2003MINI on 12/5/2005 at 01:37
I want to make some pipes for Garrett to walk through. These would be sewer pipes. I always wondered why the sewers in the game were square rooms. I guess the reason is that the cylinders can't easily have textures applied to them. You have to specify the number of sides to the cylinder, and each side gets the texture.
If I use a cylinder and find an acceptable texture, am I taking a huge performance hit due to the large number of sides to the cylinder? It looks a little cludgy right now, so I may not stay with it, but I wanted to see what everyone else has done.
One interesting find is that the static mesh pipes aren't hollow. They have ends on the (at least the bigger ones). Can't use those. Bummer.
-2003Mini
doctormidnight on 12/5/2005 at 07:02
I've used 32 and 64 sided cylinders cut in half lengthwise with the brush clipping tool to make arched internal walkways, and I don't think it's really affected the game any more than a normal brush is. If you want I can do a fraps check on the level I'm building tomorrow night, then add a few 100+ sided giganto-cylinders and do a fraps run again, but I'm thinking it won't make much of a difference.
str8g8 on 12/5/2005 at 08:16
Well, 64 sided archway probably looks great but sounds a little excessive. Anything that adds complexity to the bsp will create a higher poly count and will ultimately have a bearing on performance. It all depends on context, and how big your level is and so on, but I have been using 8 and 16 sided archways, and they look fine to me.
I think keeping things tight early on will save you much pain further down the line. It might work now, but what about when your map is full of AIs and particle systems and dynamic shadows?
cheers
str8g8
Ziemanskye on 12/5/2005 at 09:52
The number of sides on a cylinder brush should probably never be huge. For tiny objects you can go so low as 5 or 6 sides, for pillars 8-16 is enough, and really you don't need to go over 32 for a cylindrical corridor (or 64 cut in half for an arch, if you /really/ need it to be smooth).
However, they can be a pain to get to line up if you are doing corners and ramps and things, it can be easy to vertex manipulate them out of being convex, and I'm not sure how the AI Navmesh or spatial db will like it.
A huge performance hit? Not that I've noticed, but it will make the bsp a lot more complex, so a lot of them, or long stretches might.
A texture problem? Yup, the sides at angles greater than 45 degrees off each plane change which directions they want to go, so it can be a real pain to get the textures lined up smoothly all around.
Zillameth on 12/5/2005 at 11:30
The texture alligning tool does wonders. It's not perfect, but it saves much time. You can also mask inconsistencies with static meshes.
There seem to be no problems with navmeshing a cylinder, as long as its bottom side is horizontal. On the other hand, you don't need anything as complex as a cylinder to fall into some real trouble with navmesh. To be honest, I'm really sick of that monstrous invention.
As for performance, we're not using Atari 65s, right? :-) There is a significant difference between a cube and an 8-sided cylinder (8 vertexes vs. 16, for example), but 16 vertexes won't kill your system, and neither will 32 or 64. So, yes, you will run out of processing power sooner with cylinders, but if you don't have too many of them, you won't be hurt. On the other hand, I think one should at least consider using static meshes instead of BSP. As far as I remember, there are a few kinds of cyllindrical ceilings. You can make a tubular corridor with a pair of such meshes. I don't know whether it will result in a performance boost, but I think it will make it easier to build turns and intersections (AI pathfinding, on the other hand, will probably go nuts unless you set up all of the navmesh manually).
doctormidnight on 13/5/2005 at 19:59
Quote Posted by str8g8
Well, 64 sided archway probably looks great but sounds a little excessive. Anything that adds complexity to the bsp will create a higher poly count and will ultimately have a bearing on performance. It all depends on context, and how big your level is and so on, but I have been using 8 and 16 sided archways, and they look fine to me.
I think keeping things tight early on will save you much pain further down the line. It might work now, but what about when your map is full of AIs and particle systems and dynamic shadows?
cheers
str8g8
As I said in my original post, they were cut in half, so the sides are 16 and 32, respectively. Following Null's sage advise on keeping things "tight and twisty," not to mention the proper use of zones, gives the designer a lot more flexibility when it comes to making areas that are complex in this way.
2003MINI on 16/5/2005 at 17:09
I'll try the 32 and 64 settings. I had chosen somethign absurd like 400 as a first-pass, just to see what it looks like. I suppose it won't be that bad even if it had 8. Who says a pipe has to be perfectly round?
Ziemanskye on 18/5/2005 at 11:04
400! :eek: And I thought I was trying to push the engine a bit...
Sadly, best way is probably about 32 sides with a smoothing group (and/or normal maps in the curve), but since that requires new smeshes I think it's a lost cause.
400!
doctormidnight on 18/5/2005 at 16:11
Quote Posted by Ziemanskye
400! :eek: And I thought I was trying to push the engine a bit...
Sadly, best way is probably about 32 sides with a smoothing group (and/or normal maps in the curve), but since that requires new smeshes I think it's a lost cause.
400!
I'd like to see the X-Box render that
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