Tread3D 2.0 Series - Features and Screenshots


Welcome to this sneak preview of Tread3D2. For the most part Nick and I have decided to use that term instead of Tread3D 2.0 because we feel this editor sets itself apart from others, even its predicessor.

Stability in Design We never thought we'd say something like this, but Tread v1.12 is light-years behind Tread3D2. Starting from a purely design standpoint, Tread3D2 was written in C++ with an object oriented design. Because of this initial design things are more flexible and allow for more root stability. This can be seen all throughout the editor. Because of our experience with designing an editor before, we were able to focus on the major lackings of our last version, and fix all the problems. Tread3D2 has been rewritten from scratch. Not a single line of 1.12 lives on in this version.

Speed A lot of hindrance came from 1.12's inherent lack of support for hardware acceleration. Part of this was remedied by visgroups, however, this often proved to be inadequate. Tread3D2's rendering engine has been completely reengineered to be more flexible, and way faster. On an AMD K6/2 450 with a diamond Viper V770 (or 550) Tread3D2 is wicked fast. You can pan a thousand brushes in the 3D view without a hiccup. An entire Quake2 level will move in real-time at about 2-5 f.p.s. That may not sounds impressive, but trust me, it is. Often a designer works with much smaller subsets of a level, but sometimes you need to see the whole thing, and Tread3D2 makes it possible. As far as the flat views go, don't even try to slow those suckers down, you just ain't gonna do it.

Ease of Use with Power for the Pros Nick Randal's partnership in Tread3D2 has taken editing to the next level with user interface. If only he'd been able to work on 1.12 when it was still in its infancy. Nick's thrown new controls and functionality into the interface this time around. You'll sit back and say: "This is how it should have been the first time." All colors can be customized to your liking. If you hate the way a hot spot looks, then change it. Fully bindable action and mode keys are still here. A debug window sports the ability to show what's going on inside Tread3D2. This will be useful for plugin designers. Nick has also come up with a new editing paradigm: anchors. Points in your map that can be centered on by a simple click of the mouse. You can also expand and collapse views with the press of a key.

Eye Candy One of the biggest new eye candy features of Tread3D2 is a ZombieLight Plugin. Tread3D2 will precompute the lighting in your level in literally seconds and show you what it will look like in the game. Currently this supports has only been tested with Quake2 and HalfLife. It's fast! Tread3D2 can compile the lighting for base1 of Quake2 in under 20 seconds on an AMD K/6 450 machine. With this feature the full source code is also included. That conveniently leads me to the next topic.

Fully Extendable with Plugins Tread3D2 can be extended to do anything an end user wishes it to with a fully integrated plugin system. Users can code new texture loading, model importing features, just about anything their hearts desire. Full source code to five plugins is included to get you off on the right foot. Two of them are used in Tread3D2 as major features: the leaktrace and ZombieLight ( Lighting preview).
Currently Tread3D2 provides the following plugins source code:

  • Leaktrace
  • ZombieLight (Lighting preview)
  • Quake2 Pak Reader (Reads the Quake2(tm) pak file format)
  • Quake Map (Read and write maps of Quake type)
  • Shapes Plugin for Arches, Cones and Cylinders

Screenshots
Didn't think we were going to leave you in the dark did ya?

Features:

We feel that the quality of Tread3D2 speaks for itself. It’s intuitive. It’s easy to use. And it just keeps getting better. It’s got more features than any other editor available. From its creation Tread3D2 was designed to streamline the editing process. It’s the end-all of editors.

Tread3D2 supports a slew of games, and support for new games is always on the way. We have stressed our dedication to supports all id Software games, and derivatives (assuming there is demand for the support of such titles). Currently Tread3D2 supports:

  • Quake 1
  • Quake 2
  • Half-Life
  • KingPin
  • Painkeep
  • Counter Strike
  • Action Quake 2
  • Action Half-Life

If that hasn’t convinced you to click the "Get Tread3D Now" tab and get your own smokin’ copy of Tread3D2, then have a look at our short list of features:

Supported Games: Quake1 - Quake2 - Half-Life - KingPin - Painkeep - Counter Strike - Action Quake2 - Action Half-Life
Unlimited Undo/Redo.
Cut, Copy, Paste, even between maps.
3D View: Wireframe, Solid, Shaded and Textured.
Texture directory loading.
15 degree snapped default rotation (optional 1 degree control).
Leak file viewing.
Full source code to five plugins.
Target name paths drawn (+3d view).
Automatic path generation.
Fast texture viewing, with name/type filter.
Adjustable back clipping plane.
User customizable keys.
User customizable colors.
Selections crosshair.
Selectable View System, Standard 3 View (Top/Side/Front) or Custom 1 View (One window with switchable views).
Ability to size, rotate, drag brushes.
Views are all changeable.

Opens multiple maps.
Real-time camera (See yourself resize and drag in 3D!).
Multiple cameras.
Option to preview only selected objects.
Very fast drawing (supports hardware acceleration).
Visgroups Support.
Ability to hide all/show all visgroups with the click of a button.
Integrated build window shows output from build programs.
Advanced hierarchical grouping.
Texture locking.
Support for contents/surface/value editing for faces.
Ability to edit multiple faces at once.
Zoom in/out.
Entity support with advanced scripting language.
Supports WAD2/WAD3/PAK2 files.
Supports various texture formats (.WAL/.WAL2/.TGA).
Recently chosen textures list (saved with each map).
Full vertex manipulation.
Clipping tool.
CSG subtraction.
Hollowing of any shape.
Models support: Store doors and anything you want to quickly add to your maps.
Supports any grid size.
Lots of quick key combinations and modifier keys to speed up menial tasks.
Comes with a script editor, allowing you to quickly make your own scripts to facilitate mods or new games.
Full texturing control, includes: scaling, rotation, shifts.
Imports and Exports (Supported Game) .MAP files.
Map Statistics dialog shows you all kinds of neat information.
Ability to visually edit entity keys: Angles have an angle dialog, colors have the windows color picker.
Entity names can be viewed as smart names or original class names.
Texture brightness settings.
Lots of user modifiable settings to tweak for performance.
Shows selected entities class names in the views.
Shows selected brush dimensions.
Shows selected objects outlines in 3D view.
Supports 3D bilinear texture filtering.
Supports multiple 3D views.
ZombieLight Plugin - Will show you how lighting will look like in your map.
Ability to change renderer’s (2D/3D) in real-time.
Ability to edit/change paks and game settings without restarting editor.
Anchor support (jump to marked areas of your map with a click of the mouse).
Scripted build steps in GDF2 language allows for custom builds.
Runs all builds and launches games from within Tread3D2.
Comes ready to go with ArghRad, and improved versions of vis and bsp.
Unlimited tech support.
Comes with basic HTML manual, as well as many online resources.

Tread is Copyright © 1999-2009 Joe Riedel and Nicholas Randal