Level Editor Tutorial

How to create/lightmap a Level for use in an Area: Objective: Following along with this tutorial, you should be able to create a simple room from scratch in 10 minutes or less

This was lifted from a posting by St4rdog http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/8/index/150840
It needs some additional formatting love, but is as good starting place for people to create usable interior levels

Building your room:

File > New > Level > Room Level

• Create a player start. Click flag icon next to lightmapping icons > click anywhere on ground. This is the starting location for the pathfinding algorithm. Make sure you place it somewhere where you expect to be able to walk.

• Click on "New Area" in top-left list > Object Inspector in bottom-right > Layout Name > anything under 8 characters no spaces or strange characters.

• Right-click in 3D view and select Insert > New Room.
• Click Models (blue box) in the Palette in the top-right. These folders contain everything such as floor tiles/walls etc to build your rooms.
• Enable Grid Snap with the magnet icon to make sure they line up.
• The "prp" folder contains things like beds/barrels to clutter your Level.

Hint: Use DATool (3rd party tool downloadable at http://social.bioware.com/project/41/ )to browse through these quickly to find the floors/walls you want.

Note: If you get "Cannot spawn models into the selected parent object" when trying to place a model then you don't have "New Room" selected.

Adding lights

• Right-click on "New Room" in top-left list > Insert > New Light

• Move it up off the floor a little. In Object Inspector > "Color

Intensity" 2 or more > "Light Type" Point - Static (lc) > Choose any bright color.

• Copy and paste. In Object Inspector >"Light Type" Ambient - Baked (this light stops your shadows being pitch

black) > Choose a dark blue colour and keep the Color Intensity under 2/3.

Note: I'm not sure what the mix of Baked/Static light is supposed to be. If you just put a Baked + Ambient it complains about not having Static, but if you put a Static + Ambient it seems to work fine, but the wiki says Static is the most expensive.

Rendering Lightmaps

• Press the Render Lightmaps icon (you need ActivePython 2.5 installed to default location). When it's done click the Display

Lightmaps On/Off icon in the top-left to refresh the results.

• Uncheck the "View Models Fully Lit" icon in the lop-left. You should see shadows from any objects you've dropped in.

note: Lightmap-atlas messages might appear the first time you render. That seems normal.
Sometimes re-rendering the lightmaps messes them up badly when Display Lightmaps On/Off is on. It doesn't seem to use the latest lightmaps. Try pressing Display Lightmaps On/Off a few times to update it. If they're still messed up sometimes one of these fixes it (don't know which)unloading/reloading your Area or Level/changing your Area's layout property/posting your Level to Local.

Exporting

• Press the Do All Local Posts icon to the right of the lightmapping icons. It will export the name you typed into the "New Area" "Layout Name". If there's a complaint about walkable/player start then delete your old start then place a new one on a flat area.

• Save your .lvl file. It's not used by the game and the name/location doesn't matter. Only the exported/posted files are used.

Using this in an Area:

File > New > Area > Any Name

• In the Object Inspector > Area Layout you should get a "..." box (make sure it's Checked Out) > click then select your "Layout Name" which should now be there.

• Now you have a pretty level lightmapped level inside an area.