[V0008] Microbrush 2 (2.1.0) Modelling 1 (1/2) - Building

Microbrush 2 is a general-purpose all-3D brush-based modeling application with an optimized workflow and a simplistic user interface which you have probably never seen anywhere else yet. It offers a very immersive level-building experience where there is no distinction between the big picture and the small details in terms of control and work speed. Once you got used to its ways, you can undermine your thoughts with architecture as they come in, and basically "model in realtime".

MB is designed in a way that allows its output to be used in many different scenarios. With each distribution, there comes C# code for loading and saving its native file formats. You are given properties of different types (numbers, strings, etc.) which you can apply to brush faces or to brushes themselves. You can also attach brushes to other brushes, forming a hierarchy as complex as you want it. All that information is available and easy to process with the supplied code. Have a game in the making and don't want to bother making a level editor? This could be it! MB also masters an exchange XML format: If you would like to edit any aspect of your scene with your bare hands, just export to XML, commit your changes there, and convert back to the binary format. Brushes are defined by their boundary planes. In case that you need access to the calculated polygon corners, you can specially re-save a scene for obtaining these. The corners are then accessible in an XML document too. The specifications for the file formats are all shipped with the program too.

The first reference application of this modeling program is mapping for Valve's Source engine games. MB ships with converters for the topical Valve Map Format (vmf). Since v. 2.1.0, in conversion, almost everything is retained, so you can mess around with your displacements, entities, texture info and whatnot in MB, that way accomplish your work on a bigger part of your map in a short time, and seamlessly convert back and go on editing in Hammer.

You can find the project page and downloads at:
http://shrinker.beyond-veils.de/projects/Microbrush2/
http://shrinker.scottbaker.eu/projects/Microbrush2/ (mirror)

Here's the official Steam user group, where you can be kept up to date automatically: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/Microbrush2
And the official support forum: http://forums.seriouszone.com/forumdisplay.php?f=436

Sudden jumps in the video are a result of cuts.
There is a means to contact me directly listed on my homepage. I am happy about YouTube comments and will do my best to answer all your questions.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• 3d
• level
• editor
• half-life
• microbrush
• shrinker
• radiant
• hammer
• mb2.dat
• demo
• valve
• vmf
• source
• entities
• mapping

[subulouse]

Can I model weapons with this?

[Shrinker42]

Yes. I have recently gotten to know about tools that you can use to grab the architecture from any OpenGL program from the graphics memory and, for instance, save it as a Wings3D model. Using such a program, you wouldn't even need to bother with conversion.

[S1lver94]

That looks awesome!

[Shrinker42]

Thank you :)

[Agent766]

Holy crap you're good!

[Shrinker42]

Lol thanks.

[Komsomol1979]

That would be GLIntercept with OGLE plugin, it saves the model as an .OBJ-file.