So where's the level editor?

I have heard of people using Platinum Arts Sandbox at http://sandboxgamemaker.com because it has in game level editing and you can use the command /writeobj to turn the map geometry into an .obj and import it into Unity.

EDIT Forgot to mention it is free!

 

Welcome to game development. What do you think those teams of people are doing for 3 years? If you want assets in your game, you either make them in a 3d modeling program or buy them from somewhere. No game engine can magically give you the ability to make scene props.

Unity has a built-in terrain editor for manipulating height maps, texturing terrain and adding grass.

You're trying to use Unity like it's a level editor. It's painfully clear when you compare it to level design in quake. To expand on your analogy:

To design a room in Unity, you first set up your project for its platform, create character classes, put down a basic block and design your character movement script(s) and test. You then create your load and save data functions and a basic menu for testing builds. Then you start adding classes for shooting/moving/clicking/whatever and test them. Maybe at this point you add a rigged model to work on the animation system.

Then you model props in whatever program you use. You don't texture them, but you probably do some UV unwrapping. You import them, apply colliders, and run around the untextured models to check their scale. If you're satisfied, you begin modeling and texturing each object, one at a time. You then make prefabs of the different objects and assemble them into buildings, houses, vehicles, or whatever. *Mileage may vary depending on type of game and desired pipeline.

To be blunt - nobody makes models inside of Unity or any other game engine. Level design can require a ton of tools and always requires custom scripting. This is why software like Play Maker exists. There is no easy way around this. You have to buy the assets or make them.

 

http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/c...-game-engine-should-you-use-how-to-choose.php should solve everybodys problem and they're misconception of what a level designer is and what they're job is.

 

Given that yours is the first post in over a year it must not be a common problem. :/

 

Even though this thread has been raised from oblivion, the man had a point though.. Especially in todays dev environment..

You've got cloth sim, hair sims, fluid, material editors (points at unity), animation re-targeting and in-built texturing solutions (via integrations with substance etc.) Hell UE4's got their own rigging solution in ART..

Why not just get it out the way and finish it off? Add some edge loop tools, something for UV mapping, a bevel here an extrude there and were pretty much game for anything.

There'd be no issues with scale, or shoddy FBX integrations. Vertex maps can be accustomed to their own engines, no conflicts in bone structures, joints are already about.

So why not?

 

Why not add in image editing and texturing tools as well? Plus motion capture and animation cleanup tools. And once all the visual bases are covered it'd be a crying shame not to cover audio production as well - a full recording suite, please, plus synthesizers and VSTs. Lots of games need writing, too, so don't forget the word processor. Oh, and we need to make trailers and other promotional material, so video editing and compression are a must as well. I forgot project management, they'd better do something about that too. Which brings me to budgeting...

 

Sounds good to me ..

 

Well ... we do have got the pretty awesome Pro Core Tools with pretty much everything except the Rigging part, already.
Seriously - they can do an awful lot in terms of basic modeling and texturing inside Unity.

 

It is pretty cool, also you can already texture in both Unity / UE4 with substance integrations, also UE4 does supply you BSP which can do a subset of what Pro-Core can..

In all fairness, game engines have been built atop of Maya and a lot of AAA engines have level editors built right in them.. So this let's have a word processor etc. is just dragging a misnomer out for the sake of it, 3D modelling suites and Game Engines in most cases are VERY similar in designs. There's especially nowadays a lot of overlap.

P.S For Angry Penguin, UE4 already supplies you with rigging tools, so there isn't much left really is there?

 

Jokes aside (putting video editing in the same plane as 3D modelling, the fun part of this "colossal task" is that it could be achieved by simply integrating Maya or 3DS Max within Unity. 'Colossal' only because 3DS Max and Maya are 3GB of bloat considering the Blender installer is under 100MB and outside of the more advanced simulations (only used for CGI) and viewport performance, both do the same.

And let's not kid ourselves: once a smaller company like MODO does it first, they(Autodesk) will be back to catching up.
... Unless Autodesk incoming game engine main focus is modelling in engine (I am convinced this will be its main draw and it might even get me to try it... and then watch Unity and Unreal make a contract with MODO or some other highly optimized modelling suit. It is the future.).

And I don't think there's any benefit to be gained by integrating a full DAW into a game engine when Wwise is available But even them, Reaper is a top of the line DAW that is highly optimized(understatement) and has C++/Python/Java scripting as a big part of its appeal and I bet with some custom licensing, Unity could get it integrated into their engine.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, we have been regressing: part of the reason of old shooters having much more complex map layouts have to do with having BSP constantly at your fingertips.
And Source Filmmaker fan films shows how much enjoyable it is to work with animations inside of the game engine where you can visualize the interactions in realtime.

 

Please no. Keep all the software bits separate. Leave specialist jobs to specialist software.

I have no interest in wading through a ton of art centric functionality that I will never use as a programmer. Or sound, or marketing, or project management.

And from history, Unity is great a what they do (ie build game engines). But they suck at building pretty much everything else.

 

If they integrated some 3D modelling suite with Unity as a separate version, then it would be optional.

But I agree: if it is about Unity adding those tools into their engine, forget about it. They have just barely got Mecanim to work.

 

Maybe. But it would be far better to simply build a partnership with existing 3D modelling software providers and get the export and import process optimised.

 

I'll agree if that if there's a shoddy integration it's not worth the time or money to do so..

But the rest sounds like I want to shoot myself in the foot by having a bunch of 3rd party apps that don't play nicely together and require months of additional training for each application.. For what reason? Some more stuff in a GUI?

They could have an ART Mode which enables more options, so coders can remain oblivious.

 

They should just buy off Pro Core and include it with Unity. Another feature, more users drawn.

And seriously, saying that CSG level editing tools can be used only for building FPS maps is really short-sighted. They can be used for building platformers, 3D adventure games (certain early Tomb Raider games used freaking WADs with bsp-like structure to store game's levels) and many other. It just make easier to add level geometry, like buildings, hallways, simple furniture that doesn't need bajillion of polygons (tables comes to mind), then it can be fleshed out using high definition models.

 

Blender has a game engine inside a 3D modelling suite. You could always go there. See how well integration works in practice.

I tend to think of it the same way as you do coding in general. Having your art pipe line depend on the game engine, or vice versa, will likely end in tears.

Especially once you tie in every third party tool that gets used in building a game.

 

Except that game engine is a piece of crap compared to... literally anything, even original quake3 engine (not to mention it uses worst possible language for scripting game engine could use).

//edit: By "PoC engine" I've meant it doesn't support features that e.g. Unity has, integration itself works well, it's just not good engine.

 

I like pro builder, and actually was in the pre release testing for it. It really has come far in terms of what you can do inside the editor - but having said that - it is no all encompassing solution, and needs supplemented with an outside modeling program for some tasks. Mind you I haven't used the latest versions and only took part in its early stages, so of course things have improved greatly, but even so I think Maya or Max are true professional tools that you must have (or well blender too) to round out the things pro builder doesn't do.

So as far as that argument goes, pro builder integration into the editor - naw, not necessary. And as a single solution to level design - sure it gets most of that work done fine! And the author is a good guy, and had kept the kind of spirit of worldcraft/hammer editor in mind while he developed it - which that's where my game dev roots were - so I am a believer in it for sure. Actually thinking of buying a copy while I type this lol.

 

Why not go use Visual Studio for making games? There's nothing to stop you, both UE4 and UE contains tons of stuff coders will never use. Plus you can hardly call Blender's game thingy an actual "engine"..

It's been done before by many AAA's and engine developers alike as said before they've built game engines on top of Maya..

The concept is nothing new, I can't think of a reason why anyone would be adverse to it..

 

See my point? I would expect any specialist tools 'tacked on' to Unity to fall into the same camp.

 

Nah not really, I recon 3D modelling inside an engine is what's going to happen with Autodesk's game engine.. As said it's been done before and it'll probably happen again..

In Unity's case, I'd probably prefer a middleware company to do it..

 

Nope. With BGE (blender's game engine) you have crap engine that has many issues with performance.

With Unity and, say integrated ProBuilder you have great engine and you may or may not use ProBuilder bits, in the same way that you're not obligated to use Unity's terrain.

I'm pretty sure Unity would be better off with buying Pro Core to include Probuilder with one of next versions in future. Of course there are more important stuff now to do (networking, Input manager), but after those are tackled, integrated ProBuilder would make nice addition.

 

My point is that there's clearly some "grey" area about what some people think should and shouldn't be included, and I had to get as far afield as budgeting before I hit on something that I thought clearly fell outside of the grey. My deliberate exaggeration was intended to highlight that - in the same way you think that they're "close enough" to being able to include more level editing functionality someone else might think they're "close enough" to building a word processor right in. It's all about perspective.

Of the examples I raised I think image editing is the best. A 3D model is rarely considered complete without at least one texture, and (while alternatives are rapidly emerging) the standard approach to that continues to be image editing software. Yet, so far, Max, Maya, and friends seem perfectly content to let Photoshop be its own separate thing.

In my experience, the engines that build their own tools are doing things that are either a) different to the generic tools available or b) built around a specific workflow.

Also worth considering is that plenty of artists have a very strong preference for sticking to whatever software they're already trained in, and businesses don't like changing established workflows because that's a really expensive thing to do. So even if Unity did decide to build in their own version of 3DS Max (and Photoshop) how much would it end up getting used?

 

Well that's a logical argument I can get behind, there is one simple fact. As games are a visual medium you need artwork and I've seen more workflow concepts change over the last couple of years than I have seen in the last decade.

The grey area's shifting, you have in one corner as you say the "industry standard" work flow methodology (Max / Maya / Z-brush, Photoshop etc.). But now you see things like Substance Designer creeping it's way into engine cores.. Not only is it more efficient to texture on the fly in engine and modify texture sizes at run-time, it's a quicker workflow..

But none of this is new, it's just were seeing the back end of advancements years old.. It will get to the stage where all this will be engine centric even if it's supplied by a third party.

It's a good idea, anyone who makes games should realise that.. But the real question from an engine development standpoint, is it a practical one?

Well in all fairness both UE and Unity have far bigger problems to concern themselves with, which I think we can all agree need addressing far before this ever became a consideration. Plus you have company investment in third party software / training / expertise as you also mentioned.

So it's definitely not cut and dry by any means, but it'd only take one company (like Autodesk, The foundry etc.) to do it and it would make an impact on the industry no doubt.. But that becomes a fiscal matter, especially with Unity as source code and relationships would have to be developed between vendors. It wouldn't be a massive issue with UE bar the cost percentage.

So again, is it a good idea? Definitely, is it a practical one? Well only time will tell.

 

Again, you won't be forced to use it, pretty much like you're not forced to use default Unity terrain. But it will be awesome help for new studio or studios coming from engines where such editing is a thing (Source, Unreal, Cryengine).

And no, texture editing won't be needed, because editing textures would be terrible. But making levels will be immensely better with ProBuilder-like tool.

Level build with, say, blender, you have to UV unwrap to texture it properly. For level build in Probuilder it is not needed, just drag textures onto faces, then adjust tiling and offset if needed. Such tool shouldn't be "sold separately", it should be part of Unity.

 

(Sorry for resurrect - ) I think there's a good reason this thread exists. Take for example only the task of patching together 3 floors of different sizes, maybe one of them tilting slightly. Unity has no texture awareness, and the first issue would be that you'd have to do texture alignment on eye measure, or by sitting with a calculator.

Say you decide to do this in a 3D editor, you still need to export 3 different models (and spending time UV mapping them) - and basically one model for each possible variation in size of the same wall or floor, with different UV maps and colliders etc. Then you have to place them manually in Unity (while fighting the snapping system) the same way you arranged these models in the 3D application (how else would you get texture tiling to line up?). Any change in level layout in the 3D app, means doing the same work in Unity afterwards.

The nice thing about the Radiant editors was just that whether you made basic or complex shapes, texture alignment stayed perfectly evenly distributed across all your shapes, in a way I haven't experienced any 3D apps do without some effort.

Basically, I wish there was a button for maintaining texture aspect ratio and scale.

 

Just some additional notes about GTK Radiant, Hammer etc. These tools were originally conceived when BSP was still the industry standard way of processing levels. Level geometry was also a lot simpler with polys in the low hundreds. It made sense to build your levels using blocks. A hollow block for your room, a block for a desk, a block for the light fitting etc. The use of models sculpted in a 3D tool was largely restricted to a few decorative items here and there. The BSP format itself *required* the use of blocky level design, with tight corridors used as screens to help with the VIS process.

As a result, the tools heavily catered towards level designers sculpting their levels using simple BSP geometry such as cubes and cylinders, which in turn necessitated the provision of tools for manually manipulating such shapes and the textures applied to them.

Nowadays BSP is no longer used, with other options such as scene graphs and the like. Poly counts are also much higher, which means it no longer makes sense to create a level out of blocks. Unreal Engine 4 for example has dispensed with such tools altogether, even their basic cube object is still a mesh at heart.

Ultimately, the need and demand for advanced shape-manipulation tools in the editor is no longer there really, as we've moved on from the old days of building levels with basic shapes. You can still block out a level to get a feel for scale and flow, but that's really all it is meant for while you wait for your artists to create the actual geometry for you.

 

Actually I think the OP has a point and when you look at the 2D level editor tools Unity are working on and how they can be applied to 3D level design.

For instance the ability to paint objects as opposed to having to drag them around.

 

Though it's been 3 years, I don't understand why this topic happened at all. A guy came here, without a slightest understanding of what Unity is, what a game engine framework is and started complaining about not having level design out-of-the-box features.

My god... /facepalm

 

Totally disagree, and you could make pretty much the same argument about any feature beyond the core object/component and rendering systems. Building levels is a pretty common part of building a game and its not unreasonable to expect a game engine to have a reasonable level editor.

Furthermore at the time the OP was writing there was much more focus on 3D/FPS type games (although it was beginning to shift), so having functionality that better supported those type of games would have made a lot of sense.

Finally as @Arowx mentioned they ARE building a 2D level editor.

 

The fact that there's a terrain system but not a level editing toolset has always struck me as a little odd.

 

I have no idea how you came to be on a topic this old, you weren't perhaps looking into why no level editing tools exist in Unity or shader editor etc etc.

Perhaps.. your thinking was along these lines "Man whyTF do people want decent level editing tools built into a game engine.. I should really go look into this, maybe necro bump an old topic and talk crap about someone who clearly to me doesn't have the slightest understanding of what Unity is" ....a game engine without so much as decent DAMN level editor for a start

 

So true. So much this.

 

There is a level editing system - it's called Unity - the makers of which have no idea what kind of level or even game you want to make, so they gave you the tools to make all of them.

If you mean "environment editing" tool, then say that - stop saying "level editor" because it's definitely not what you mean.

 

Ummm :

http://unity3d.com/unity

"Renowned throughout the industry as the multiplatform game engine."

Err :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_(game_engine)

"Unity is a cross-platform game engine"

Hmmmm?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_level_editors

"Level editors allow for the customization and modification of levels within games."

 

Personally I'm more a fan of the term "scene editor" because you're not always making a level. Sometimes it's a menu.

 

After a lot of thought on the subject, I've come to the conclusion that the best way is tighter integrations with DCC's. As you'll always need more, basic blockouts are cool and the defacto way of doing things (has been for a long while).

Although with the need for more content constantly, the way things are going is the best way it's just in the early stages. You have Houdini's procedural integration with UE as well as ART which is made by Epic, Stingray constantly improves their live link system, CE always had some integration with Autodesk DCC's even though they have their own CryDesigner tools which are pretty cool.

It'll all get integrated at some point, one way or another.. The DCC integration seems the most promising though.

 

Yeah, like I said, Unity is a level editing system (among other things, obviously). If it couldn't be used to make levels, then somebody's going to have to explain how so many Unity-based games with levels were created without any third-party tools.

What you're talking about is an environment blocking tool, which is already covered by things like ProBuilder (which has a free version).

Also, Houdini has Unity integration, along with support for Maya, Max, C4D, Blender, etc. which could also easily be used to quickly block out levels and bring them into the engine.

 

Here's an option for building level geometry within Unity:

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/47418

 

Let me try this again, I knew what the OP meant by "level editor" being overly sematical doesn't really help. Firstly, you should read the post above yours.

Secondly If I'm bringing semantics into the fold, what you're actually talking about is a "level designer toolset" or "CSG" / "BSP". Which today are practically useless, time has moved on and whilst blockouts are cool things get changed so drastically I often wonder if it's worth doing at all. Modern DCC's are way too complex and modern games demand way too much to do it in this manor..

Because with stuff like Stingray's live link, you can test the scene with a couple of clicks.. Pro-core wouldn't add any benefit.. It's not exactly a "new" concept either, it's just taken a long time to filter down.. Hopefully we'll see more DCC's have proper integrations with the two major engines (UE / Unity).

Although, Epic are creating geometry 2.0 which will be more along the lines of source's next generation of hammer. Which is cool, I'd rather them spend their time working with DCC developers to unify integration. But that's more of a "red tape" thing because Autodesk won't want to do it due to Stingray (probably, although y'never know they might do).

I said in the post above you (if you had read it) that Houdini has integrations with UE4, hence it's simple to go look and see what other integrations it has.

Stingray is the closest today in regards to a proper art / engine workflow pipeline. Whilst I get that CSG is old hat and not extremely useful today, there's been a bit of a workflow hole ever since it left although it seems it's finally being addressed.

 

Not sure why you kept saying I needed to read your immediately preceding post when it's part of what I was replying to.

Regardless, everything that is being asked for by both you and most others here, is already supported by Unity. Again, they have no way of knowing what "level" actually means for a given game, so they support anything. The common complaint in this thread is, in reality, just "Unity doesn't support building what I call a 'level' for my game". Comments like these imply a lack of experience more than a lack of tools.

To quote somebody who seems to agree when they aren't simply being argumentative:

I think that perhaps where our opinions differ is on the definition of "simple".

 

That person you quoted really knows their stuff ..

Ok, let me de-fuse a little then.. I understand what you mean and I understand what the OP means as well. I'm saying in a stereotypical 3D game of different orders of magnitude there are better workflows to get "levels" i.e 3D modelling architecture into an engine.

DCC creators have partially gone a certain way to address this like Houdini and or Maya with Stingray, I have no issues exporting .FBX files and importing them into let's say Unity. It's not difficult, but making touch up's can be a little time consuming and in some DCC's / engines the .FBX pipeline has been a little off. Unity, luckily has a brilliant import pipeline..!

The shared material editor / phsyx simulations etc. in Stingray really do help speed things up.. It's cool and I want to see more of it.!

I personally have no use for something like pro-core since I use Stingray for prototyping and technically speaking it's all done in the DCC, it's just very quick workflow.

P.S not sure what you mean by when you say we don't share the same definition of "simple".
P.P.S I'm not sure why all of this even really matters?

 

I think CSG/BSP still has its place. It's really easy to make a level and you don't have to have a degree in 3D modeling. Not everyone wants or have means to make the next Far Cry or Crysis (which, yes, would need some kind of DCC). For simpler and indie games, BSP/CSG is a very good choice. Just look at how detailed some mods for the original Doom (!) can be, and that isn't even "real" 3D! Another thing are maps for Quake and Quake3 sourceports such as Xonotic (Q3). They can be really beautiful and detailed as well.

So yeah, for Indie/hobbyist crowd CSG/BSP would be good enough in terms of level design, especially if developers of such tools would take a clue from modern Quake editors such as Trenchbroom. For AAA you'd need a DCC, but then again, Unity isn't AAA game engine (yet), it's barely AA.

Plus, modern graphic cards have really no limits of polygons they can display (well, none that you can pass unless you make your game models unnecessarily detailed). The thing that maters are drawcalls. So levels designed using CSG/BSP, even very detailed ones, would do just fine if you bake whole level into a single/few meshes (in case you use different materials/textures in some places) with appropriate UV coordinates and then cut off invisible polys from being seen using frustum culling and occlusion culling (if necessary).

Finally, I really like the way Cube engine (Sauerbraten, Marble Arena/MA2, Platinum Arts Sandbox and others) approach map building. I think the kind of editor used there is even better than modern Quake editors like Trenchbroom.

 

I think I found my YouTube rant video calling. Doing Gavin McInnes styled rants about wannabe game devs like the OP. There is YouTube gold here.

 

Hello,

I just stumbled across this topic and was wondering if Unity has any concrete plans of buying a level editing tool on the asset store and integrating it the editor as an optional add-on? Is this something that is being considered for the Unity 2017 release cycle?

 

Nothing on the roadmap even remotely fits the description of a tool for creating levels from scratch and realistically anyone who needs a solution has already picked up a copy of either ProBuilder Basic or SabreCSG. Both are freely available for commercial use.

https://unity3d.com/unity/roadmap

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/user-tools/modeling/probuilder-basic-11919
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/user-tools/modeling/sabrecsg-level-design-tools-47418

 

Thank you so much! I downloaded SabreCSG and I love the asset so far! Its so awesome to have a free and open source asset that allows me to create 3D geometry. I really appreciate your assistance

 

I struggled with this as well. Normally I approached game dev as build the tools I need. But with Unity having this Editor I thought surely the idea was to use it to build levels (scenes) but I always found it to be so tedious. Like something that was very quickly hacked together and never could quite get it all.

BUT... if you do connect with Unity very well just build your own editor that works in a way best for you to build worlds.

This caught my attention only because I am doing exactly this right now. It is very early on and my needs are very simple (probably the biggest difference... I don't think in terms of AAA stuff).

Another update last night

Obviously I only made a few very simple ultra low poly models for testing at this point (heck one is just a textured cube). Anyway... mine may make no sense to you at all but it does for me. Point is if you build your own you can make it work exactly the way you want to maximize your development (world building) speed, fix bugs and so forth.

Just something to keep in mind.

 

I'm afraid you're confused as to the purpose of game engines. They are a much more generic, but also more powerful tool than a map/level editor, which is often built on top of the former to provide some convenient features to create contents for some specific type of games.

GtkRadiant, for instance, presupposes you're building contents for IdTech engine, which is mainly used to create FPS games. It might be a bit easier to create levels for FPS games using such a tool than doing the same with Unity.

But try make, say a Hearthstone clone or some open world RPG game with it and you'll quickly find that it's not an ideal tool for the job for which Unity would be a far more reasonable choice.

And it's not that Unity cannot be used to create Doom style games either. It's just that you'll need to do some research to find or create suitable modular contents to build your levels with, and learn how to place them inside a scene.

It's fine if you've found that using such a specific tool like GtkRadiant suits your needs for some specific type of games you want to create. But claiming that other more generic game engines like Unity needs to be restrained in their functionalities to mimic such a tool only shows that you don't really understand the difference between those two distinct concepts.

 

@mysticfall that OP left about 4 years ago about 10 days after making that post... probably to find a game engine with a built-in level editor. lol

I can understand their perspective... someone uses a different tool that is super easy to rapidly build game worlds (sure limited to a certain "flavor" but people don't think about it if that is all they are basically interested in) and keep hearing about Unity and how great it is all over the web... they come in and expect it will have at least as much in the way of tools as they are used to... not less (even though ultimately it can be much more than they had and is much more in many ways it also is less at the same time as far as immediate use is concerned).