Terrain Mesh Export And Preview Capture Orbit Are Here

I have added two features that solve very different problems, but both came from the same general need: make MapToPlay more useful outside the narrowest default workflow.

The first is a new Terrain Mesh export. The second is Preview Capture Orbit in the editor. One is about getting your terrain out cleanly. The other is about showing your work properly once it is in shape.

Why Terrain Mesh Export Exists

Not everyone wants a full game-ready export every time. Sometimes the real need is much simpler: get the terrain mesh with its texture out of MapToPlay and continue working somewhere else.

That is exactly what this new export does. It outputs the terrain mesh together with the material and background texture, without trying to force the rest of a game-specific pipeline on top of it. No extra template dependency, no playable-area hole carved into the surface, no pretending this has to be something more complicated than it is.

This matters because there are plenty of cases where you want to keep moving in another DCC tool, use the terrain as reference geometry, or build your own downstream workflow around a clean terrain snapshot. For that job, a direct mesh export is simply the right format.

What The Export Actually Produces

The Terrain Mesh export currently focuses on the essentials. You get the terrain as an OBJ package together with its material and texture, using the full scene size directly from the project instead of asking you to guess or configure another confusing output-size setting.

That was intentional. If someone wants to decimate, resize, or process the mesh further, that is usually better done in the external tool where the rest of the work is happening anyway. The export should give you a clean starting point, not try to outsmart your pipeline.

• Full-scene terrain mesh export
• Material and texture included
• No carved playable-area hole
• No template requirement
• No extra terrain-side export settings to fight with

Preview Capture Orbit In The Editor

The other addition is Preview Capture Orbit. This one is much more visual. It exists because clean presentation matters, and repeatedly trying to hand-position the camera for nice preview shots is annoying, slow, and inconsistent.

Preview Capture Orbit gives me a controlled way to orbit around the map and capture showcase footage that feels deliberate instead of improvised. It is there to make previews look better, but also to make producing them less tedious.

Why It Works Well With Viewport Focus

Preview Capture Orbit becomes more useful when combined with Viewport focus. Orbit gives motion and consistency. Viewport focus gives framing. Together they make it much easier to create previews that actually direct attention where it should go instead of just spinning randomly around a huge scene.

That combination is important because a map editor scene is usually too large and too information-dense to present well by accident. If I want previews to communicate terrain shape, composition, and atmosphere, I need tools that help isolate the interesting part of the scene and move around it cleanly.

The Point Of Both Features

These updates are really about the same underlying idea: MapToPlay should not trap the user in one rigid path. Sometimes you need a direct export into another tool. Sometimes you need a better way to present what you have built. Both are valid, and both deserve proper support.

I want the platform to be practical. Terrain Mesh export makes it easier to continue work elsewhere. Preview Capture Orbit makes it easier to present work here. Both reduce friction in places where friction adds no value.

More of this kind of improvement is coming. The goal is not just more features, but better leverage: fewer awkward workarounds, cleaner exports, and tools that make the editor easier to actually use day to day.

Stan, Developer of MapToPlay