3D level editor for concepts/sketches [closed]

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Closed 7 years ago.

I used to work with the Hammer editor of Valve for my Portal 2 mod, however if I just want to draw a basic concept or sketch for chambers while brainstorming, the editor has just too much features so I can not focus on what I really need and have to mess around with specific things I don't need. Therefore I am thinking about the development of a simple tool (in C# based on WPF/XAML) which is optimized for basic level geometry, only consisting of cubes/voxels, and a few gameplay entities. For the moment I am doing some research to approximate whether this is a good idea or whether this would be wasted time.

So far my requirements would be:

• tiled view with a 3d window and different 2d perspectives known from different 3d editing tools (the 2d views could be made optional to simplify the usability)
• camera movement in the 3d window
• basic item handling including selection, movement and rotation

Although I have specific details about the file formats I don't want to mess with that in the early stages where I just want to get the editor working. Anything related to (de)serialization is not part of this question.

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My questions:

1. Are there any similiar projects I might have a look into or even reuse?
2. Which resources (tutorials, books, articles, ...) would you recommend for the development of such an editor?

Answer 1

What you just described could be done perfectly using an existing 3D modeller tool, such as Blender. Using Blender specifically for this use case, you could setup a Workspace with exactly the views you wish, and you can completely hide all the unwanted options/windows such as texturing/animation/lighting.
You could also set up a template project to give a basic startup project so you could jump instantly into just sketching and throwing geometry around.
Plus it's free, and has excellent export support for many standard types.

I do understand it may sound appealing to write your own editor (been there, done that), and it would definitely be an interesting learning experience, if you just want a tool NOW, I'd recommend using Blender and not reinvent the wheel.

Blender 3D