So, to all of you experienced Mappers....(and mods)

[IronCurtain]

How hard will mapping in UT3 be? I'm really interested in it, but if I have to custom make 90% of the **** in other programs........ well that would suck.

Anyone know how easy/hard it will be to use the UT3 editor?

[DGUnreal]

I've been working with UE3 for about 18 months now.

The answer to your question is "it depends".
Depends entirely on what you are doing and what you want in your map.

UE3 UEd is IMHO slower for productivity and a lot of things work differently than UT2004 for those who are previous mappers. It is also generally more work and more time to create a map compared to UT2004, even using ready-made content.

If you are planning on just using all stock UT3 content, then you don't have to use any external third-party software like Max/Maya, PhotoShop etc.

[Sjosz]

I've been working with UE3 for about 18 months now.

The answer to your question is "it depends".
Depends entirely on what you are doing and what you want in your map.

UE3 UEd is IMHO slower for productivity and a lot of things work differently than UT2004 for those who are previous mappers. It is also generally more work and more time to create a map compared to UT2004, even using ready-made content.

If you are planning on just using all stock UT3 content, then you don't have to use any external third-party software like Max/Maya, PhotoShop etc.

Quoted for truth. I've been working with UE3 since May 2006 and like anyone else I had to get used to it. Now that I am used to UE3 UEd, however, I wouldn't want to go back, really.
Dev time will most definitely be longer than for UT2004, at least, to make a properly decorated level like you see in the demo. I'm thinking around a month to 3 months development time, and that's not even counting making custom content if you want to do that.

[MeepZero]

What sorts of things are the most different to you about working in the editor? Are there any things you like/dont like about how it functions?

[WickedPenguin]

The texture/material editor is definitely much more interesting and powerful. I really like the visual workflow. It takes longer to create something, but you've got more control and can experiment a lot faster because you can just connect and reconnect nodes instead of paging through a bunch of material editor pages.

Below is the material I made for the Noderunner 2's control panels, which have an animated simulated "radar" scope with movement and sweep, and along with video noise on the screens.
http://wickedpenguin.com/ue3/images/nr2/NR2_Ued01-7.jpg

The one thing I don't like about the material editor (which is evident in the above image) is that you can't zoom out without the text becoming unreadable.

[SPECTRE]

Spend the extra $10 on the Special Edition, and get 10+ hours of tutorials. Watch the tutorials and decide for yourself.

UT3 will have plenty of content for you to mess around with too.

[DGUnreal]

What sorts of things are the most different to you about working in the editor? Are there any things you like/dont like about how it functions?

For anyone who has mapped for UT2004 there will be some similarities, however, a lot has changed.

There are probably two to four times as many properties for many of the similar actors. The lighting system is more complex and must be set up correctly otherwise it can lead into issues. Mappers cannot be as haphazard about custom content creation like UT2004, otherwise in UT3 it just may not work, simplified collision is an example. Occlusion should be considered during map design and layout, unlike UT2004 where even a badly designed map could be saved to some degree by placing ZonePortals and AntiPortals into it, the auto-occlusion system in UE3 may require the addition of master occluders in various areas. Build times, especially with Terrain, are significantly longer than UT2004, easily reaching 30 minutes or more on good hardware. Creation of shaders is significantly more involved than UT2004. etc.

Spend the extra $10 on the Special Edition, and get 10+ hours of tutorials. Watch the tutorials and decide for yourself.

UT3 will have plenty of content for you to mess around with too.

The UDN3 will also be made public when UT3 ships. Plus there is a new set of video tutorials and Mastering Unreal book coming out.

Even though UT3 will ship with a lot of content, you will still have to know how to use it in a map, which is not as straight-forward and easy as in UT2004. For example, when inserting staticmeshes the lightmap properties will have to be set appropriately, you don't get the same simple drop-in-and-build like UT2004. Plus whether surfaces/meshes are "touched" by dynamic lighting must be set correctly otherwise it will impact framerate, etc.

UE3 requires that you know and understand more about what is going on it it than UT2004 did. Otherwise your map may end up looking poor and running badly. For example, if you mapped for UT2004 and never understood the Simplified Collision workings, then you are in even more trouble on UE3 since it has many things more complex than that.

[thejinx]

I can only imagine what it's gonna take to push in new bump mapped textures alone. So much for finding random fabric around my house and shoving it into a scanner

I hope we see another Make Something Unreal contest to keep the community bonus packs flowing

[DGUnreal]

I can only imagine what it's gonna take to push in new bump mapped textures alone. So much for finding random fabric around my house and shoving it into a scanner

I hope we see another Make Something Unreal contest to keep the community bonus packs flowing

Creating custom content that competes with Epic's UT3 content is going to take a lot of time, as it requires hi-poly Detail meshes to get the Normal Map and optionally a Diffuse Texture for the in-game Render mesh.
For photos or scanned textures, you can often create a Normal Map automatically from the NVidia or ATI tools or using CrazyBump.
However, even just creating custom map content that is of UT2004 style quality can still benefit from the better lightmapping and NormalMap features of UT3, even if it doesn't look as good as Epic UT3 maps, it will still look better than regular UT2004.

Mark Rein (??) stated that there will probably be another MSUC for UT3, however, I don't see custom maps becoming popular especially with the online community simply because they can easily reach 200 to 300MB, which is just too big to server-push and most gamers are too lazy to pre-download maps.

[Shrike]

Mark Rein (??) stated that there will probably be another MSUC for UT3, however, I don't see custom maps becoming popular especially with the online community simply because they can easily reach 200 to 300MB, which is just too big to server-push and most gamers are too lazy to pre-download maps.

Wow, so no MSUC? That's huge actually. It's all about developers, wether they be mappers, modelers, scripters whatever. It's those people that end up getting jobs in the industry and recommending Epic's engine as a platform. It's in Epic's best interest to keep the development community strong. I hope you are wrong DG.

[DGUnreal]

Mark Rein (??) stated that there will probably be another MSUC for UT3

Wow, so no MSUC?

??
Read my post again.

[Shrike]

??
Read my post again.

DOH! Hiding in the corner now......crying........but with a smile.

[DS3]

I don't see custom maps becoming popular especially with the online community simply because they can easily reach 200 to 300MB, which is just too big to server-push and most gamers are too lazy to pre-download maps.

Hmm... Sounds like bull crap to me.
DM-ShangriLa.ut3 = 35 megabytes. 28 if compressed. 95% of custom made maps won't be so detailed.

[DGUnreal]

Hmm... Sounds like bull crap to me.
DM-ShangriLa.ut3 = 35 megabytes. 28 if compressed. 95% of custom made maps won't be so detailed.

Does your mother know you talk like that?

Trust me, I've been working with UE3 for over 18 months now.
I'm not going to debate this with you.

For one, Shangri-La most likely has very little asset content in the UT3 map file itself, most of the assets are in the other packages since that is how most of the maps are made. Add up the ASC_, HU_, LT_, NEC_, UN_ content package files.

If a mapper uses nothing but stock UT3 content and CSG brushes, the map size will still be much larger than the equivalent UT2004 map due to all of the staticmesh lightmaps.