Level Editor Tutorial

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Contents

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 

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.

Hint: If you need lots of wall sections quickly, place one at a convenient location e.g. (0,0). Copy (Ctrl-C) then Paste (Ctrl-V)
as many as you need. In the Object Inspector, change the coordinates of successive sections to (0,8), (0,16) etc or drag manually 
if you can do that quicker.

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.

Working with multiple rooms

In general it is best to define each building room as a new room in the level. This becomes important when you work on lighting. To physically connect rooms you need to slide them together to get the doors to line up, they do not line up automatically. It takes some trial and error but becomes easier with practice.

Use the Room Properties icon to specify which rooms are connected etc.

Pathfinding

Click the Generate Pathfinding icon. Green dots indicate where the player will be allowed to walk.

For this to work, the area properties must name a valid start point, and it needs to be bounded by walls or other obstacles. 

Hint: you may need to place another startpoint in any room that can't be reached from the main startpoint. That would apply, for example, to
rooms reached by transition doors within the area.

Adding lights

Two very simple alternatives are given here.

The first is minimal, with shadows.

The second makes no shadows, but ensures that faces are never in darkness.

Method 1 

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.

Method 2

Light Probe

Whether you use method 1 or 2, 

Note : you need a light probe to make character and water lighting work properly. The exact position doesn't seem to matter much.

Rendering Lightmaps

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.

Adding the Minimap

Select the area. Right click, then select Minimap > Minimap Selection Tool. The default green box appears. Right click on the area again, Minimap > Post Minimap to Local. It's possible to handcraft or refine the minimap, as detailed under Custom minimaps.

Exporting

Using this in an Area

File > New > Area > Any Name

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

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 are doing, so we will generate a light source next.

Tip: When choosing the size of your terrain level think about where you are going to put horizon and vista objects, like distant mountains and tree lines. You may need to allow for extra space around your adventure area to place those items.


Grid Size

If you want to work with a larger grid than the one provided by default you can change the grid size by going to:

Tools/Options/Level Editor/Grid Square Size.

This will not change the actual dimensions of the terrain level that you created, it only changes the size of the squares in the grid.

Define an area

Must be done before rendering the lightmap.

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

First use the Terrain mesh tools to make a hole. It doesn't have to be deep. Then right-click on Terrain world and select Insert -> New Water Mesh. Double Click on the Water Mesh to zoom to it. By default it gets placed in a corner. Using the 3 Axis Movement tool MoveTool.png grab the water and drag it to your hole. Depending on the size of the hole, you might have to adjust the water mesh size by changing the Size X and Size Y property values. Once you have the mesh placed, it's time to create the light probe. Right-click near the water mesh and select Insert -> New Light Probe. Using the move tool again, drag the light probe so that is roughly centered over the water mesh and slightly above it. Click on Render Lightmaps, then Render Light Probs. You might have to toggle Display Lightmaps, but you should now see your water looking like water and reflecting things around it.

See also Bug: Water plane missing in-game for an important workaround.

Placing Models

Tip 1: I had to change the Snap Options to make the models go where I wanted them. The settings I use were 0.10 for Snap to Grid and Snap Z Size. I also had to turn off Enable Snap to Surface whenever I wanted to change the vertical position of something (like creating the second floor of a building). Enable Snap to Surface is not applied globally, so once you turn it off and position an object vertically, turning it back on will not move that object unless you select it (or have it selected when you turn it back on).

Tip 2: When placing premade cottages be aware that the door frames you can see attached to those buildings DO NOT have built in door hooks (see Area tutorial for information on placing doors). You can place a door frame model (for example, fhe_doorfrs_0) over the built in door frame to generate a door hook. The door frame model has to be placed from the Level Editor.


Adding Vegetation and Wind

The Vegetation page includes a list with pictures of the various plants available for placement. If you do not see the plants once you place them with the Scatter Object Tool then you may need to adjust your SpeedTree Rendering Distance Selector. This is a drop-down that you will see in the Tool Bar. It lists the distances at which plants will be visible. I set it to Very Far and left it there.

Each level can have one active wind object in it. The location of the wind object doesn't matter. The wind object defines how wind behaves on this level, which is used for such things as flapping banners and swaying trees.

Image:Level editor wind object.png

The Wind Object may be found by right clicking on Terrain World and selecting:

Insert>New Wind Object


Visual Effects (VFX)

Placeable visual effects like flames or smoke are considered to be art assets in the Dragon Age toolset, so you need to place them from within the Level Editor.

The VFX Tutorial provides guidance on creating and placing visual effects.


Path finding and Obstructions

The path finding process lays down a grid of points that are marked "accessible" if they can be reached from a path finding start spot via passable terrain. This is essentially a flood-fill algorithm.

You must create an Exportable area before you can generate any path finding data.

In most cases you will want to block off certain areas of your terrain.

Now that you have your exportable area you can generate path finding data.

You should now be ready to generate pathfinding data by clicking on the Generate Pathfinding for Active Area button in the tool bar.

Converting Levels into Areas

Click on Do All Local Posts (you can avoid problems by generating a lightmap and pathfinding before doing local posts). This can be found in the menu at Tools>Export>Do All Local Posts

Your level has now been converted and can be used to make an area. The Area tutorial will walk you through what to do next.

Retrieved from "http://social.bioware.com/wiki/datoolset/index.php/Level_Editor_Tutorial"
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