Level Buddy
A downloadable tool
Level Buddy
Level Buddy is a CSG level modeling workflow add on for Blender 3D. It takes inspiration from old school editors like UnrealEd and DoomED. Level Buddy reduces iteration time while letting you test out ideas quickly and easily.
- Easy to use tools and interface.
- Auto texture/UV unwrap in world space.
- CSG modeling techniques including additive and subtractive inspired work flow.
- NOT BSP, you are work with poly meshes at all times. When you build the map you get a static poly mesh not a BSP tree of faces.
- Build and export your map to FBX with 1 button, great if you are working with Unity or any external game engine.
- Blender 2.79 now supported. Level Buddy now works with the new version of Blender 2.79.
***Update Version 1.3
- added support for Blender 2.79
- added the ability set floating point precision when rounding vertex positions for CSG operations.
- TextureBuddy is now automatically enabled when LevelBuddy is enabled.
- fixed bug when trying to auto texture a map that had no textures.
- fixed bug of trying to execute TextureBuddy if the addon was not installed/enabled
***Update Version 1.2
- added FBX export options. This is great if you are using Unity or any other external game engine. Build and export with 1 button click.
- added remove material feature that will remove faces with a specific material applied when the map is built.
- added auto UV mapping as an option.
- added option to flip map normals when the map is built.
- added the ability to build the map while in edit mode.
- added in the ability to tag sectors and brushes to a layer (A or B) to fix boolean operation orders where they had problems generating proper openings/connections when the map would be built.
- hid the light setting properties for the time being as they were dependant upon material node setups that were specific to a personal project I was doing. If you still need them you can jump into the code and uncomment out that code in the draw panel function. But in the long run I will be moving them out of this script and into another script.
- added support for Blender 2.78
note: Addon is still in development so there might be a few bugs here and there.
Version 1.0 is still available to download below.
| Status | In development |
| Category | Tool |
| Rating | Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars (32 total ratings) |
| Author | Matt Lucas |
| Tags | addon,blender3d,Level Editor |
| Code license | GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL) |
Download
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Reworked and updated it for Bender 4.0+
https://github.com/EvilReFlex/ERF_LevelBuddyBlender
I have started the migration myself of this to Blender 2.8+.
https://github.com/Reticulatas/LevelBuddyforBlender28
This is early, but I have the basic functionality working. It's still quite crashy. If someone better at Blender Python picks this up, there is probably not much more to do to get it 100% functional.
EDIT: Looks like someone else beat me to this but didn't touch TextureBuddy - might be worth continuing regardless
Awesome! I like it. Do you have another version that might be more up to date? I would love to try it out. Yes, It reminds me of old school doom editor by here there is no need for computing BSP Trees though Duke Nuck'em used beck to front rendering. Love to see where this goes in the future and you might be ahead of this now that I look at it. So yes, I am very interested in any up-to-date information.
Hello,
I've modified the script and updated it for blender 2.92. However The 'FAST' solver does not provide decent result while the 'EXACT' solver (which is not similar to 'CARVE' apparently) takes a very long time to proceed all the operations (or fail to provide a good result). This one also requires 'clean' sectors work and tolerate less freedom than the 'CARVE' solver.
So until they update or add a new solver, my conclusion is that we're stuck with the good old blender 2.79.
btw thank you for this tool!
Your software looks great. I hope, my post can help to see, that there is interest in it. I know, hard times. Would be great to be able to use your Map-Editor in combination with Blender 2.80, 2.90 and up. I guess, if it would work with 2.80 it runs also on 2.9x. Thanks for making such a great tool. Wish you all the best. Kind regards from Berlin, Germany.
Hi Matt,
not sure if you read the comments, but just fyi: it seems that it would now be possible to update to the newer Blender versions. There is the new 'EXACT' solver, that should be similar to the old 'CARVE' solver. I think from v2.91 upward.
I tried to update the addon and got pretty far, but I don't really understand the new Depsgraph stuff, so for now I gave up.
Cheers
Jan
You can download a version it works on by going tohttps://www.blender.org/download/previous-versions/
After spending about a day getting the hang of Level Buddy, I really like the concept, but texturing is... very difficult :/
I suppose I could just unwrap by hand after the map is generated, but that's specifically one of the tasks that i feel is overkill for quake/half life style mapping.
Something that could really help is the ability to have a "detail" layer for some brushes/sectors that will merge with each-others, but not with the non-detail brushes/sectors
You can't use it in 2.8 because it requires the Blender game engine. It is meant for gaming. If Blender decides to bring back the Blender game engine this will be updated to that new version of the Blender game engine. So you are still stuck on blender 2.79 but look on the bright side. The blender game engine is still new on the 2.79 so that's all what is new right now. Whenever the new one comes out then it will be the old. So you're going to still need a second blender launcher to 2.79 if you want to use that so you are still stuck on two of them. If you know what I mean with two software.
It doesn't require the game engine, but it does require a boolean solver that can deal with coplanar faces. Blender 2.7x had two solvers - BMesh and Carve - which was slower, but could handle coplanar faces. Unfortunately Carve has been removed from Blender 2.8x
So it wouldn't make sense to update until the BMesh solver is up to the task.
Nice addon. But how do you start it.
At first I unzipped it in that addon folder of Blender 2.8RC3. No entry for Level Buddy showed up in the user preferenaces addons panel. So I deleted both files and then choose install from file. That worked with getting to the point where I can enable it in user preferences but now when I press the T key no interface for the addon shows up.
So I thought maybe it will only work with the OFFI ICAL version of Blender 2.8 So I deleted 2.8RC3 and downloaded and installed 2.81. I did an install from file again and enabled the addon in user prefs. And still no interface or controls.
I watched both videos and the author just already has the interface up and ready to go. I have enabled it in preferences, but cannot see where to get to it’s controls.
EDIT:
After doing more googling, I discovered that version 1.3 of this addonn was backwardly compatible with blender version 2.79. So I installed it in my 2.79 addons folder. So now I can at least see the interface. But I still do not know what does what. I will have to go thru Matt Lucas’ second video minute by minute and see if I can figure it out.
Great addon, fun to use. One question I have that I'm not sure if it's a Level Buddy question or a blender one cause I'm pretty new to both, how would I go about rotating textures when applying a material to a sector? Any help would be appreciated!
(edit: I'm using auto UV Map. I can rotate the 2d sector UVs manually but then the walls don't end up looking right so I'm confused)
I absolutely adore this addon!
I've tried updating it to work with Blender 2.80 just for fun. I got pretty far, but then I realized that Carve is gone and the newer BMesh Booleans can't handle coplanar faces... :( Apparently it's being worked on, but for now we seem to be stuck on 2.79..
Anyway, thank you for this inspiring tool! It will be great to use it with Armory in 2.8x one day
it should export out the final map as well. For my own use I have always used the exported brush volumes as trigger zones but that involves a custom script on unity's side to catch that during the fbx import. It wouldn't be hard to add in a button to say export the built map only though so I will look into that.
Sorry for the inactivity, the script is not abandoned just busy with work and family. Patreon could be interesting just not sure of the best structure setup. I thought about Github as well just didn't see the benefit since it is only two script files. Thanks for the interest in the project and hopefully I'll get some free time to do another update and some documentation soon.
Hey Hi Lucas, thanks for the editor :) Ok I understand you are very busy. Github even if is for two scripts, people can help in add new functionality or fix some bugs or update to a new blender version, maybe this even will help you in you own projects, and I pretty sure this can grow up a little more. BTW github have a wiki for you own repo giving the possibility to add documentation for you project, and its own page (http://github.io/), you can keep simple, all in one place, link to this page. For discussion some comments here, report issues on github. For Patreon, just an idea, not surethough... I think just for the incentive and see how much people are interested to see this grow, donating some bucks monthly for maintenance =) regards.
This is probably the best add-on I've ever found for BGE.
I have a few questions:
1.are you planning on making parts separable so one can use occluders in BGE so only rooms that are visible will be rendered?
2.do you plan on adding features that are similar to the Hammer Editor?
3.will you add some instances such as PC controller, doors, skybox setup and activators(similar to what you showed off in your videos)?
Last one I promise, is there a more up to date version that maybe is still being tested? I would even be willing to pay for it.
keep up the amazing work.
