Submitted by , posted on 30 April 2004



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This is a screenshot of a level editor I am currently working on for a school game project. The game we are making is going to be using the Irrlicht 3D Engine, but the editor is written in plain old C++ and OpenGL using Borland C++ Builder 6.

As far as features go, you can create terrain, skyboxes, skyplanes, skydomes, waterplanes, generate shadows on the terrain, add fog, load and place models on the terrain. Currently the only supported format is Obj and 3ds formats.

When modeling the terrain, you can create texture splats from different textures and specify your own resolution for the alpha map and then paint directly onto the terrain with a brush. You can even create different types of layers, they don't have to be texture splats, you can simply blend in a shadow map onto the terrain or a detail map if you want or just stretch a single texture across. And of course basic Raise, Lower, Flatten, Smooth capabilities are included for sculpting the terrain.

When loading meshes you simply drag the name of the loaded mesh from the TreeView on the left into the render window where you want it placed and it gets put there. It kind of works like Battlefield's editor, cause I found this method so easy to use.

When you save your work, you can export a heightmap bitmap file along with the alpha maps as bitmap files. You can also export the geometry of each texture splat and only the triangles that were painted on or have some texture on them are exported instead of the entire terrain over and over for each splat.

Anyway, I hope to finish this soon and perhaps release it for free to download cause I know a lot of people may like something like this to use for their own games.



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