By Jered
Date Created: 5/23/2002
Many people, when browsing through the menus in UnrealEd, tend to skip over this incredibly useful tool. The floor lofter, as its name implies, is used to rise floors. Now your thinking "Why the hell do I need to raise my floors?". I’ll tell you why. Anyone who has used UnrealEd knows of the INCREDIBLE difficulty that it is to create organic outdoor areas or walls. The floor lofter makes the task -much- easier.
When you start ExEd, create a block with the dimensions of 256*256*256, and carve it out. Now, go and Open the Floor Lofter (Menu Bar ->Window -> Floor Lofter". A window should pop up. At about this time your heart should freeze, seeing a brand new array of buttons and fields. Not to worry. Half of them don’t work.
Lets run through the buttons first.
Render: This button takes what you have done, and renders it into a 3d builder brush in ExEd.
Level "<<" ">>": This adjust your position on the "grid". Clicking the ">>" takes you up a level, while clicking "<<" takes you down a level.
Terra Grid: Used to set how large your grid is. I can’t seem to get this to work.
Cell Size: How large a 1*1 block is in the grid. Doesn’t work.
Render Scale: Scale up or down the terra grid. Can only be a whole non-negative number.
Advanced: Goes to advance mode, which consists of a bunch of un-labeled Check Boxes. Will not be covered here, or maybe not ever.
Now that you have the button layout down, lets create our first grid. Click the "Render" button. Now, if you move the Floor Lofter window out of the way, you will see that this created a 4*4*1 builder brush in UnrealEd. Not much. Switch back into the Floor Lofter Window. There are 5 points in a row on the bow in the middle. Click the middle point and drag it up a little bit. Now, hit "Render" again. Now switch back into UnrealEd. You may not notice it at first, but one of the vertices on the builder brush moved up a bit! Switch back to the Floor Lofter and move watch of the five points Either up or down. Now hit "Render" once again. Switch into UnrealEd. You’ll notice that one whole row of Vertices has moved either up or down, creating a sort of "mountain" effect. That's pretty cool and all, but the other 3 rows remain untouched. This is where the "<<" and ">>" buttons come in. Click the ">>" button. As soon as you do it, your points should reset. But not to fear! Take a look under the "Level" display (just left of the "<<" button") and notice that it says "Level: 2". You are now on the Next row of vertices. Move each of the five points up or down and hit "Render" once again. Switch back into UnrealEd and admire your handiwork. Now, go through each of the Five levels and move each vertex ever so slightly. Now hit "Render" and look at your builder brush in UnrealEd. Pretty Sweet eh? now you just have to "Add" your brush and texture it to begin enjoying organic looking floors, walls, and ceilings. I cooked this up in about 10 minutes using the Floor Lofter. The results can look -very- nice.
"Give us the Tools, and we will build worlds" ~ Jered
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