PlanetX Map Editor is a 3D world editor for the TrueVision3D 6.5 grahpics engine. It was designed to be able to be used on any possible 3D game, which is possible through support for features such as plugins and entities. The workflow is intuitive, streamlined, and after not too long becomes second-nature. All available tasks can be accessed through the menu, and the toolbar is context-sensitive, meaning that it provides differnet options based on the selected object.
The editor is designed to make it very easy to perform map editing tasks. Everything starts at the menu, which is divided into categories of actions and types of objects. There is the Terrain section, the Plugins section, the Media section, and so on. So, for example, if you wanted to add a mesh, you would click Objects, choose Mesh, and press add. This mesh would become selected, filling the property grid with properties and changing the available options on the toolbar. This means that, for example, the ability to align the mesh to a terrain is not available while editing a terrain.
There is a fully-featured terrain sculpting and painting system in place in the editor, which includes such functions as Raise Hill, Lower Hill, Smooth, Raise/Lower Flat, Flatten, Smudge Terrains, and a Pressure-Based Painting System. While originially only predefined heightmap and texture support was planned for the terrain object, it was found that these features added many new possibilities to world editing and the amount of customization possible. There are also different brush sizes, shapes, and speeds to choose from.
Object Manipulation is another major feature. Object manipulation allows you to control the position, scale, and rotation of many objects through interactive 3D Widgets next to the object. The user will click a certain area of the widget, which clearly controls a certain aspect of the mesh, and then drag in the desired direction. This will transform the selected aspect of the object.
Another object with extended support is the Vegetation object. Vegetation is composed of MiniMeshes, which are very fast to render, thus allowing there to be many on screen at one time. As with terrain sculpting, it was originally planned to only support minimesh placement through a distribution map, but once again it was decided that the ability to Place, Paint, and Erase vegetation directly onto the terrain would greatly add to the interactability of the editor.
Plugins allow you to extend the already vast ability of the editor. This is done by creating Object Plugins, Import/Export Plugins, UI Plugins, and Rendering Plugins in Visual Studio 2005 and then importing them into PXME. It would never be possible to add everything the users would need, such as objects and features specific to their game, so plugins provide the option to extend functionality as needed. There is a sample plug-in pack included with the editor.
The editor will be priced at $60. Upon purchase you will recieve instructions as to how to activate the editor.
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