[Dev News] TrenchBroom 3D Level Editor

[xSicKxBot]

Over the years here on GameFromScratch we have covered TrenchBroom importers such as Qodot for Godot and TrenchBroom inspired tools such as Anvil for Blender. We never actually covered TrenchBroom itself… until today. TrenchBroom is a modern level editor, available for Windows, Mac and Linux, completely free and open source, for creating Quake maps common in the popular Boomer Shooter indie genre. In addition to supporting most early idTech and Valve Source engine games, you can also author maps for custom game engines as well as Unity, Godot and Unreal Engine (detailed below).

Features of TrenchBroom:

• General
  • Full support for editing in 3D and in up to three 2D views
    
    
  • High performance renderer with support for huge maps
    
    
  • Unlimited Undo and Redo
    
    
  • Macro-like command repetition
    
    
  • Issue browser with automatic quick fixes
    
    
  • Point file support
    
    
  • Automatic backups
    
    
  • .obj file export
    
    
  • Free and cross platform
    
    
  
  
• Brush Editing
  • Robust vertex editing with edge and face splitting and manipulating multiple vertices together
    
    
  • Clipping tool with two and three points
    
    
  • Scaling and shearing tools
    
    
  • CSG operations: merge, subtract, intersect
    
    
  • UV view for easy texture manipulations
    
    
  • Precise texture lock for all brush editing operations
    
    
  • Multiple material collections
    
    
  
  
• Entity Editing
  • Entity browser with drag and drop support
    
    
  • Support for FGD and DEF files for entity definitions
    
    
  • Mod support
    
    
  • Entity link visualization
    
    
  • Displays 3D models in the editor
    
    
  • Smart entity property editors
    
    
  
  
• Supported Games
  • Quake (Standard and Valve 220 file formats)
    
    
  • Quake 2
    
    
  • Quake 3 (partial, no patches or brush primitives yet)
    
    
  • Hexen 2
    
    
  • Daikatana
    
    
  • Generic (for custom engines)
    
    
  • More games can be supported with custom game configurations
    
    
  
  

Key Links

TrenchBroom Homepage

TrenchBroom GitHub

TrenchBroom Manual

TrenchBroom Discord

Godot Plugins

Func_Godot

Qodot

Unity Plugins

QuakeKit

Scopa

Tremble (Unity Asset Store) [Affiliate Link]

Unreal Engine

HammUEr

You can learn more about TrenchBroom, see the basics of how it works and more in the below.