I think most of you have been doing this a lot longer than me but I have a question that I did pose and get a response from David Williams but he suggested I post it here.

Anyway, i want to create an in game level editor with specific requirements, most I have figured out but a couple are still a mystery until I found here I think.

Anyway, I want to create Window and Door assets (3ds max). No issue. However the real trick comes in placing them in side the games engine correctly. Placing is easy most engines have prefabs or like but what I want to do is place the door or window in a wall and have the asset remove the opening/cut the wall what ever the right term is. Same with windows. My thought is to have a dummy object within the 3ds file that can be used to create the shape for the door or window.

Ray cast off this object to create the mesh I want to remove.

Can using this technology do this. Termite Engine) The images from the website under "How Thermite Works" seems to refer to this.

Any thought would be great!

Thanx

Steven Davies

Hi Steven,

Now that I read some more details of your project I'm not sure if Thermite3D is what you are looking for. Thermite3D is based on the concept of voxels, but if you are making an editor for an existing game engine then probably that engine is not based on voxels.

The technology you are after is probably what is known as 'Constructive Solid Geometry'. If you didn't know that term then just sticking it in to google will find you some useful information. It's basically the process of taking two or more meshes and adding or subtracting them from eachother:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructi ... d_geometry

In particular, this approach is used by UnrealEd (the Unreal level editor). It can also be performed in realtime (though I have never tried this).

Have a look at this video to see if it is similar to what you are trying to do:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 981648678#

If you like it, a series of articles about the technoloigy start here:

http://sandervanrossen.blogspot.com/200 ... art-1.html

Be warned though - it's complex stuff!