Impressions of Torque Constructor
So those in the know, will know that we at Luma Arcade are busy working on a version Marble Blast for Garage Games! Having said that, we were given all the original source Quark & .map files of the original Marble Blast games, and there in lies the rub! I would have preferred to have max files to create .dif files from since that’s how we have worked our pipeline out since the days of Mini#37. However we couldn’t all the .difs were made in Quark. Turns out that we have had to remap and reprocess all the levels. I couldn’t handle the thought of learning Quark, so originally turned to Delgine to see if it could open raw .map files, turns out it can’t! Finally I turned to Torque Constructor 1.0.31 its been my life saver and opened my eyes to the weakness that is .map format and not the .dif format!
Obviously when opening any new software you feel slightly threatened at this new world layed out before you, and the thought of figuring out how to do something so simple as select a face seems daunting! Yet constructor is pretty easy to get into! Okay so I haven’t modeled anything (don’t plan too) but just the overall package has really impressed me!
Here’s why:-
- The interface feels comfortable and everything you need for simple editing is right in front of you all the time.
- Shortcuts to flick between Vertices, Faces & Brushes are nice and easy.
- I discovered the ‘Select’ option on the top tool bar, so handy for selecting all faces calling the same material! This was lifesaver no. 1
- Saving in Native Constructor Format, wow is .map buggy! Never try to remap something and expect the .map format to keep your texture UVs
- Exporting straight to .dif format! Saves you from having to go through the .map format which messes up your UVs something rotten! This was lifesaver no. 2
- Texture Tools!! Okay not brilliant just yet, but they do the job! There are some nice tools available like the ‘As One’ option which allows you to map multiple faces across multiple brushes at once! Awesome! Something lacking in my opinion is the ability to Fit to Face and then to ‘Tile’ the texture within that face. It can be done but via a work around of scaling and shifting your textures… a tile option would be awesome! Also the rotate tool behaves very weirdly… it seems to rotate about some random location, haven’t quiet worked out the logic behind that one yet!
One final thing I discovered is there is a nasty collision export bug in version 1.0.31 which was fixed with the update to 1.0.4, but since then they have released a 1.0.51 which has some nice little bug fixes in it! Be sure to upgrade to version 1.0.51 
Overall its a great little tool, and I might just be changing my pipeline to work from Max thru Constructor… simply to avoid the .map format!! I am going to be looking into the Max2Ctor plugin more closely to really start harnessing the power of Max & Constructor combined! 
Related Posts:
- TGEA 1.7.1 First Impressions
- 8 Things U should know when starting with DIFs
- Introduction to .Map files for the 3D Artist
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Nice to see you used torque constructor for revamping and recreating the original marble blast levels. For simplicity sake, it is a better pick than Quark, although Quark does have so many more capabilities. Constructor definitely has the upper hand at texturing, though.
Hi there!
Thanks for the comment!
Yes agreed, quark has many more features… but for the sake of Marble Blast Mobile on the iPhone we felt constructor did the job just fine. The updated versions also solved a whole bumch of our collision issues!
~C
Hi, I know this is an old post, but I wil try asking nonetheless
I have a PDF from you, entitled “3D Studio Max to DIF Pipeline”. Now that you have used Constructor, Im curious about any thoughts that may affect your prefered pipeline regarding DIFs, on making them from scratch.
Hi Novack,
Its great to get asked questions! So I will do my best to answer!
The tools available in Max for modeling far out surpass constructor. (that said the artist must be modeling with a brush based mentality) however constructor clearly has the upper hand interms of exporting functional DIFs with accurate Texture Coordinates.
There is a great tool being developed by Ryan Mounts on the Garage Games forums called ‘Max2Ctor’ that exports your brushes from Max directly into Constructor. In my opinion this pipeline our performs the Max2Dif process using Delgine, becuase Construtor has the upper hand on the DIF format.
I would suggest searching on the Forums for ‘Max2Ctor’ and playing with it!
Do let me know how it goes!
~C
Thank you very much for the info Chris!
I will look for it, and let you know how it was