posted 02-21-2002 01:40 PM           

So Quakin' I guess I don't follow "overdraw"... what does that mean? And by tris I assume you're abbreviating triangles... for a few minutes I was like "tris... tris.." (pronounced "triss ... triz? tries... hmm.."). Why would z-fighting occur in the case of 1 caulk structure and 1 textured detail brush in the same place? Are you also saying that when it draws one face of a brush, it draws all of them?

quote:

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Originally posted by Shuhite: no such thing as stupid questions... just stupid people! So Quakin' I guess I don't follow "overdraw"... what does that mean? And by tris I assume you're abbreviating triangles... for a few minutes I was like "tris... tris.." (pronounced "triss ... triz? tries... hmm.."). Why would z-fighting occur in the case of 1 caulk structure and 1 textured detail brush in the same place? Are you also saying that when it draws one face of a brush, it draws all of them? Alrighty then... more questions from a stupid person. I eagerly await your reply to my mail, as well

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Yes tris is triangles.

Ok an explination of what I am calling overdaw. When a brush with a textured face passes behind another textured brush the game draws 2 lots of texture in the same place. Viewed from a distance in game it can and does cause z-fighting. Especialy in 16bit mode. RTCW is plauged with this sort of z-fighting.

An example I just built.

ugly isnt it?

This 1 is without overdraw. More tris but looks a lot better.

It just a choise you make when you map. Do you have more tris or do you have overdraw and probably z-fighting as well. I nearly always go with a few more tris.

Q

P.S. You may be in for a long wait on the e-mail reply. I am busy!

posted 02-21-2002 03:06 PM          

see the explosion pic:
In this case the z fighting would occur, if he would have used only beam A, textured the 3 face and put the crossbar on. Then, on beam A the texture of the face facing to the small face of the crossbar would run underneath it. And if that was viewed in 16 bit from an angle and a far distance then maybe z-fighting would have occured. (why is that actually I mean are the q3 engines calculations that inaccurate or do all games suffer from this like q3)

What I dont understand is why he uses beam B, because he could have just textured the lower face of A and have the same effect I would think...

edit: ooops too late

quote:

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Originally posted by SpletteR: What I dont understand is why he uses beam B, because he could have just textured the lower face of A and have the same effect I would think...

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The visible area of the top and bottom of the beam are differnt. Take a look at the map or map file and you will see that................

posted 02-21-2002 03:13 PM           

If the textured brush (red prism) has caulk on the two sides slapped up against the other brushes (orange and purplish) where does the problem come? I guess I can kind of see when it's trying to draw the red over the orange... so the solution is to chop out another brush? Did you do that manually or with el evil subtracto?

I realy do need to find the time to learn how to do that stuff.

As for Q&A;, including just the posts that gives useful info and the matching questions would be best I think. bit of pruning called for or that site will end up with 100's of pages LOL

Thanks BTW

posted 02-22-2002 02:54 AM          

Excellent work sir.

posted 02-22-2002 03:17 AM          

Ok I needed a curve in a street. So I started a new map created one 16 sided brush (768 unit diameter) and one 12 sided brush (512u diameter,as rough circles). Then I cut up both brushes using the clipper so I have only 1 quater (90deg curve). After that I adjusted the outer edges of both quater "circles" to be on grid. Then I substracted the smaller diameter brush from the bigger one and ready was my bend in the street. Finally I selected the street pieces (which were cut by the substract pretty well) and loaded them into my normal map. Dunno if any microbrushes were created like that but since i only selcted the needed pieces to load them into my map it shouldnt matter nayway.

Before I did that (knowing CSG is evil) I tried to do the same by clipping brushes into shape, I just couldnt get the street to have the same width during the curve as when staight. I also created way more brushes and triangles (ingame) this way .

Its about time I did the evils of subtract in this thread. I didn't use it on this map but I do sometimes.........as I know what I'm doing!

posted 02-22-2002 03:22 PM           

I've spent a few hours converting this thread into a semi-smooth website for easier viewing and simply because Quakin's process NEEDS to be up on a website!

Check it out at
http://www2.gvsu.edu/~bickelj/quakin/
and let me know what you think. I should have the whole ordeal in a zip package available for download later on tonight or tomorrow. I need to finish Q&A; and then finish filling out the image tags before I make a one-page version and then zip it all up.

CSG SUBTRACT

Ok 1st thanks to Spletter for sending the brushwork this is based on.

The idea was to make a curved pathway so CSG Subtract was used using a brush similar to the caulk 1 I recreated. I have also retextured for ease of viewing.

I suspect he altered the top brush but it is a good enough example of the evils of subtract.

1st the brushwork is cut on a gridsize of 1.
2nd the cuts are not optimal
3rd if the side faces are textured you get overdraw & z-fighting.

Shows the side faces textured. As that expanded view shows the texture extends behind other brushes. Go look at the Pro version of the lost world map and you will see the z-fighting this can cause (curved wall by RA)

If you want to use brushwok to make a path like this then building it yourself is better.

Like this.

Brushwork is on a bigger grid & no overdraw.

However the best way to build curves is normaly with patches. It is what they are for after all.

Hope that all helps!

Q

Edit: This was debated here http://www.quake3world.com/ubb/Forum6/HTML/020668.html?

posted 02-24-2002 07:52 PM          

I see someone else has already asked the same question in the thread earlier

doh!

posted 03-02-2002 01:16 AM          

Basically I have a house surrounded by terrain. It is a 2 story mansion, complete with windows, doors, etc. My problem is no matter where I stand outside, it draws the entire house, although all the walls are structural and all doorways and windows have been filled with hint brushes...

Now I've been looking at id / Nerve maps, and have been going by the way they do hinting, but it seems like they dont know what they're doing sometimes...

What procedure should I follow so that the parts of the house that are opposite of me won't be drawn when I'm on one side of the house. So for example, if I'm on the left side of the house, how can I prevent the rooms on the right side of the house from being drawn?

Also, the house is split into about 9 parts on each level... so think of the floor plan as basically 2 tic-tac-toe tables stacked on top of each other with a hold in the middle somewhere for stairs connecting the two. I'm not sure if this is relevant...

I've tried lots of things... putting hints in the windows / doors, putting hint trianlges that split the 1024*1024 portal squares, etc... none of it seems to make a difference.

To make matters worse, the house is sitting on a terrain map (detailed), and within the terrain map, "underground", contains a set of tunnels.... the tunnels come up into a set of trenches that surround the mansion. Of course, once you come out into the trenches you can see the ALL of the house...

Hope this made some sense....

posted 03-02-2002 06:32 AM          

A few things come to mind though.

1st. Dont look at the hinting in those maps you mentioned. Whoever placed those hints didn't understand how hints work.

2nd. Do you have simple caulk brushes inside the terrain to aid with vis blocking?

3rd. Hinting a building on terrain might not be worth doing. Or at least not in a big way. Would probably take a lot of hints and a big jump in vis data to get it to work. I would need to see the map to know. Maybe a screenshot or 2 of the area in question would help.

4th. Have you read some good hinting tutorials?

these are quite good.
http://www.quake3world.com/ubb/Forum6/HTML/019324.html?
http://fps.brainerd.net/hintbrushes.htm

posted 03-03-2002 12:45 AM          

quote:

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Originally posted by Shuhite: From what very little I know about hinting, my guess would be the following: (black square is outside of buildings, red lines are edges of hint brushes) I'm thinkin that this would pretty much make sure that from any given standpoint the entire house is not being drawn....... anybody out there think this is right/wrong? Let me know cuz this is my understanding

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That pic isn't the best I ever saw but I can see what you are aiming at. Here is 1 I did earlier.

8 hints there. That was for a pillar and the point was to show that to hint it creates a lot of leafs for little gain. For a building you would need some form of horizontal hinting too. Basicly a huge number of leafs created for minimal gain. Unless that building contains a lot of tris and is realy hitting fps hard it probably isn't worth hinting externaly (you might be able to use some internal hints to help a bit though). Be aware also that those hints would need to be extended back till they hit more structure & that the pivot points chosen would depend on the layout of the map.

posted 03-03-2002 12:49 AM          

These show that leaving overdraw in can sometimes cause EXTRA tris! Depends on the brushwork & where the t-junctions are. Dont just assume that going for the 'easy' option saves tris.

Edit: Added pics back in.