Tutorial 02 - Tools and Editors

ID-Tech4 » Tutorial 02 - Tools and Editors

Chapters:

Tools and Editors

In this chapter we go through the list of tools and editors that we are going to use for creating content. This includes both – editors integrated directly in engine as well as third party tools. We briefly describe all of them; more information will be given during next chapters.

Note: For creating this series of tutorials I’ve used my personal experience as well as these sites as help source: www.iddevnet.com, www.modwiki.net, discussion forum www.doom3world.org.

Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop is well-known and widely used program among professionals. This is a 2D bitmap with many useful features. We will use this program mostly to create textures. If you are used to any other bitmap editor (Paint Shop Pro, Gimp etc.) that is fine, you don’t have to strictly use Photoshop.

Autodesk Maya

Also Maya is very known 3D program. Especially it is popular among animators, but it is full-featured 3D package. So we will use it during tutorials not only for animation but also for modeling. To convert Maya models to Doom 3 you will need older versions of Maya - versions 4.5, 5.0 or 6.0.

Pixologic ZBrush

ZBrush is relatively new tool, it was introduced to public in 1999, and its demo wasn’t released until 2002. This tool combines the best of 2D and 3D graphic editors together. Modeling of 3D objects takes place in a way of painting or rather sculpting with brushes. ZBrush allows you to create very detailed 3D models, which can be also textured by this tool etc. In the process of content creation for id Tech 4 we will use ZBrush to produce high detail models (aka nextgen models). Basic work-flow for creating high detail models will be shown in the final chapter dealing with character models. Trial version of ZBrush is available on its home page.

web: www.pixologic.com

Crazybump

Crayzbump is tiny but very handy tool for creating and editing normalmaps. With help of Crazybump, we can create high quality normal maps right from digital photos. This tool also offers creation of specularmaps, displacmentmaps, and fake occlusionmaps. During these tutorials we will use Crazybump mainly for normalmaps for textures or editing existing normalmaps exported from ZBrush. Demo of Crazybump is available on its home page.

web: www.crazybump.com

Id Tech 4 Editors

Unlike most other engines, id Tech 4 has built-in editors. These all editors are in single executable file “Doom3.exe”. Therefore these editors can be started by commands in the running game. The engine has built-in different kinds of editors. Let’s describe them all step by step.

There are two ways how to start editors. The first way is to run command from the console. Follow steps below.

Run “Doom3.exe”.
Open console by pressing “~” (it is a tilde key under the “Esc” key). If nothing happened, try to press “Ctrl + Alt + ~” instead.
Type commands in the command-prompt of the console.

Tip: Similar to Linux terminals, also id Tech 4 console is possible to complete commands and variables by pressing “Tab” key. For example, if you type in console “noc” and then press “Tab”, this command will be automatically completed to the “noclip”. When there are multiple commands/variables starting with same letters then engine will make list of them and print them in the console. If you keep pressing “Tab”, engine will change completed command/variable gradually by the entries in that list.