Hint of the day (arf)
nrby
Join Date: 2002-03-05 Member: 270Members
Join Date: 2002-03-05 Member: 270Members
I noticed a lot of ns maps had (by thier nature) loads of pipes. These can easily make your r_speeds rise because the shape of the pipe cuts lots of new portals and makes vis cry.
You can help it out using hints.
Untreated pipes, notice no hinting. not tied to entity, points not snapped to grid.
<img src="http://csnation.counter-strike.net/barney/personal/wc_nohint.jpg" border="0">
Notice r_speeds are touching 300
<img src="http://csnation.counter-strike.net/barney/personal/game_nohint.jpg" border="0">
Pipes hinted, covering the pipes, not touching the wall.
<img src="http://csnation.counter-strike.net/barney/personal/wc_hint.jpg" border="0">
Hinted r_speeds are about 50 polys less. Add this up in an area and you could save a lot of poly's
<img src="http://csnation.counter-strike.net/barney/personal/game_hint.jpg" border="0">
Hope this helps <!--emo&:)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'><!--endemo-->
You can help it out using hints.
Untreated pipes, notice no hinting. not tied to entity, points not snapped to grid.
<img src="http://csnation.counter-strike.net/barney/personal/wc_nohint.jpg" border="0">
Notice r_speeds are touching 300
<img src="http://csnation.counter-strike.net/barney/personal/game_nohint.jpg" border="0">
Pipes hinted, covering the pipes, not touching the wall.
<img src="http://csnation.counter-strike.net/barney/personal/wc_hint.jpg" border="0">
Hinted r_speeds are about 50 polys less. Add this up in an area and you could save a lot of poly's
<img src="http://csnation.counter-strike.net/barney/personal/game_hint.jpg" border="0">
Hope this helps <!--emo&:)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'><!--endemo-->
Comments
My map isn't very cylinder heavy at the moment, mostly because I tried other ways to showcase pipes and machinery, but now my hands are untied <!--emo&:)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'><!--endemo-->
Just curious though, as I do know a little about mapping : If you just made them not touch the walls and not added hint brushes, how much does that help the r_speeds? (Just from the way I read about hint brushes, I dont see how they would help here, but maybe I learned them wrong)
<!--EDIT|Comprox|Mar. 05 2002,18:25-->
Basically avoid having world based cylinders touch other faces, i'll explain why tommorow.
A picture with gl_wireframe 1 on would've confirmed this, so I'm just guessing. I'm too lazy to try it out for myself at the moment <!--emo&:)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'><!--endemo-->
A technique I came up with for the pipes under the floors in my levels was to have only the upper half showing with NULL on the bottom and the ends, with a 1 unit gap to the wall, that way i cut about 100 of my r_speeds in the area i was working with, and you couldn't tell because there was no way to see the bottom half of the pipes.
Oh, and also, using hints like n@rby did will also significantly reduce VIS compile time, and go a long way towards preventing those occasional HOM artifacts on angled faces.
<!--EDIT|Relic25|Mar. 05 2002,22:03-->
But i can make just 1 brush over the tube or i have to make 4 brushes?(i think the 1st way but i dunno)
AND always about hint brushes...what's the use for entire areas? Can someone tell me where to find tutorials and/or samples and/or everything else where to learn more about?(if someone can't explain here)
Here is another one use the null texture.
I can be used instead of {invisible or {blue on funk illusionarys and on a side on a brush entity that is not visible.
In the attached picture, you can see a cylinder that is splitting up an adjacent surface. (This is the example I was writing about when I said that even moving the end of this cylinder 2 units away from the wall didn't keep the adjacent face from being split up.) Anyway, the reason that the face is being split up is because those are the boundaries of the VIS portals that were created. VIS must calculate every other VIS portal that can be seen from each of these portals. In other words, the 'space' surrounding the cylinder must be subdivided in order to analyze what other 'spaces' are visible from anywhere around the cylinder. By nature, it is more difficult (time consuming) for VIS to run visportal calculations for non-regular (non-90 degree) 'spaces', and leads to a greater chance of error in the VIS calculations (results in HOM effects).
In Figure 1, an overhead of a cylinder in a room, you see how the space is automatically subdivided if the compiler is allowed to fraction up the space on its own. This creates a lot of non-90 degree vis portals in the space around the cylinder.
Figure 2 shows the same cylinder surrounded by a hint brush. The hint brush prevents the wild fractioning and creates much more 'regular' blocks of space. It also confines the fractioning to a controlled, regular space. This prevents the face splitting that sometimes occurs even when a brush isn't in direct contact with another surface.
I know a lot of this is probably common knowledge, and if any of it is incorrect, feel free to correct me, but this is what I have come to understand from past experience.
<!--EDIT|Relic25|Mar. 06 2002,15:34-->
<a href="http://countermap.counter-strike.net/Tutorials/tutorial.php?id=2" target="_blank">http://countermap.counter-strike.net/Tutorials/tutorial.php?id=2</a>
Is there a way to explain it easier?
Juggie: Unfortunately, I don't know of an easier way to explain it. Although that page credits me, I didn't write that tutorial. I only edited it. It's really difficult to understand exactly how hint brushes work and how to really use them effectively until you fully understand how CSG, BSP, VIS, and HL's rendering engine work to process what is drawn in a map. Using the same principles as briefly discussed above, you can apply the same rules to using hint brushes to more controllably split up the space in a room/area so that fewer other spaces can be 'seen' along the longest line-of-sight from anywhere within each subdivided space. Essentially, all hint brushes do is create vis portals along the faces to which the hint texture is applied. It may help some people to change the mindset from maps being constructed of solids to maps being simply chunks of space with texturing on the interior surfaces.
<!--EDIT|Relic25|Mar. 06 2002,16:52-->
Can u clarify? PLEASE!
This isn't always the case. Every once and a while, you'll find that it will still split faces, even if the brushes aren't touching. It just depends on what the compile process decides is the most efficient way to build the VIS portals.