[25-1] THRED

Learn to use THRED, the powerful map editor for Quake Champions. Discover its features like real-time preview, CSG, texture mapping, and brush manipulation.

Alright, let's dive into THRED, a super cool map editor that'll let you build your own arenas for Quake Champions. Think of it as your digital LEGO set for creating some epic maps. It's packed with features that make map-making way more intuitive and fun.

What THRED Does:

• Real-time Preview: This is huge! You get to see your map exactly as it'll look in-game, from a simple wireframe to a fully textured and lit environment, all updated live as you work. No more guessing how things will turn out.
• Live Positioning: While you're building, THRED shows you exactly where your viewpoint is in the map, making navigation and understanding the layout a breeze.
• Concave Brush Support: This is a bit technical, but basically, it means you can create more complex shapes directly. When you export your map to the standard .MAP format, THRED smartly breaks these down into simpler pieces that Quake can handle.
• Brush Management: You can easily load and save your brush creations. The initial shapes are pretty standard – cubes, spheres, cylinders – but more are planned, so your options will grow.
• Transformations: Take any brush and rotate it, scale it, move it, or even shear it along any axis. This gives you incredible control over your map's geometry.
• Map Element Creation: THRED has dialogs that help you whip up common map elements like stairs and rings. Once created, you can tweak them further with rotation, scaling, and placement.
• Real-time CSG: Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) is how maps are often built, using shapes to add or subtract from each other. Doing this in real-time means you can see the results of your CSG operations instantly, making the building process much smoother.
• Dynamic Lighting: Place lights directly within the editor to get a feel for the mood and atmosphere of your map. You can experiment with dramatic lighting effects without ever leaving THRED.
• Advanced Texture Mapping: This is a powerful feature. You can select specific polygons or groups of polygons while navigating your map and change their textures. You can also align textures precisely, similar to other advanced editors like buildEd.
• Brush Alignment Tools: Need to line up a new brush perfectly with existing geometry? THRED has functions to help you do just that, ensuring clean and precise map construction.
• Automatic Scaling: Complex objects you create can be automatically scaled down to sizes that Quake can efficiently render, preventing performance issues.
• Undo System: Made a mistake? No worries. THRED has a robust undo system, so you can easily backtrack and fix errors without starting over.

Basically, THRED gives you all the tools you need to bring your Quake Champions map ideas to life, from basic shapes to complex lighting and texturing. It’s designed to make the whole process feel more immediate and less like a chore.