"I'm wondering if it is possible to draw a map in Pro-E"

I received this email tonight and figured since it's the 3rd one this week (all simular anyway) I would share the answer with everyone here on the boards.

Most of you regulars have been over this stuff a time or two, but as new members join the boards these questions come back up. So if it's redundent for you, move on to the porn sites.


Matt writes:

"Hi, As I was looking around the web for a conversion tool(anything3d to .t3d, if there is such a thing)...I found your site and figured I could shoot you this question...First of all, do you know of a conversion program? Second of all,so you know, why, I'm wondering if it is possible to draw a map in Pro/Engineer(3d(the whole thing OR just chunks(buildings etc)) and then dump it into UED to finish it...."

Thanks
matt



My oh-so-witty reply:

You seek the answers to the universe... well... you would actually have a better chance if you in fact WHERE seeking answers to the universe! HA!

I have been hunting such a utility for roughly 3 years now! Truth is you are likely not to find such a beast.

I think the main reason you will be hard pressed to locate any such util is that the current Unreal Engine is simply not built for highly complex model representation. It's BSP based engine is limited, and optimized for speed.
So whats it all about? Integer math opposed to Floating point math calculations. In more simple terms... the engine can do what it does well, as long as all geometry is even digits (nothing to the right of the decimal) AND to also maintain even digits, everything MUST be on grid. Then you are truly allowing the engine to function in it's optimal form using Integer math. Follow so far?

OK, so you can do clean precise models with a good CAD application (Pro-E, Inventor, Autocad, Etc.), making sure nothing is smaller than 1 inch and even keeping everything on grid... is that enough? Close... but then you have the geometry limitation, or better said Poly count limitation, that says any more than 400 polygons is simply more than the engine was developed to display. But
that's only an issue if you are trying to import mechanical parts that are complex... and you say you want to do a building, right?

Now the truth comes out, you CAN in fact build most everything in Pro-E Or Autocad and import it piece by piece into Unreal. I know this to be true because I have done an entire 3 story building this way from Autocad. The trick was to keep the imports to as few as possible... chunks. And, I also had to first Export them from Autocad, importing them into 3D Studio MAX and THEN going out as a DXF. For some reason even though Autodesk Developed the DXF format I have found that it does not work from any and all applications the same. Gibe it a try... you might have better luck with Pro-E.

Next year all this will be history anyway. The next Unreal engine is "said" to allow 50,000 polys viewable at one time (over a million for the total scene). Just hunt around, you can pick up some interesting facts about it on the net.

Good luck. I hope this mini novel helps. ;-)

Daniel "Spooger" Patton

Hey oRGy...

Sorry I have not emailed you... I believe I didn't have any good news for you, so I was putting it off. I sent you an ICQ.


"Wheras importing from 3d apps can mean big bsp problems if you don't know exactly what you're doing"

Yup... my whole point for putting up this post...

And it can be done without errors, do it all the time.

"How exactly are floats a problem for the unreal engine. I take it floats are truncated and this gives rise to errors"

From what I understand they are not truncated... thats the problem. They add up and build to the point of the ugly BSP demon! ARGH!

"...than truncating all those floats manually?"


I'm guessing what you mean by that Keeek is that you would export it out as a T3D file and then go in and wipe out everything to the right of the decimal... Right?

"IF" thats what you mean then you also would have to deal with your numbers rounding up or down and some poss. shifting of geometry.

3Dx3 and I have had this same conversation. He even found a handy utility that would let you quickly edit the DXF file before importing it into Unreal, doing the same thing I believe you are talking about... truncating.


"why the fck did anyone make it possible to generate floats in UED in the first place?"

So we could learn from our mistakes of course! LOL...

Hmmm... well JaFO...

The problem is not as you mention, it's not numbers over 999 like 1,000 or 124,928... it's numbers that are to the right of the decimal point like 124,928.247

This happens when you are off grid or work with geometry that is not built to an even unit scale.

Now lets say that you meant to use a (.) in place of a (,) in what you just wrote. It's an even bigger problem I think. Because if you take your first two number in the set 10.05 : 24.65 and translate them to 1005 : 2465... where the distance from the original two numbers is like 14.60 units, the new distance between them is like 1460 units!!

And it can get whacked easy, when you reduce an entire scene in the editor... hmm... not even sure how you would do such a thing.

Not sure you are following the thread eXitus...


You can build your level in most ANY 3D application that exports out to DXF as long as it's even units and on grid. That last part is a limitation of the Unreal engine, not the 3D app.

Build with uneven units and off grid in UED and it will still give you errors. Point being, it's not the 3D application that is the real limitation, it's the Unreal engine.

So most any 3D application will work.