• Editor Tool Buttons

    Tomasz ‘Millennium’ Jachimczak
    (tomasz@planetunreal.com)

    Basic Building Brushes:

    Add brush to world. This button is used to "add" a brush to the world. Any brush can be added to the world, but make sure that you don't try to add someting to a peice of the world that is allready solid, as this can turn out quite nasty when playing the game or rebuilding...

    Subtract brush from world. This button will "carve" out the brush from your level. Do not try to subtract a brush from an area that has allready been subtracted - as this won't work and can have adverse (bad) effects on your level.

    Brush intersection. This is the "intersect" button. It is used to change your brush. Say you have a "cube" brush, but only want to cut out half a cube from a solid wall. You could go through the cube properties and change the shape of your brush, or you could simply move the cube to where you want it to go and then press this button. This will make a new brush for you - but it will only be where the solid wall was before. It is also good for making complex objects into a single brush. Say you want to make a fireplace, and you want to use it in a few places - create it (bit by bit) and then place a cube brush over the top (so the cube {or whatever} encompases the fireplace totally) and when you press this button, your new brush will be EXACTLY the same as what you created using many little bits.

    Brush deintersection. This does the opposite of what the intersect button does. It will select the parts of the brush that are in an area that is not solid - and create them into a new brush for you.

    Add Special Brush. This allows you to create "special" brushes to your map. These can be a wide range of things, such as windows, water levels, portals and the like. It is normally used in combination with the "sheet" brush.

    Add movible brush. This button will create a mover for you. It will use whatever brush you have currently selected. When using this brush however, make sure tht the brush you have selected has NOT been streched in any way, as it won't work properly...

    Build a cube. This will create a cube brush for you. If you right click on it, it will give you an option to go to cube properties. This will allow you to change the height, depth ect of the cube brush you will create.

    Build a Sphere. This is the same as the cube, but it will create a round ball shaped (well a sphere really) brush. Once again right click on it to alter the properties of the brush.

    Build a cylinder. This will create a cylinder for you, that you can use like any other brush.

    Build a cone. This will create a cone (rounded pyramid) that you can use like any other brush.

    Build a stair. This will create a straight flight of stairs. These stairs will not turn or curve as they go up.

    Build a spiral stair. This will create a rounded set of stairs that can be set to form a very tight spiral staircase.

    Build a curved stair. This will simply create a rounded set of stairs that are similar to the first set, but they curve around to a side when they have been built.

    Build a sheet. This creates a 2 dimensional sheet. It can be used for a VERY LARGE number of applications. One of the most common is to create a water plane. This tool does however require more pratice then the other brushes, as it is not a 3D brush and can easily "wreck" a level. It should NOT (I can't stress this enough) be used to create walls and other solid shapes. (Well at least until you are quite familiar with the editor).

    Advanced Building Brushes:

    Move Camera. This is the normal view button. It is normally toggled to "on". It lets you move in the veiws. My advise is to leave it set to what it is...

    Zoom camera. I can honestly say I have no idea what this button is supposed to do. I have tried it a few times, but normally end up miles away from where I am building, so I always leave it set to the button described above.

    Rotate brush. This button is used to rotate the brush that you have currently got selected. It is used by holding CTRL and with a combination of mouse buttons (Left rotates X axis, right rotates Y axis and both rotate Z axis) allows the brush to be rotated to any angle.

    Sheer brush. This brush allows you to "skew" the brush. That is, it allows you to 'lean' the brush to a side.

    Scale brush. This button will allow you to change the size of your brush. That's right, once again CTRL and the mouse will activate it when it's selected.

    Stretch brush. This will alter the size of your brush, but it will do it one axis at a time. Which basically means it's great for adjusting something that is almost perfect.

    SnapScale Brush. This button will allow you to stretch a brush along all three axis' , but at the same time it will "snap" to the grid. This is VERY handy to enlarge or shrink brushes, as they are easy to match up later.

    Select all polys. This brush will select ALL the things in your map. I don't know what the point is, but the option is there...

    Select all actors. Once again, I am not sure. But look on the bright side, I haven't used it - and still made great maps, so it probably (feel free to prove me wrong) isn't all that integral to the editor.

    Select actors inside brush. This is another of the buttons I haven't used very much - or at all. I can't really tell you what it is used for...

    Select none. This will make sure that "none" of the brushes or textures are selected. In a way, it 'unselects' everything...

    Invert actor selection state. This button will replace the selection that you currently have. Sorry I can't say more, but yet again, it's a brush that I have little use for.

    Replace selected brushes. This button will replace the brush with what you currently have selected.

    Replace selected non-brush actors. This button will replace the actors selected with what you currently have selected.

    Undo last operation. I don't think that anyone there needs a detailed explanation of what an "undo" button does, But on that note - just remember that you can't undo past a rebuild. I mean that if you rebuild your level and don't make any changes - then you won't be able to undo something that was changed before you last rebuilt.

    Redo operation. If you accidentally pressed "undo" once too many, then this button will redo the last action that you undid.

    Pan textures. This will move the texture that is selected. It is used mainly for aligning the texture to match up with other textures. If you have more then one brush with a texture, and you want them to line up - then this is the tool for you.

    Rotate textures. This button will allow you to rotate a texture so that it matches the direction of other textures - or simply faces the direction that you want it to face.

    Drawing Region: Selected Actors. This button will "hide" all the brushes that are in your level. It's great for adding in detail and things like that when you don't want to see all the other brushes.

    Hide Seleced Actors. This button is similar to the one above, but it will only hide the brushes that are selected. You can select more then one brush at a time to hide by pressing CTRL and select as many as you like.

    Drawing Regions: Off. This will "bring back" any brushes that were hidden using the buttons above.

    Drawing Regions: Brush Z (Depth). This will hide the Z axis apparently. I can put this into the pile of buttons that I never use.

    Toggle vertex snap. This will toggle the grid snap function of placing brushes. It is generally used for adding the details when the grid is in the way...

    Get Help. Well, now here is a useless button - as you are probably using the BETA UnrealED, this button has absolutely NO function whatsoever, so don't bother trying to find the help file...

    Camera speed. This will change the speed with which your moves moves brushes and other objects in the views.

    Toggle grid mode. This button will snap objects to the grid when they are moved around in the editor.

    Toggle rotation grid. This will toggle whether you want rotational grid snapping. This button makes it rather difficult to rotate a brush when it is large and also makes it difficult to align things to angles made by sides of cylinders for example, but makes it a LOT easier to align general angles in the editor.