richdiesal vs bubba

[wedge2211]

In all my attemps to find a really good mapping tutorial, i've seen plenty of people point to http://www.planetquake.com/bubba or http://richdiesal.jedioutcastmaps.com/

 

Now it is really interesting to read both sequences of tutorials off of both sites, there are some key differences...summed up by the statement, "RichDiesal is really finicky." For example, here are some key questions:

 

1. Why does Diesal hate the hollow command, and want to draw rooms individual wall by wall?

 

2. Why does Diesal hate CSG subtract?

 

3. Why does Diesal texture each surface individually, rather than whole brushes like Bubba (who leaves textures facing the void)?

 

4. What's with Diesal and all the detail brushes?

 

Anyways, there are some questins I would like answered on my little JKII mapping quest for truth...

 

I'd done all the basic tutorials off of Diesal's site, and now I found other tuts that are so much less picky and so much easier, so I'm wondering if all the detail stuff Diesal does is really necessary, or can I go ahead and make all my rooms hollow?

[t3rr0r]

if you look at more tutorials (ie. other radiants), you'll see more tuts similar to diesal's.

[Emon]

Originally posted by wedge2211

4. What's with Diesal and all the detail brushes?

 

Dunno, but his logic is completely flawed. Detail brushes aren't vis blocking, so if your whole level is detail brushes, all geometry will be rendered through all other geometry. Decreasing compile times and exponentially lowering framerates and raising r_speeds. What you WANT to do is make your main structures out of struct brushes, because they are vis blocking and once you're behind them, other geometry won't be rendered. Detail brushes should be small details like stairs, trim, a computer table in a bedroom, etc. Looking through tons of BSP portals at the same time will decrease performance, which is why the items inside a room, like a desk, a chair, a shelf, etc, should be detail, since detail brushes are ignored by vis and no BSP portals are created. Like I said before, they are not vis blocking so all other geometry is still drawn. E.g. if you're looking at your entire level all at once and you have a detail brush infront of your face, the entire level will still be drawn. If it was a vis blocking struct brush, all geometry behind it (or most of it) wouldn't be drawn and would drastically increase performance.

 

[/rant]

 

[Emon]

Originally posted by wedge2211

3. Why does Diesal texture each surface individually, rather than whole brushes like Bubba (who leaves textures facing the void)?

 

Because Rich seems to think that unseen surfaces that aren't caulked will still be drawn and will make the level slow. This is partially true, but only on detail brushes. If you're level is made out of struct AND detail brushes (as it should be) sof2map (or q3map2) will automatically cull unseen surfaces, EXCEPT on detail brushes. Detail brushes' unseen surfs need to be caulked.

 

 

As for the other ones...

 

 

1. Because overlapping brushes slow compile times. You can use hollow, just make sure to resize all the brushes so they don't overlap.

 

2. Because if you use it too much, it creates tons of brush fragments. If you use it sparingly on non-complex brushes, it'll be fine. E.g. If you have a prefab of an X-Wing made of brushes, then CSG subtract a cube with it, you'll have fragments all over the place. If you just are using CSG subtract to make a hole in a wall, it won't fragment anything, you'll just have to resize overlapping brushes, if there are any.

[wedge2211]

Cool, thanks. Not caulking struct brushes will sure be a timesaver.

[Emon]

Take note, though, that there have been some freakish times when sof2map doesn't caulk them, dunno why. Q3map2 support for JO (week or two) will improve this vastly. I would recommend not caulking a certain area (except for behind patches and on detail of course) then run through that area with r_showtris 1 to make sure nothing was missed. If you open up Raven's levels, you'll notice they did the same thing. There are a few caulked spots, but most of it is uncaulked.

[idontlikegeorge]

kind of a dumb question, but are brushes structural by default? and what about patches?

 

yeah, i kind of agree with rich, i like making things manually... but like emon said, if you use the shortcut tools right, more power to you

[Emon]

Brushes default to struct, yes. Patches are neither, they are entities. They are completely ignored by VIS.

[volrathxp]

Emon, when is q3map gonna be ready? do they have a website or something? this sounds interesting

[Project_Fusion]

hi,

1. because when you hollow a room, it overlaps the brshes causing problems.

 

I however, use hollow, then un-overlap them by shrinking them 1 unit (making sure there arent any leaks)

 

c ya

rich

[Emon]

Well the "website" is http://www.shaderlab.com. You can find ydnar, the author, on (I think) irc.enterthegame.com or gamesnet (dunno which), he's the author. Or inquire on forums.ravensoft.com

[volrathxp]

ahh... thankee very much man.

[redrain85]

Overall, Rich's tutorials are the best JO specific tutorials out there.

 

I don't agree with everything he writes, but by-and-large his tutorials are sound, from what I can see.

 

Anyone knows what happened to jk2editing.cjb.net? That site showed promise, but now it seems to be gone.

[idontlikegeorge]

i think it moved to: http://mapping.jediknightii.net/

[redrain85]

Nope, that's 007's site. I forget the name of the chap that ran the site I'm talking about, but his site was pretty good. Wish it was still around.

[Joben]

Rich's General Concepts I and II are superb.

 

However im going through Brushes201 right now and it is a lot

less polished, typos and such, but more importantly things that

just arnt realy explained. For example the one on doors.

He just says "Make a doorframe." he doesnt realy say what he

meens by that and his pic doesnt help much.

Then latter on doors he says "First of all, make the switch itself.

To do this, I simply cut a hole in my doorframe and stuck a button in it!

In this case, I used doomgiver/elevatorcall." There is no mention in the text that he

wants you to make it a func_usable. I only figured that out on like the

third readthrough when i look realy close at the pic and noticed the small red

letters next to the switch's brush. That was by no meens a stupid error on my

part, i being a newbie had no idea there was a func_usable and he forgot to tell me about it.

 

I dont think he says to make everything out of detail...I think that is just

his ocasinal vaugeness showing itself. I consider this page corroberating evidence. I call your attention to the part involving r_showtris and the areaportal shader...

[volrathxp]

The later tutorials do become very unpolished. Rich should fix them. Nuff said.

[UniKorn]

Originally posted by wedge2211

Cool, thanks. Not caulking struct brushes will sure be a timesaver.

 

Normally it shouldn't be. I build all my stuff in caulk, and afterwards I apply texture to the faces that can be seen. That way you are sure that every unseen face is caulked.

[Joben]

Originally posted by UniKorn

 

Normally it shouldn't be. I build all my stuff in caulk, and afterwards I apply texture to the faces that can be seen. That way you are sure that every unseen face is caulked.

 

yeh...its just simpler that way.

 

...Simple and as some have it proformance increasing, why not do it?

[ydnar]

Originally posted by Emon

 

Dunno, but his logic is completely flawed. Detail brushes aren't vis blocking, so if your whole level is detail brushes, all geometry will be rendered through all other geometry. Decreasing compile times and exponentially lowering framerates and raising r_speeds. What you WANT to do is make your main structures out of struct brushes, because they are vis blocking and once you're behind them, other geometry won't be rendered. Detail brushes should be small details like stairs, trim, a computer table in a bedroom, etc. Looking through tons of BSP portals at the same time will decrease performance, which is why the items inside a room, like a desk, a chair, a shelf, etc, should be detail, since detail brushes are ignored by vis and no BSP portals are created. Like I said before, they are not vis blocking so all other geometry is still drawn. E.g. if you're looking at your entire level all at once and you have a detail brush infront of your face, the entire level will still be drawn. If it was a vis blocking struct brush, all geometry behind it (or most of it) wouldn't be drawn and would drastically increase performance.

 

[/rant]

 

 

 

Actually...

 

 

BSP portals are only used at compile time, not run-time.

 

There is no such thing as vis blocking. Either there is a portal (between two BSP leaves) or there isn't.

 

A simple structural caulk hull combined with efficient hinting gives you (the mapper) the most control over BSP generation and visibility calculation.

 

While it's not perfect, this is one of the better full examples of a caulk-hull map from soup to nuts out there:

 

http://www.quake3world.com/ubb/Forum6/HTML/020488.html?

 

 

Oh, and Q3Map2 is NOT a substitute for good mapping techniques. While it will clean some stuff up, it's not perfect and doesn't catch everything that an attentive mapper would.

 

y

[Emon]

You know what I meant.

 

Hey, I heard q3map2 was perfect, that was before I used it.

[Spoon_Gouge]

If I look at the maps included with JO (ex: kejim_post) most of the brushes are calked on their non-visible sides as Rich states. That is generally the approach I take as well (it works...wtf). However, there are almost no detail brushes in the map at all leading me to look at that from a perspective different to Rich's. I've made most small little maps so far that have not seen the light of the user community and as such have not had the need to test things like fps on them.

[Joben]

amen to that Spoon.

I was just starting to notice that Raven uses almost no detail brushes.

While they do caulk a lot of stuff though there are ocasinal huge

sections left uncaulked...so im not shure it the caulking is intensinal a lot

of the time or if they just dont texture that side so it remains caulk.

 

someone wana tell me what 'hinting' is?

its related to the system/hint shader i imagine?

actualy is there a tread or turorial somewere

that explains what all those odd little shaders in system do?

nodrop, noimpact, skip and a bunch of others like that.

Also what are the ones with names like _video512 for?