Vertex Manipulation 2
Reducing Brush Counts & R-Speeds using comples brushes.
Ok,I'm assuming that you've already got some experience with the vertexmanipulation tool or read the first tutorial of this series. If not,then I would recommend learning about this tool before going ahead withthis tutorial as it'll help you understand this.
Ok, sowhat exactly does this tutorial cover? Well, there is a limit to theamount of brushes that a level can have. These are 8192 (using zonerscompile tools) and about half this amount if you're using the standardcompile tools that come with Hammer. So, if you've got a set-up of ablock and a wedge, you have 2 brushes. However, using vertexmanipulation, you could reduce this to 1, allowing for a more complexand bigger map to be made.
So this means that you can make more interesting brushes for your map, and also less brush count.
So lets take the example of the wedge. Here, we have a block and a wedge:
Ok, now here we have a total of 2 brushes. Now, if you have this in 10different places in your map for doorsteps or ramps, etc, you will have20 brushes from these alone.
Now, to reduce this count, you can do the following:
Make a block like below and go into vertex manipulation mode. I've got one of 768 x 320 x 128.
Next step is to select in the 3D view, the edge on the top of the rightside of the brush, and drag it back towards the centre of the block,like so:
And there you have a wedge! This has saved on brush use for the map andalso the amount of brush faces in your map. This may not seem much, butsay you've got a block and a wedge for 20 doorsteps in the map and 5ramps in your level, that's 50 brushes in total. With this methodabove, you will have cut this in half, to 25. This is very useful forlarger maps and also compile time, as well as r_speeds! Lots of goodthings there!
But why?Well, the more brushes you have, the longer your compile time will be,both on CSG and VIS. So if you've halved the amount of brushes used,you've chopped off a lot of time that VIS will take to compile yourmap.
Also, it will be reducing r_speeds by the fact that insteadof the engine having to draw two brushes, it draws one instead. In ahigh w_poly area, this application can work wonders on reducing it.And, since doorsteps will be quite small, VIS won't have to berendering two small brushes, it will have to be rendering one biggerbrush. This is good because big brushes are rendered faster.
Note that this can also be done using the clip tool.
Now, obviously, there are more things that this can be applied to.Corner sections of walls are an example. Not only can you reduce theamount of brushes used, you can also give the corner a better look,rather than a 90 degree angle.
Here we have a corner:
Now, going on the information above about compile times and enginerendering, this will be bad for rendering. Two brushes, that are alsothin = slower rendering. So what can we do? Well, our friend, vertexmanipulation can be applied!
First of all, create a 5 sided cylinder and go into vertex manipulation mode:
Now, adjust the shape until you have this:
Replacing the two-sided corner we had earlier, we now have this:
There we go! Looks much better than a 90 degree angle and we now havecut the brushes in half (2 to 1!). The brush is a lot bigger as well,so less rendering time spent too.
If you had that corner of two brushes in 50 places in your map, that's100 brushes in total. Instead, you can have 50 brushes, with 7 facesper corner rather than 12 using this method. Both counts are a lotlower, allowing for a better-looking map to be made!
These are only two examples of reducing brushes by using complexbrushes, but are the most common and simplistic ones I could think offor the tutorial. I know there are other ways of reducing brush countusing this method, I'm just not going to explain all of them!
Remember,If your r_speeds are bad, and you've not tried this method yet, itcould be worth giving it a shot, as I brought mine down from 800 to 650using this method in one area on a map!
NB:After you finish using vertex manipulation on any solid and you likethe outcome, always do a test compile and check for problems. This way,if its wrong, you can fix it straight away. By The God
[ 本帖最后由 Simen.sllove 于 2007-11-20 09:24 编辑 ] |