https://wiki.beamng.com/Portal Blender (with plenty of plugins like https://www.beamng.com/threads/blender-addon.56981/ http://renderhjs.net/textools/blender/) Notepad++ Powerpoint (seriously, it beats Inkscape so often!) Gimp Irfanview (with plugins) CSP (clip studio paint) Excel Math More Math Thing to help math https://joshmadison.com/convert-for-windows/ 4 different web browsers, plenty of addons, hundreds of tabs open for researching stuff Time, too much time and even more time MPC Classic, that is vital to play tunes of deathmetal, chiptune, classic opera and alike in same playlist Virtual dub 64 for cutting stupid videos, which people will watch like 10% most of the time as they are so boring. Visual Studio to code some more tools (mostly failing while trying) Notepad (one that comes with windows, or came, does it come in win 10 anymore?) Intel GPA Audacity Node beam editor I use really little, especially nowdays there are better ways, but it is useful for viewing stuff once you learn how to use keypad to pan etc. But then sometimes, especially when fooling around with heightmaps, more tools will be needed, so going for search engine and trying to find out something that might work. I wonder if I'm forgetting something, probably there was something else, but I'm hitting blank.
For me: Blender (to model) Notepad++ (Jbeam, materials etc) Paint.net (Textures) Gimp (Textures) BNEditor (Jbeam edits, tris and visualisation) BeamNG (Duhh) Chrome (Research and showing off to you) Outlook (to send emails ) Math (Converting, calculating node positions etc) Discord(To help others and chat) Spotify(Some rock or synthwave music) Microsoft Office and google Drive for feedback, presentations and other stuff Quite a long list Most of the stuff is free
Or just stick to Blender - modeling work Notepad++ - jbeam, materials, lua abd pretty much everything else but textures Paint.net/sometimes gimp- textures, skins and so on. Any internet browser - research, music and getting distracted. Other stuff is pretty much optional/ highier end stuff.
This is literally all I use... nothing else. So yeah... you don't need a lot to do absolutely everything in Beam.
no need to scare the guy away from modding, with putting so many not exactly needed programs. @Blijo @fufsgfen
I come from a sim racing background and modeling race tracks from the ground up 100% from 3D models. These are the tools Ive used for a long time to make a boat load of tracks for all of the ISI sims. I have adapted my workflow for this game, but still use the same basic design scheme that I've evolved over the years. 3DSMax: with the Open Collada DAE plugin for all 3D modeling. Most of the time, I model the entire layout and terrain in 3DSMax, then render the map as a height map to import seamlessly as Torque 3D terrain. I wouldn't have been able to build Pikes Peak or my other large projects if I had to shape terrain 100% by hand. I never got my head around Blender and used Milk Shape prior to getting serious about modeling. 3DS has very detailed documentation and teaches you everything you need to know, no need to go hunting for how to do anything. Its extremely customizeable and I have all the tools and modes I use on toolbars and keybindings where I can use them instantly. Google Maps: for basic research of real world locations and building satellite orthographic maps. Street View can give very detailed images of locations that have been photographed. USGS Earth Explorer: A huge resource for free maps and terrain data. they have 1000's of high res 2D maps and 3D terrain models including 1 meter resolution orthographic satellite maps, 6 meter DEM's of most areas, and 1 meter resolution LIDAR. L3DT: I use this height map editor as a go-between for getting digital terrain models from the USGS website into 16bit grayscale PNG files that can be imported into Torque 3D terrain. I used it recently to import a chunk of the Grand Canyon that I was having trouble getting in game due to very limited resources for this remote area, Notepad++ for editing materials and all other text based files like JSON. Paint Shop Pro 7 and 8: With the Nvidia DDS plugin for all my 2D editing of textures and menu images. It looks basic but has some powerful vector and layer tools for compositing images and touching up. They are unfortunately 32 bit, so are unreliable for working with 8K images that push 2-4Gb memory usage. ive found some of GIMP's tools useful but don't like the janky interface. Microsoft One Drive: For cloud storage and backup. I also use the included OneNote app for coordinating with my beta testers and other developers. It works well as a shared whiteboard for making checklists to keep track of in-progress tasks and squashing bugs.
Basically what AI'torror said. But if you want a really quick and easy method for getting heightmaps, this tool is great: https://terrain.party/ Its intended for getting heightmaps for Cities Skylines, but it outputs heightmap png's in a zip file, which is a pretty nice feature.
I did try that, but resolution sucks. To get resolution you need to cramp that huge area to tiny area which kinda then is not so nice. Blender works for heightmaps too, member named Average Person has been experimenting with that, rendering heightmaps with Blender is something I hope to do some day.
if your looking for heightmaps this website is very useful https://tangrams.github.io/heightmapper/ it's basically terrain.party but you can turn off auto-exposure and download a large area as separate heightmaps and then stich them together in gimp.
For me, all this programs... But you forget the most important one... PATIENCE Without patience, anything you do will turn into a hot mess...
Link to download? Yeah, patience and that certain stubbornness, will to drill trough bedrock and dig new information, seek solutions, be like a Sherlock Holmes searching missing piece of the puzzle. I think modders generally are bit difficult persons, because they kinda need to be quite stubborn, I know I am at least, but I try not to be difficult, that is not easy though.
