Maps

The map view (the map icon in the activity bar, or Ctrl+4) shows a map in 3D with everything it places: meshes, player starts, spawn points, bot and deployable factories, capture points, payload paths, jump pads, triggers, blocking and other volumes, lights, sounds, emitters and navigation points. You can move, rotate and scale what it places and edit every property, and read and rewire its Kismet.

Opening a map

The side bar lists the playable maps: the packages that stream sublevels (TD_Abyss_P, SG_SerpentBeach_P…). Untick Playable maps only to see every package with a level in it. Pick one and the Studio reads the map and every sublevel it streams (art, collision, lighting, AI, skybox, effects…). That takes about half a second for most maps; the meshes then load in the background (the counter at the bottom left).

The side bar then shows:

• Levels: the map's packages. The eye hides a level, the graph icon opens its Kismet. A dot means the level has unsaved edits.
• Show: which kinds of actors are drawn. Blocking volumes, navigation and level info start hidden.
• The outliner: every actor of the visible levels, with a filter. Click one to select it, double-click to frame it.

Moving around

Input	What it does
Left drag	Orbit
Right drag	Pan; hold it and press W A S D (Q E down/up) to fly
Wheel	Zoom
Click	Select the actor under the pointer
F	Frame the selection
W / E / R	Move, rotate or scale with the gizmo
Q	Select only (no gizmo)
Escape	Deselect

The toolbar picks the shading: Lit, Unlit, No textures or Wireframe. Player starts take their team's colour; volumes are drawn as outlines; a light's reach shows when it is selected.

Editing

Drag the gizmo, then release: the Studio writes the actor's Location, Rotation and DrawScale3D into its level package. Meshes that the cooker gathered into a StaticMeshCollectionActor (most of a map's art) are moved through their own component's Translation, Rotation and Scale3D instead. The inspector on the right shows the selected actor's properties; edit any of them like in the Packages view.

These are ordinary package edits: Ctrl+Z takes them back, Save (Ctrl+S) writes the changed level packages, they go into your project and the mod cooker ships them as deltas of the level packages.

What the game does not recompute

Cooked maps carry data that was computed from where things were when the map was built, and the Studio does not rebuild it:

• Lighting and shadows are baked: a moved mesh keeps its old light map, so it can look too dark or too bright, and the shadow it used to cast stays where it was.
• Bot navigation (the Havok nav mesh and the path network) is not rebuilt: moving navigation points or blocking the way can break bot pathing.
• BSP collision cannot change. Blocking volumes and meshes move with their collision.

Adding and removing actors is not available yet.

Heavy walls

Heavy walls in the toolbar colours everything flagged m_bCanBaseOn False: a "rooftop" that champions slide off instead of standing on. Each face is coloured by its slope: roofs and floors grey (where the flag belongs), slopes orange, and walls red. Red walls are the heavy walls: walls flagged as rooftops by mistake. Flagged blocking volumes are shown even when volumes are hidden, see-through. Tick X-ray to draw each flagged object in one flat colour instead (meshes red, volumes yellow), seen through everything in front of it: quick to spot every flagged object on a map. Tick rooftops above the outliner to list only the flagged actors.

The inspector's Can be stood on switch sets the flag. For a mesh the cooker gathered into a collection the flag belongs to the collection actor, so it changes for every mesh of that collection.

Exporting

Export in the toolbar writes the map as one GLB (glTF, metres) or FBX (centimetres), Y up, for Blender or another engine. Both open in Blender's FBX importers (the classic and the newer one). By default it takes the levels and kinds of actors the view shows. Each mesh is stored once and placed by an object per placement (Blender imports them as linked duplicates), grouped by level, with materials and textures embedded (up to 512², 1024², 2048² or full size). Volumes as meshes adds the shapes of volumes. Abyss exports in about three seconds.

Kismet

Kismet in the toolbar (or a level's graph icon) shows the level's sequences as a graph: events (red), actions (blue), conditions (yellow), sub-sequences (purple) and variables (circles). The cooker strips the node positions, so the Studio rebuilds the layout from the connector positions the cooker kept; nodes it cannot place sit in a row below. Comment boxes are listed above the graph.

Input	What it does
Drag the background, wheel	Pan, zoom
Drag a node's title	Move it (only in this view: positions are not saved)
Drag an output to an input	Link them
Drag a variable connector to a variable	Link the variable
Click a link, then Delete; or Alt+click	Break the link
Double-click a sub-sequence	Go into it (the breadcrumb goes back)
F	Fit the graph

Adding nodes: the list offers every kind of node the game's maps use (Delay, Toggle, Touch, Bot Spawned, Level Loaded, Ak Post Event…), with how often each is used. The new node is a copy of one of them with its links and title removed. Anything it pointed at that the level does not have is cleared. If an actor of this level is selected in the 3D view, a new event fires from it (it is added to the actor's GeneratedEvents) and a new object variable holds it. Then link it like any other node. Deleting a node also removes every link to it.

Kismet runs on the server and in the client, so a mod that changes it must be installed on both.

Select a node to see and edit its properties on the right. An event fired by an actor names it: show it jumps to the actor in the 3D view.

Matinee

Matinee timelines move things: gates, doors, platforms, cutscene cameras. Double-click a Matinee node in Kismet (or Open in Matinee in its properties) to open its timeline under the 3D view:

• Groups and tracks: each group with the actors it drives, and every key list of its tracks: movement (PosTrack positions, EulerTrack rotations, or one curve per axis), property curves, events, camera cuts, toggles and sounds.
• Preview: play (Space) or drag on the ruler to scrub. The driven actors move in the 3D view and every movement draws its path. The preview interpolates linearly between keys; the game uses the keys' curve modes.
• Editing: click a key to edit its time and value in the bar above the tracks, or drag it along the timeline (it stays between its neighbours). Double-click a row to add a key there (a copy of the key before it). Delete removes the selected key.

A movement keyed relative to the actor (IMF_RelativeToInitial) is drawn from where the actor stands, so moving the actor moves its path too. Matinees fed by a named variable are resolved like the game resolves them, by name.

Automation

The MCP server's studio_map tool lists, opens and inspects maps, lists actors by kind, selects and moves them, hides kinds and levels, lists and fixes heavy walls, exports the map, reads Kismet sequences, links, unlinks, adds and removes nodes, and opens and edits Matinee timelines. See Automation.