uncadonego on 19/8/2019 at 23:50
Sorry for the thread necromancy, but I wanted to post on this thread, because it has the most apt title from my search results, if that makes any sense.
I know we've discussed playing with the time stamp on some brushes and also using solids to fill in arches for better cell count....(
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=145894)
....but I have another question. Psych0sis mentioned to me that he looked at The Power of Suggestion in Dromed once, and noticed that instead of carving a big airbrush, and then making buildings inside that airbrush out of solids, I tend to carve streets with fill air brushes in the solid, and texture one side of the street with building A texture and the other side of the street with building B texture. In other words, most of my building is carving the empty space with fill air out of a solid Dromed universe.
He said I would probably get better cell counts by doing the opposite, making a big fill air brush and filling in solid buildings.
I was looking at DCE mission 17 today to see if the red awnings in it were brush or object, so while I was in there, I checked, and yep, Yandros made his buildings out of fill solid.
As far as lower cell count is concerned, have I been doing it backwards all these years? :confused:
DirkBogan on 20/8/2019 at 00:46
I made this mistake too, Don. The reason everybody advised using the 'carve-out' method in the OldDark days was because it resulted in fewer on-screen polys, and of course the game would almost always crash if you exceeded 1024. Considering the on-screen poly limit in NewDark is 20480, this is no longer an issue.
Building with solid brushes is usually much better for the cell count, especially for building large cities and streets, but I've discovered that it isn't always better -- for example, sometimes carving out stairs is about twice as efficient as building them out of solid brushes, and sometimes it isn't. However, unless you want to exhaustively test making all your geometry both ways to see which is better for every single instance, it is better to err on making giant airbrushes and building everything out of solids.
If you look at 20th Anniversary missions like Sound of A Burrick In A Room, Whistling of The Gears and Lost Among The Forsaken, they are almost entirely made out of solid brushes, including the terrain. That's partly how they managed to fit so much detailed architecture into ~32700 cells.
uncadonego on 20/8/2019 at 02:09
Ok, I guess for the OldDark it was ok. I'll just start using more solid architecture from now on.
marbleman on 20/8/2019 at 05:36
Not to mention that with fill air, you need fewer brushes. For example, making a room with trims at the top and bottom only requires 3 air brushes stacked on top of each other. For OldDark and its limit of ~7000 brushes, it was also a big deal. Nowadays, it's better to make those trims out of solid brushes.
But the real cell saver is the time value. I recently reclaimed about 1000 cells but "to end"-ing just eight narrow but tall brushes. The general rule here, as far as I can tell, is that you want your biggest brushes to have the lowest values and the smallest one to have the highest values.
uncadonego on 20/8/2019 at 07:02
Quote Posted by marbleman
Not to mention that with fill air, you need fewer brushes. For example, making a room with trims at the top and bottom only requires 3 air brushes stacked on top of each other. For OldDark and its limit of ~7000 brushes, it was also a big deal. Nowadays, it's better to make those trims out of solid brushes.
But the real cell saver is the time value. I recently reclaimed about 1000 cells but "to end"-ing just eight narrow but tall brushes. The general rule here, as far as I can tell, is that you want your biggest brushes to have the lowest values and the smallest one to have the highest values.
Yeah, Unna clued me into that last time I worked on this mission. I experimented, checking the number of cells on optimization each change. By manipulating the time on 114 brushes, I went from 32,585 cells down to 23,800 cells.
uncadonego on 20/8/2019 at 11:35
Tonight, I replaced some more fill-air brush textures against walls with Yandros' res_cube, changed some brush columns with nicked's marble column, brush awnings with object awnings, etc. Got it down so far from exceeding cell limit down to 22962 so far. I think I can do a lot more. Does anyone volunteer to make objects for authors? I have a couple of roof top air conditioning units made from a mess of brushes. I have a feeling if someone made object based on screenshots, that would save me a lot of cells.
trefoilknot on 20/8/2019 at 11:40
Does relative brush timing matter, even for non-intersecting brushes?
DirkBogan on 20/8/2019 at 12:09
Quote Posted by trefoilknot
Does relative brush timing matter, even for non-intersecting brushes?
From a practical standpoint, it's often difficult to tell. The main thing you want to do is have large airbrushes as early as possible, and complex solids as late as possible. Other than that, I've found that
usually*, you'll get the same reduction/increase in cells if you set time earlier or later than the original time, not the exact time you set. So long as changing the time doesn't visually affect/ruin your geometry, you should try experimenting with earlier/later timings on as many brushes as possible. You never know when an innocuous little brush you ignored might save you ~100 cells if you set it earlier or later than its original time.
I'm sure somebody with more knowledge about csgmerge operations could describe how it actually works. Sometimes setting an airbrush TO END will actually reduce the cells, sometimes it increases it (without visibly affecting geometry, of course). It's impossible to intuit, even if you think you understand some general rule of thumb.
*in some cases, this might not be true, and unless you're willing to try every single terrain brush time to maximize savings, I suggest you stick to earlier/later testing.
marbleman on 20/8/2019 at 12:22
Quote Posted by DirkBogan
The main thing you want to do is have large airbrushes as early as possible, and complex solids as late as possible.
From what I can tell, you want your largest
solids to be placed as early as possible as well, pretty much right after the big airbrushes.
DirkBogan on 20/8/2019 at 12:46
Quote Posted by marbleman
you want your largest
solids to be placed as early as possible as well, pretty much right after the big airbrushes.
I think it depends. If we're talking about a large solid cube brush, the rule usually holds. If we're talking multiple intersecting cylinders, it seems not to hold as well -- sometimes complex solids cost less cells when timed earlier, often they cost less when timed later. Although there is some relation between brush size and cell count/polygon, higher brush sides and intersections usually produce more cells than even the biggest simple cube. The only rule I found that
always produces lower cells is having your large (exterior) airbrushes as early as possible. It's also more convenient for construction, so you don't accidentally erase low-time solid brushwork.
Again, all these observations are totally conditional. It's best for authors to test for themselves, and experiment with these rules of thumb. You never know when an edge-case will save you a few hundred cells.