WHITE VIEWPORTS? READ THIS Before Posting!

[Angel_Mapper]

First of all, watch this:

http://projectboil.pixel10.co.uk/posting/Posting.html




There are a lot of questions that we get asked here WAY too often, and most of the time it has been answered before. Before you post a question, PLEASE use the search button and make sure it hasn't already been asked.

And now for the list of the most commonly asked questions:

1) OMG WHITE VIEWPORTS!

Click View >> Viewports >> Configure and choose a setup, then hit ok.

2) I can't select anything, and no menus come up when I right click!

Turn off anti-aliasing in your video card settings.

3) When I click on the Texture/Mesh browser nothing comes up!

Your desktop resolution may be set too low, and the menu is appearing just off screen. Temporarily raise your resolution and move the menu.





There are plenty of other questions that have been asked many times, so once again PLEASE USE THE SEARCH BUTTON before posting.

Or, as The G.o.a.T. would say, read the faq (link is in his signature). :up:

[legacy-{RA}SKYFURNACE]

PLEASE BOOKMARK THESE SITES~!

Any answer you get or need will come from these sources 90% of the time:

Mapper Resources:

http://forums.unrealplayground.com/s...ad.php?t=10151

http://www.planetunreal.com/architectonic/

http://angelmapper.com/tutorials.htm

http://udn.epicgames.com/Content/UnrealEdInterface

http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/wiki/

http://www.leveldesigner.com

[legacy-Fecal Marmaset]

Geezus how did you get this stickied! Nobody sees mine I guess.

Anyway...Good Job Angel.:up:

EDIT: I probably would have spent more time/effort on the Tips & Tricks thread, if it didn't have to be bumped every damn day.

[legacy-<-Äçe->]

in addition to angels q and a's:

Q: “Exciting dynamic lights that flicker and twinkle work lovely in UnrealED 3.0, but when I rebuild or play they’re static. What am I doing wrong?”

A: Absolutely nothing. Dynamic lights were sadly taken out. As such, they’re still available in the editor, but will not work whatsoever ingame. You can get much the same sort of effects using projectors, though…
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Q: “Where are the flags/ bombing run goals/ ball spawns/ DOM points?”

A: For some bizarre reason they’ve been cunningly hidden. Open the Actor Classes Browser and expand Navigation Point-> JumpDest-> Jump Spot-> Game Objective. They’re all there. Quite why they’re so well hidden is anyone’s guess…

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Q: “Every time I quit UnrealEd 3.0 it asks me if I want to save package0/ package1/ package1138. What do I do?”

A: Always click NO. All the information you need for your custom map is saved within the map itself. Probably by magic or something. Or under the MyLevel package. Either way, messing with these packages runs the risk of messing up UT2003, and noone wants that, do they?!
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Q: “My terrain disappeared! My terrain disappeared! I was working, and my terrain sort of… disappeared…”

A: Mellow. Another common bug. Probably. It happens every once in a while, especially if you’re subtracting BSP. You’ll find that if you do a rebuild, everything’ll spring back…
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Q: “Some static meshes are sort of invisible and weird when you look at them from one side. What’s with that? How do I fix it?”

A: Correct me if I’m wrong, but the best I can figure it is that some static meshes were designed to be viewed in one place and one place only – the original map. An excellent example is the meshes of the trophies. Now, why bother going to the trouble of making the back view if they’re only ever going to be visible from the front? Quite a few are like this. They look crazy, I know. No, you can’t fix it.
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[legacy-Corion]

I got dynamic lights to work. ?

Just set the bDynamicLit or whatever the lighting variable is to True. Its not TOTALLY dynamic but I have a subtle pulse that works nicely. Am I not supposed to be doing this?

[legacy-<-Äçe->]

uhhh not that i know of though i read somewhere that dynamic lights were taken out but if you can get em to work, oh well.

[legacy-NiTrOcALyPsE]

Tip:

More often than not, I've found that looking into official retail maps has answered many questions for me. If I don't know how to create a certain effect, I go into a retail map that has a similar effect and look around in the actor properties to see just how it works. Normally this solution is much quicker than asking on a forum and waiting for a reply.

[legacy-Afterglow]

Tip:

In effort to keep map file sizes down make sure you compress any imported custom textures to dtx in the texture browser.

Right Click texture ---> Compress ---> DTX(1/3/5)

[legacy-myklee]

Angel Mapper! You are the bomb! Your tuts are terrrrrrific. And I come here looking for a solution to the white viewports and wala! You have the answer! Thanks!

[legacy-Fecal Marmaset]

Ahhh yes. Thank gawd for you Angel.

[legacy-godsbane]

A short while ago I got the white viewports... in MAYA!!!

I think it has something to do with the camera view plane being too far into the world, basically pointing past the geometry and out into space. Even comands like FrameAll don't work.

You have to go into perspective view, switch on view, or unhide cameras and then move them back so your model is in FRONT of them.

Stupid thing.

[legacy-FireCrack]

Bandbox selection
ctrl+alt+lmb-drag allows you to drag out a bandbox, highly usefull for selecting a bunch of things at once

Vetex editing
Vertex editing is one of the best tools of unrealed when working with bsp, to activate it click on the vertex editing mode icon (top right of the toolbar)
Once you are in vertex editing mode you can control+click or ctrl+alt+lmb-drag to select vertecies, you can then move them around with ctrl+lmb-drag. This is not as error prone as you may think, but there are 2 big ways to make bsp holes.
Dont overlap verticies
If you do this one of the following will happen:

• your verticies will stick together
• you will get a bruih that has BSP errors
• you will get a GPF and your editor will crash

Dont make your brush 'inside out'
I discovered this one the hard way . If you drag your brush through itself (ie drag the bottom vertecies of a cube out through the top) your brush will invert and actualy affect the area outside of it, so if you subtract, you delete everything outside your brush and vice versa. while i'm not sure if tyhis causes bsp errors it's a preety fast way to screw up your map regardless (but i'm preety sure it causes BSP errors)

Use the groups broser!!!!
While it may seem usless when you just start out once your map begins to fill with static meshes you wish taht you could make all of your wall pannels in a section hidden, or select a whole bunch of lights to shrink their corneas with a click of a button, use the groups broser, you wont regret it
Open the groups broser
the 'G' icon along with your textures, static meshes, animations, etc..
to add a group
click the new group button (lloks like a page) give it a name
to add items to a group
select your items and the group and then click the add to group button(has a +)
to remove items from a group
ass above but click the remove icon(-) instead
to select/deselct a group
click the select/deselct icons(red boxes). any other objects you had selected will remain selected
to hide/show a group
click the checkbox beside it's name

[legacy-Nuclear hazard]

''Turn off anti-aliasing in your video card settings. ''
how?:bulb: :noob:

[legacy-madbri]

I've found that by adjusting the display settings from 1024 x 768 to 1280 x 1024 resolution, the whole of Unreal Editor is made visible. A simple tip, but it also allows you to view greater amounts of detail in the four (or whatever you've specified) viewports.

If you're unsure how to change your display settings, do one of the following:

Right-click Desktop >>> click Settings tab >>> adjust resolution as necessary

OR:

Start >>> Control Panel >>> Display (this may be different to you) >>> Settings tab >>> adjust resolution as necessary

Also, change back to your default resolution when you come out of Unreal Ed. If you're reading the forums with 1280 x 1024 you'll need to put you're binoculars on to stop the eyes from bleeding :bulb:

[Angel_Mapper]

Added the Posting video.

http://projectboil.pixel10.co.uk/posting/Posting.html

[legacy-Duffman]

Nice :up:

[legacy-Harsh_but_Fair]

ty anglemapper for (unknowingly) helping a newbie in need.

Harsh

[legacy-Lord_Shaithis]

I got dynamic lights to work! I used a TriigerLight actor. Go into Light>TriggerLight in the actor browser and then you can make the flickering, pulsing etc. lights work.

[Angel_Mapper]

Using an Emitter for that is better.

[musilowski]

Yeah, I'm using an Emitter for those too, but is there a way to stop the light pulsing through walls? :bulb:

[legacy-Shakuurn]

And under no circumstances should the terrain be larger than 256*256. :bulb: It increases the filesize exponentially, the number of polygons rises (Also exponentially) and sometimes one of the following four things happen when trying to load/play the map (Particularly to those with lower end video cards):

When too many terrain triangles have to be rendered, all your terrain becomes completely transparent.

The game crashes and exits with a CreateTexture Failed error.

The game crashes and exits with a CreateVertexBuffer Failed error.

No textures appear at all and are completely replaced by a blank whiteness, as if the level was in Lighting mode. Crosshairs are replacedwith ugly coloured squares, the menus are giant white rectangles and texture appears as a big array of coloured rectangles. :bulb:

[legacy-FragMaster666]

Originally posted by Angel_Mapper
And now for the list of the most commonly asked questions:

1) OMG WHITE VIEWPORTS!

Click View >> Viewports >> Configure and choose a setup, then hit ok.

lol you summed it up in 1 How many people ask this? (I shouldn't laugh, I did once - but that was way back and I think i was ONE OF the first to ask )

I think you've contributed more to the community by answering this than you ever could by making maps :up:

[Henrik]

It's mind boggling how seemingly rudimentary problem solving skills evade so many people.

[legacy-{IC}|)uFF]

thank you . i have just tried that and now it works ! thank very much

[legacy-TacosForFreedom]

anyone asking why thier editor is white isnt going to know what the hell a viewport is.

[legacy-Krogen]

When this thing happened to me the first time, I figured it out myself GO ME!

[legacy-SuperDemonKitty]

personaly i thought the way to fix the problem was quite obvious..


people should look at the tabs under the title bar more often

[legacy-Zygar]

Yeah, I got the white viewports bug around the 4th time I started up UnrealED. Fixed it in 2 minutes by myself.

[legacy-Krogen]

This is retarted. I haven't got the white viewports now for like 2 weeks and 2 weeks ago I got them every time I started Unreal Ed.

[legacy-rsmolens]

I did do a search on texture browser and got a ton of hits...sorry..but too lazy to read all of them.

[legacy-{KAC}Honcho]

Originally posted by NiTrOcALyPsE
Tip:

More often than not, I've found that looking into official retail maps has answered many questions for me. If I don't know how to create a certain effect, I go into a retail map that has a similar effect and look around in the actor properties to see just how it works. Normally this solution is much quicker than asking on a forum and waiting for a reply.

...ahhhhh, the sign of a truely efficient programmer reusing code snippets etc.

[legacy-mr_scary_wasp]

Originally posted by FragMaster666
lol you summed it up in 1 How many people ask this? (I shouldn't laugh, I did once - but that was way back and I think i was ONE OF the first to ask )

I think you've contributed more to the community by answering this than you ever could by making maps :up:

I also asked once. In fact I think thats why I registered all the way back in 2002. That was for UEd 2. Looks like they never worked out the bug. I hope its still there in the next UEd. It wouldnt be the same without it.

And have you seen her maps? OMFG why cant I make maps like that? Lifes unfair.

[legacy-Leethal]

Just writing a quick note to say thanx Angel_Mapper for ya advice on white viewports, im pretty much a noob when it comez to unrealed at the mo' but freaked out when i saw the white viewports...lol

Thanx 4 ya recommendation, was easy to fix...:up:

[legacy-butcherboy]

And under no circumstances should the terrain be larger than 256*256. :bulb: It increases the filesize exponentially, the number of polygons rises (Also exponentially) and sometimes one of the following four things happen when trying to load/play the map (Particularly to those with lower end video cards):

When too many terrain triangles have to be rendered, all your terrain becomes completely transparent.

The game crashes and exits with a CreateTexture Failed error.

The game crashes and exits with a CreateVertexBuffer Failed error.

No textures appear at all and are completely replaced by a blank whiteness, as if the level was in Lighting mode. Crosshairs are replacedwith ugly coloured squares, the menus are giant white rectangles and texture appears as a big array of coloured rectangles. :bulb:

That is when you adjust your terrain sector size, add anti-portals/bsp's, and add fog. I've got a map somewhere that uses a 1024x1024 terrain texture, I believe. Of course it is scaled 32x to fit a large map experiement.

I've recently encountered a new "white viewport" with the latest ATI and 3369 patch - apparently when I jam to iTunes or Media Player I eventually loose Windows handles or something and no textures are rendered to my 3D map views. Usually quitting iTunes et al saving my map and rebooting fixes it, but at first I just thought it was the white viewport deal until the configure thing didn't work on it lol.

[legacy-UT TROOPER]

I tryed what you said but i still have white veiw ports!please help PLZ

[SpY]

Thank God for this sticky

I wonder why my viewports went away in the first place, lol..

[UTDDRmaster117]

Angel mapper, you are my hero. <3 <3

[Dreamchaser]

I have discovered a little experimenting with UnRealEd.ini in a text editor( Notepad or Wordpad) allows me to preset the initial default configuration.

Most of the time some kind of updating is supposed to happen starting up UnRealEd with your last viewport config, but not always.

So take a look at UnRealEd.ini, make a backup copy and experiment with the structure of it.

Also sometimes Windows will force a read only attribute on all your Unreal files making it difficult for the game to save such things.

[TremorDeth]

LIFE SAVER.... I'm dumb and this is a lifesaver

[tontrilia]

It agree, the useful message