the option Add Light.

That’s it. You now have a light in the room. You should notice on your 3D view that you can now see something. If not, move your eye point around until you can. You can move the light source like any other object. Click on it, hold down CTRL and move it to the ceiling.

Place a few more lights around the level until you set the mood (I’ll deal with lighting in a later tutorial).

It’s Almost Time:

We are almost ready. All that’s left is to place the Player start location. Each map must have a player start location. Go to the Browser and click where it says TEXTURES. The player start location is under CLASSES in the drop down box (I’ll deal with this area in much more detail in a later tutorial) so select CLASSES.

Now you will see a bunch of different classes in the game. Select NAVIGATION POINT and down on the list you will see PlayerStart. Click on player start and go to your views. Pick which room you want the start in, right click in the room and select Add PlayerStart. DO NOT TRY DRAGGING the class over as on my machine it will crash the editor.

Once again rebuild your level (so the lights take effect) and save it to disk. I suggest creating a UserMap directory under your UNREAL\MAPS dir and storing all maps there. It’s now time to test your level.

Learn From My Mistakes:

If you have a GLIDE capable video card AND a voodoo/voodoo2 card... DO NOT... I REPEAT DO NOT… try playing the level from inside the editor. You will get a mutal exclusion error and total screw up your Unreal settings. Instead save the level, close the editor and find your level using my computer. Just double click on the level to load it in Unreal.

A couple of other things that might help you. Make sure you have plenty of RAM. When I first tried the editor I had only 64 meg.. and it ran like SHIT! After upgrading to 128meg of ram.. it runs great.

Also, make sure you have no other background takes loaded. Press CTRL-ALT-DEL to bring up the Close Program menu. The only 2 tasks you want active are EXPLORER and SYSTRAY. Close everything else. This will greatly help speed up the editor.

CONTACTING ME:

If you need more help or have some ideas, information, etc, you can reach me at

mrsin@creativecarnage.com. I can also be found on #UnrealED on EFNET irc.

CREDITS:

There are a bunch of us working on figuring everything out. Some of this information was discovered by the many people on #unrealED including MegaHertz, Freakscne and Orion.

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