i was under the impression that both of those could only open and extract files from paks? 

Nope, QuArK let's you save just fine. 

I have just tested and the tc plugin is creating pak's as well. Very straightforward 

Pakker 

thanks :) i wasn't able to check myself today.
wasn't able to find pakker though, but i should be able to use quark as i've already got that. 

http://www.gamers.org/pub/idgames2/utils/bsp_pak_tools/pakker10.zip 

so, i made a few pathetic textures and im trying to get texmex to put them in a wad, like i did once before i think, but now when ever i try to import it gives me "was ignored" on all the textures

the textures are in .bmp format and i believe they are 8 bit color

...i don't get it any clues? 

i remember that happening, and don't really recall why it did, but i'm pretty sure if you convert your bitmaps into 24bit targas, the problem should go away.

it might have to do with the 8bit bitmaps not having the correct palette (it's not enough for it to be 256 colours, it has to be the correct 256 colours). 

Are the bitmaps compressed? That might be it. 

Your texture, then 'paste image as new mip' in TexMex. 

those both worked :D

... i don't know how to compress bitmaps so i dont think i can decompress them :S 

I'm working on a terrain map. I use triangle shapes to lift the corners to equal heights and then use force to grid 1 to fit the brush.

Sometimes the brush takes the grid on a counter line and it is possible to move the brush back into its original position, gaining a clean, converted brush.

Othertimes it gets out of grid and causes the vieuw to get out of position.
http://members.home.nl/gimli/align.jpg

The first method , without forcing to grid, brings a well compiled map with errors, caused by the compiler with warnings and heling points. But a fitting brush order.

The second , with force to grid and reposition, brings a misaligned map with less errors and a better compile log, and a rather blurry brush fit.

How to avoid the process and which would be best suitable?
I never minded thes misalignements, I'm already glad the compiler takes it. But then again, the small difference could change vistime considerably. 

when i make terrain in qe3, i just do my terrain mapping in 3d view after copying and pasting all the triangular shaped brushes i need.
i keep the grid on 16 (or 8 if i need fine details) and just pull individual vertices up or down depending on what i need in the 3d view.
this usually creates good results for me. 

It would be really ace if editors allowed you to select say, 4 brushes and lock 4 vertices which all interleap with a simple keyboard shortcut, then you just drag the locked vertices into the appropriate position as one, and then "ungroup" them. 

or when you rotate a group of brushes. why do editors persist in snapping vertices to different points when they were initially sharing the same one...

also, why does firefox keep underlining 'vertices' like i'm spelling it wrong. what a bastard. 

As I read, I think my failure is caused by using the 1 grid option in force to grid. It turns out to become a disordered 0.x grid position that hardly can be healed. 

Which editor do you use? I forget..... 

your terrain generator program should automatically snap to grid too, so i don't know why it would change again if you snap to grid in the editor. 

... it could be that, unless you are zoomed into the maximum, your manipulation on the different brushes is just not lining up and not that it is actually off-grid.

I would not go below 8 for snapping unless I was trying to fit the terrain to an object that was not on the same grid reference, and then I would definitely zoom right in.

I use BspEditor and can zoom to 1600%. At that level it needs a very distinct mouse movement to move one unit and snapping acurately is easy. At the standard zoom (75%) it is impossible to line up brushwork in single unit movements even though the editor is 'snapping'. 

I use Quark63. It took quiet long before I could sahape a terrain map.
I don't use a terraineditor. Maybe a silly way I come up with.

I started with a triangle brush. Made it as precise I could. As long nothing happens to the brush it stands on grid with integers.

Then I turn the grid to 1 and force the outcorners to the 1 grid point. Of course the origin of the brush gets disordered so I have to force the whole brush into grid again.
That's my startpoint with terrain mapping and it compiled well.
Now I can make a terrainmap of all the triangle brushes. All goes well untill I lift the outpoints of the brush to level it with another brush.

From there the two outcomes appear in Quark.

Some brushes after distorted flip to a decimal but after resizing the brush with 1 the force to grid puts it exact 1 gridpoint aside. So I can easily rearange it untill it fits its origin.

Others get distorted and will never line up with the others. They will fit on x and y-axe but not in the lenght.

So I was thinking. Maybe I shoul force to grid only on a 8 or 16 grid. 

The wonders of QuArK. This is just normal behaviour from my experience... 

I am no terrain expert and it is difficult to make suggestions without knowing what you are trying to achieve. But... if you are doing anything on a large scale, then use a terrain generator and do all (most) of the modelling in that and then import it into the editor.

I did a large lump of terrain in FMB-BDG in the form of a cavern. It was over 1000 units in each direction made up a few thousand triangles of 64 units. It took about 30 minutes to do in the generator - I dread to think what it would have taken in the editor.

http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/5075/fmbbdg16bu3.jpg

You can probably make it out in this screenshot.

When I had finished, I ran the BspEditor Brush Merge and got it down to about 900 brushes (from memory). 

1 - select the brush tool, set it to "wedge" shaped (triangular prism)

2 - select a suitable texture

3 - quicky make about 4 or 5 wedge shaped brushes

4 - in the "top" view I use the vertex editing tool to move the corners of the brushes into whatever shape I want, usually on a grid not smaller than 16x16

5 - I switch to a "side" view and move the verticle edges of the prisms up and down to shape my terrain

Notes:

Nothing ever goes off grid. The editor is set to "snap to grid" and whatever the grid size may be, the points of my brushes snap to them.

Aligning the textures better is as easy as selecting my brushes and setting the attributes back to 0 (i.e. rotation, movement x, movement y, x scale, y scale), then click a button which says "to world", which tends to look OK.

You can use this method to make overhanging rocks and other intricate shapes.

It is quite time consuming but looks good in the end! 

I've just checked that old map and the cavern is 3000 x 3000 x 800 high. 

Is there anything similar to aquire's engine for q2? I was messing with q2 map, just made the first area, nothing special so far, 2 entities (start and light), but when i load it to the engine, the game just freezes and i see q2 using 99% of cpu. Wtf?