IMPORTING AND EXPORTING

  "Machismo"
cool_machismo@yahoo.com

INTRODUCTION

This tutorial will deal with all kinds of exporting and importing that you may want to do in Unreal Tournament.

IMPORTING AND EXPORTING LEVELS

Want to see your favorite unreal levels in UT?. Load up UnrealEd from unreal\ system directory and open the map that you want to export. Hit the file menu and hit export, and save your exported level as a .t3d. Note down the textures that the level used. Open UnrealEd from the UT\system directory; hit file, new level and hit ok when it asks to create a new map; then hit file, import level. Find the previously exported level and hit open. Choose import a new level in the import map dialog. Load the textures that the level used in unreal that you noted down before. I never bother doing this, do this only if your system can handle the load - I just drag and select all the textures from the open texture box and hit open. Now that you have the textures loaded just do a complete rebuild of the level - you might want to turn autobsp on. There you go, you should see the imported level in all its previous glory!.

 EXPORTING AND IMPORTING BRUSHES

Just created a new brush like a house that you don't want to lose? How do you save this brush? Build a larger brush than the house and hit the intersect button (or deintersect depending  on the situation). Choose export from the brush menu and save the red builder brush wherever you want. The next time you want to have a house in your level there is no need to go and create the whole house again. Just hit the brush, import button. When the import a brush dialog box opens up under solidity check solid mesh (use nonsolid only if you exported a nonsolid brush) and under cleanup check "merge coplanar polygons". While working with large brushes or where you wan the original textures preserved make sure "keep original polygons intact is checked" other wise you could get large ugly holes in your brush when it is subtracted or added.

EXPORTING AND IMPORTING MUSIC

Exporting music is a simple process of opening the music browser on the right loading the music file that you want to export and hitting the export button. Remember that UnrealEd saves the music file as a *.s3m file. Importing follows the same way of getting it into UnrealEd, just hit the import button - your file has to be in one of the formats like scream trackers, not a normal wave file. You need third party players like WinAmp to play the file once it is exported. For more information on importing and exporting and general unreal music notes head down to the Unreal Tech site and read the Composing Music for Unreal article by Alexander Brandon.

TIP: Music files have to be saved in the .umx format once they have been imported. They cannot contain normal sounds like voices and have to be pure music files. Forget about using your favorite Mettalica (so sue me assholes) track as your music file.

  EXPORTING AND IMPORTING SOUNDS

Export sounds in the normal way by choosing the SoundFx browser from the right, loading the sound package, locating the sound and hitting the export button. While importing sounds you can do so using the normal wave format (*.wav). While saving the sound make sure you save it as a *.uax in the sounds folder.

IMPORTING AND EXPORTING TEXTURES

Locate the texture that you want to import and use in UnrealEd. Open it up using an image editing program like PaintShopPro:

• Hit the colors menu and choose decrease color depth and then 256 colors (it could be different if you are using another image editing program). You might want to choose optimized octree.

• Once the color conversion is over you have to change the size of the image to 256x256. You could do this in two ways. Just hit the image menu and change the canvas size to 256x256. Or you could make a selection box of 256x256 and choose image menu and crop to selection. HINT: Choose the crop tool from the tool browser (default of right) and drag a box. The size of the box can be determined by looking at the status bar on the bottom. When you have got the box to the correct size move it around the image so that it is positioned according to how you want to see the image. Then hit image and crop. NOTE: UnrealEd supports images in multiples from 1 to 1024, that means the image could be 256x128 or 1024x256,etc.

• Once you have the image to the correct size you just have to save it. Save it as a bitmap(*.bmp) or a Zsoft Paintbrush (*.pcx). If you save it as a pcx file make sure under options it is version 5.

• Now in UnrealEd just choose textures from the browser. Hit the import button at the bottom. Locate the image saved from the previous step and hit open.

• When the import texture dialog box opens give the name that you want this texture to be called in the name field. The group that you want this texture to be put in like door, floor, etc. has to be entered in the group field. Give the name of the texture package like skycity that you want the texture to be saved to. If you want to create a all new texture package just give that name. Make sure generate mipmaps is unchecked below that. That should be all hit the ok button and you should see the texture in the browser on the right. With all that done just hit the save button and save the package in the textures folder as a *.utx file