wade on 16/8/2020 at 22:47
Quote Posted by Psych0sis
Why use objects for walls instead of regular terrain brushes?
I tried terrain brushes previously, but mono gave me an apparent cell cycle warning. I'm not sure why, usually I get those if a solid brush crosses over two air brushes. In this spot, the terrain brush was between two other wall objects.
wade on 16/8/2020 at 22:54
Quote Posted by PinkDot
Good to hear the tag worked for you, but I'm wondering if everything is OK with the normals of your mesh. Maybe it's just hard to make out the actual shape from those screengrabs, but typically for solid objects you don't need the double-sided polygons, if all of them face outwards. Double-sided is for thin meshes like leaves, paper, fabric - generally modeled with a single, no thickness polygon, seen from both sides. Otherwise you might be doubling up the polycount of your meshes.
At first the upper part of the doorway was invisible, much like the inside of a 1-sided object. This is a space where a portcullis-type object would move. How would I go about fixing normals if vertices have already merged or edges have been merged or filled?
wade on 16/8/2020 at 23:19
Quote Posted by nicked
Yeah I couldn't tell from the first image, but the fixed version doesn't look like it should need any double-sided textures. It looks like the normals were facing the wrong way.
See my reply to PinkDot, but here's some screenshots from within Blender 2.79b with solid and wireframe selected. As far as normals facing outward, the object's faces for the upper door area were merely recessed. I merged some vertices at certain points, also bridging or filling some edges, so long as the resulting faces were triangulated.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/GnsJDBf.jpg Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/v402LiM.jpg Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/nJxzdq0.jpg Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/2fLWKgV.jpg
nicked on 17/8/2020 at 06:58
Oof, that's one messy shape. You could make that with about 75% less polys. You don't actually need to triangulate in Blender as 3DStoBin will do that for you, but manually triangulating complex faces will save you from the algorithm creating impossibly thin slivers.
Bear in mind as well that objects can only have square or spherical collision in Dromed, so you'll have problems making it accurate with a shape like that intended to replace terrain (in addition the other limitations of objects such as light mapping and AI visibility).
Checking Normals: In Blender 2.79b (this will differ for later Blender versions), in Edit mode, turn on Face Normals from the toolbar down the right. This will show you blue lines sticking out from each face:
Inline Image:
https://nickdablin.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/normals1.png If the blue line is pointing inwards, select the affected face and click Flip Direction from Shading\UVs panel:
Inline Image:
https://nickdablin.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/normals2.pngCell cycle warning: I don't think I've ever seen this error. If you post the exact error message you're seeing, we may be able to help. There should be no problem whatsoever with solid brushes crossing air brushes. Without seeing the error, I would first make sure there's no obvious problems, like ensure your brushes are snapped to the grid.
wade on 17/8/2020 at 17:44
Quote Posted by nicked
Oof, that's one messy shape. You could make that with about 75% less polys. You don't actually need to triangulate in Blender as 3DStoBin will do that for you, but manually triangulating complex faces will save you from the algorithm creating impossibly thin slivers.
Well, I can try it again in Face Mode with Select-Similar-coplanar-delete, then Edge Mode, select all edges, F (fill). That will "restart" it and reduce triangles.
Quote Posted by nicked
Bear in mind as well that objects can only have square or spherical collision in Dromed, so you'll have problems making it accurate with a shape like that intended to replace terrain (in addition the other limitations of objects such as light mapping and AI visibility).
Is adding "DBL" in the .e file still a wise choice?
Quote Posted by nicked
Cell cycle warning: I don't think I've ever seen this error. If you post the exact error message you're seeing, we may be able to help. There should be no problem whatsoever with solid brushes crossing air brushes. Without seeing the error, I would first make sure there's no obvious problems, like ensure your brushes are snapped to the grid.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/zDrbYrC.jpg This warning from the first picture will appear after I make some change, and when I move around the grid map in DromEd it will repeatedly appear.
Sorry, I should have said "when one air brush crosses an inner solid brush within an outer air brush". I used to get the cell cycle warning when making stairs and I think I had a floor between air brush rooms. The air brush the stairs were in crossed the solid floor and I got the warning.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/AKL0NCp.jpgI think I've also had this warning when my exterior walls were solid brushes and they crossed other solid brushes. like when a solid brush is overlapping two solid brushes but is turning perpendicular from them. but. Anyway, the last time I made this wall with a portal that was a solid brush with an air cylinder going through it, I got the warning, which is partly why I wanted to try an object instead. Also, when I use objects for walls, the texture gets applied the way I want it.
I have been snapping to grid, but I still get the warning with solid brushes.
R Soul on 17/8/2020 at 19:14
Quote Posted by wade
Also, when I use objects for walls, the texture gets applied the way I want it.
The texture alignment tools for terrain brushes are quite versatile and should allow perfectly good texture mapping.
Using objects as terrain is a bad idea for reasons people have already posted. It's like taking a largely ineffective medicine with awful side effects for a condition that's been brought on by a poor lifestyle choice.
Quote:
I have been snapping to grid, but I still get the warning with solid brushes.
Always worth a try but sometimes brushes snapped to a grid size of 16 can still cause problems if they're complicated enough.
This has a post telling you how to get the the cell that's causing the problem:
(
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144873)
Look out for odd rotations, complex intersecting shapes, possibly extremely large areas, or anything close to the great barrier (+-1000 in any direction).
It may be better for the terrain problems to be discussed in their own thread because making objects and exporting them is also a thing.
wade on 18/8/2020 at 17:13
Quote Posted by R Soul
The texture alignment tools for terrain brushes are quite versatile and should allow perfectly good texture mapping.
I made another terrain brush and resized it to match my custom texture. However, see the issue remaining below.
Quote:
Always worth a try but sometimes brushes snapped to a grid size of 16 can still cause problems if they're complicated enough.
Been using grid size 12.
The cells in question contain a spiral staircase in one and a terrain brush building in another. Even after I deleted both and optimized, I still had the cell cycle warning when the new terrain brush wall remained. For some reason terrain brushes are causing the warning. It might just help to change the size of terrain brushes. My terrain brush wall has a height of 35 because I have taller buildings. Perhaps the height should be closer to 15, like in the unstripped MISS1.MIS file?
wade on 19/8/2020 at 21:59
I'm going back to the drawing board. Several years ago, I had an upper skyhack airbrush with the rest of the map split into bigger airbrushes. At that time, I was having trouble rendering skyhack properly between different map sections. I went back to a singular airbrush, like in the FM "Stowaway". Today I took a closer look at First City Bank and Trust (Miss2) and must admit all this time I've had difficulty comprehending the many individual brushes and how they render. Tried it with a couple smaller airbrushes, highlighted terrain brushes (houses) within them, set the Time "to end" and was able to render them.
Hopefully, if I keep this up, I can bring in more terrain brushes without getting the warnings.
nicked on 20/8/2020 at 11:24
If you're not in the Dromed Discord it may be worth joining there as you will probably get answers a little quicker than here.
ZylonBane on 20/8/2020 at 21:24
Why don't you have hardware rendering enabled in DromEd?