Export Map to glTF?

[Cosmonaut_]

Hello,

I just purchased Ultra Engine on Steam under the impression that I would be able to use the map editor to create scenes that could be exported as glTF models, for use in Blender or possibly other engines. According to this blog post, the technology was finished in 2021, and it's also stated that entire scenes could be saved as glTF this way:

I've found the ability to save models as glTF, but no equivalent for scenes. I also bought Leadwerks 4 some years ago, and I remember that it had the ability to export map geometry as OBJ (albeit without any materials, disappointingly). But Ultra Engine seems to lack even that. This was my primary way I intended to use this software, as I loved Leadwerks' CSG editor, and a modern CSG editor with the ability to export map geometry, model props, texture information, and possibly even entities such as lights would be a dream come true. I'm hoping that I just missed the functionality. Is there currently any way to save a scene as glTF format?

Less importantly, I was also wondering if there's any way to customize the colors used in the UI of Ultra Engine? Or at least a light mode? As it is now, the background of the 2D viewports are nearly the same shade of grey as the background of the editor itself, and it makes the whole work area very visually confusing with viewports kind of melding into each other at a glance.

Any help with these is appreciated, because I was really looking forward to using Ultra Engine in this way.

[Josh]

Hi,

Currently, the engine supports exporting a model as a glTF. It does not support exporting the whole scene as a glTF. However, it would not be difficult to create an editor extension that creates a temporary model, parents every entity in the scene to that model, and then saves that model as a glTF. I will give it a try now. Keep in mind that terrain and foliage cannot easily be exported to glTF.

The color scheme is not currently user-editable, but if people want it would be easy for me to add a color scheme file the editor can load at startup.

[Josh]

I have uploaded an extension to export the scene as a glTF file here:

You can place that in your "Ultra Engine/Scripts/Start/Extensions" folder and it will work.

Currently brush geometry does not get included in the export, but I think I can add that today...

[Josh]

In the next build, the editor will load the color scheme from the file "Ultra Engine/UI/Themes/dark.json". I don't recommend trying to convert to a light mode, because that would require different icons, but you can adjust the colors of the dark theme there.

You will need to opt into the beta branch on Steam to get this update sooner:

 

[Josh]

Updates are available now.

[Cosmonaut_]

Wow, you're fast! I have to say, this is pretty good customer service, lol.

I see that you've got the export script working with brushes, too! That's really fantastic, it sounds like it'll do exactly what I was looking for. I can't wait to try it when I get home today. As for the terrain, I'm not bothered that it doesn't export along with the rest of the map geometry. If there's a way to export the heightmap, that's enough. Or even if there isn't, any external tool I'm using these glTF files in is sure to have a way to create heightmap terrain anyway.

And the ability to tweak the editor colors, too, you really got it all covered!

I really appreciate you doing this! I couldn't have hoped for a better response to my questions.

[Josh]

My pleasure. If you are happy with the result, reviews on Steam are always appreciated.