Mesh Screen
Introduction
Once you have created your textures you can view them mapped onto a mesh and move around admiring your world. You can then export the world as a 3ds file for loading into a 3D package or a x file (Microsoft DirectX file format).
You can reach this screen by selecting Create Mesh from the editor screen toolbar. This is only possible after you have created the textures.
Moving Around
To move around the world you have a number of key controls:
W or Up Arrow - Move forward
S or Down Arrow - Move Backward
A or Left Arrow - Move Left
D or Right Arros - Move Right
Q or Delete - Rotate Left
E or Page Down - Rotate Right
Home - Move Up
Click the left Mouse Button and hold it down to rotate the camera under mouse control. If you are in walk mode you can obviously not move above the surface of the ground. The speed of movement can be controlled by the sensitivity slider.
Controls
Output, Lightmap and Blended thumbnails
Clicking on one of these changes the mesh to use that texture. The final texture is the blended one. The lightmap one is useful to see how well your lighting has worked.
Scale Sliders
You can scale the world in any dimension. This allows you to make your island more craggy for example. Note: if exporting the mesh the scale matrix gets saved as well.
View Option Radio Buttons
- Filtering - your video card can provide filtering to smooth out blocky textures. This does not affect the output textures it is just a way of viewing the world.
- Wireframe - allows you to view the world as a wireframe mesh.
- Walk - forces the camera to stick to the surface of the world. Allows you to walk around on your created mesh.
Sensitivity
This slider controls the sensitivity of the mouse and keyboard controls. A higher value means larger movements.
Skybox
Allows you to specify a skybox to be rendered around the world. A skybox is a box whose insides are textured with images of the sky around and then positioned so the viewer is always at its centre. On clicking this opens a dialog where you can select from existing skyboxes, edit skyboxes and add new ones:
Along the left of the dialog are skyboxes that already exist. You can choose from one of these skyboxes simply by clicking on its name. The skyboxes that come with T2 can be edited but are locked by default. Since skyboxes are shared amongst projects altering one will affect all projects that use it. To create a new skybox click on the Add button and select a file name. You will need to provide textures for each of the 6 sides of the box.
Angle & Height
Skyboxes often have an image of the sun. In order to align the sun with the lighting in your mesh you can change the angle of the skybox. The vertical offset of the skybox can also be changed using the height slider.
Reset View
If you become lost moving around your world this button returns you to the default view.
Export
Export allows you to save the mesh and textures in a format that can be imported in to other programs. You can save to either the 3ds or x file format. You could then load the mesh into a 3D art package for further processing or even into your own game.
Note: If you save in 3ds format your output textures are renamed to conform to the limitation that 3ds files still use the old 8.3 file format. Also the 3ds format does not support more than 64K triangles or vertices.
Tip: pressing F2 at any time in T2 takes a screenshot and saves it in your output folder
Close
Closes the screen and returns to the main editor.
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