Quake3World

Do you guys fill the void between walls or tiers with caulk? Even if the void is completely sealed off with brushes. There are several spots where I am want to fill this void with caulk to make it seem solid, for instance between a basement ceiling and the floor above. How do you deal with areas inaccessible to players but completely sealed by brushes?

I fill my gaps with caulk. To be honest, I do not know if it speeds the compile or makes it longer, but I like a clean looking map when I work so... even if it affects the compile, it's probably not by much if you know how to handle brushes correct.

I tend to use caulk, but its not supposed to matter for the final result. (However compile times are something I'm not sure on)

Another question would be, how does vis deal with these areas? If it's completely filled with brushes, maybe vis ignores it. I'm guessing vis does not know if it is accessible by the player, so it may calculate the void (increasing compile times).

The map I am working on is going to be massive, so filling voids with caulk will be a big deal. The entire map layout on XY is about like 4000 by 4000 (-2112 to 2112), outside area will be symmetric with origin. The height of the building itself is going to be like 2000 to 3000 (still figuring out how high the roof will be). I would like the skybox to be higher so I can have antennas and smoke stakes at like 3000 or 4000 height. I know, it might sound crazy! But I'm rebuilding everything from scratch, I'm trying to do things right this time around. Any optimization suggestions for big structures are welcome

Sorry if I'm mis-understanding you, but from what it sounds like, you're asking if vis calculates in the void, yes?

This is basically the exact thing that vis does not do heh. That's why your map will have a leak if there's a hole in your level, cuz then the vis process simply does not work. Anything that is completely sealed off by brushes (IE: in the void) does not affect vis at all. Putting huge chunks of caulking out there in the void between two floors or something is totally redundant. If you need to make vis cuts, then use hint brushes.

For instance, if you have a room that is completed sealed by brushes, but is accessible by a teleporter. This would be no different then say the empty space under each stair of a staircase that is completely sealed by brushes surrounding the staircase. Does vis add these types of areas or does it ignore them? It seems that filling these area with caulk is the right thing to do, but maybe I'm just confusing myself! :icon28: Anyone know of any good links about vis that explain this?

Don't fill the actual space with caulk, just texture the undersides of the brush faces that you don't see in game with it. Know what I mean? A good practice to get into is to start building everything out of caulk, then once you have finished a shape/area/whatever, then select the faces that a player will see and texture them. This saves the trouble of going back later after you discover that the game is rendering a bunch of shit that you can never see anyway.

the difference between the two examples you just gave is that the room accessible by teleporter would have an info_teleporter_destination (or whatever it's called, i haven't mapped for Q3 in ages) in it, and therefore a leaktest would be performed on that space because there is an entity in it. an empty space under stairs or whatever will have no entities, therefore no leaktest

Quack wrote:Do you guys fill the void between walls or tiers with caulk? Even if the void is completely sealed off with brushes. There are several spots where I am want to fill this void with caulk to make it seem solid, for instance between a basement ceiling and the floor above. How do you deal with areas inaccessible to players but completely sealed by brushes?

If I understand what you're asking correctly, you're basically wondering if the shape of the outside of your map makes any difference whatsoever to the compiler. Nope.

For a perhaps oversimplified analogy, imagine that when a map compiles, it's filled with water (thus the "leak" terminology). Any faces that get wet are kept, and everything else is irrelevent and tossed out. Whether the rough edges and odd gaps on the outside of the map are smoothed off and filled in or not doesn't matter to the compiler at all.

The other related question: "Is it easier to work with a map in the editor when the construction is clean and things are lined up and smoothed off and there aren't a bunch of odd spaces and gaps to deal with?" Yep. And if anyone else ever has to open up your map and work on it, nice, neat, clean brushwork will keep them from wanting to stab you in the face.

might have the wrong end of the stick here, but it would be worth leaktesting your map before putting on blocks of caulk to help personal organisation - just in case you're plugging a hole that'll show up as a untextured face in-game.

Thanks for all the replies! I've got a good idea about how caulk and vis work now. I've remade this map several times over the last few years, constantly changing the way I create brushwork and caulk. I feel confident enough to remake it from scratch for the last time, doing it right this time around. The help is most appreciated!

One thing I was wondering about though, anyone here actual attempted to write their own prt file instead of letting vis do it for you?

pjw wrote:If I understand what you're asking correctly, you're basically wondering if the shape of the outside of your map makes any difference whatsoever to the compiler. Nope.

Ummm I think it does especially with large terrain sections made out of triangles. The bottom of tri-soup meshes are usually all draged down to share a single plane. I remember Yndar telling me to make the bottom of terrain meshes a single plane because the compiler does something with them. Need a codey type to validate this tbh.

Sorry for vagueness.
Sock

sock wrote:

pjw wrote:If I understand what you're asking correctly, you're basically wondering if the shape of the outside of your map makes any difference whatsoever to the compiler. Nope.

Ummm I think it does especially with large terrain sections made out of triangles. The bottom of tri-soup meshes are usually all draged down to share a single plane. I remember Yndar telling me to make the bottom of terrain meshes a single plane because the compiler does something with them. Need a codey type to validate this tbh.

Sorry for vagueness.
Sock

Terrain is a bit of a different story, since it's an entity. It's been a while since I've done any terrain but AFAIK vis doesn't even calculate on terrain.

Yeah, what mrd said.

In the examples that I've seen, tri-souped terrain doesn't seal the map and is detail--any actual vis-blocking is usually done via some sort of embedded axial caulk structure which also acts to seal the hull.

The same thing would apply to patches and meshes right? A bevel that is a quarter circle should have a triangle caulk piece with the same height that fits snug inside the bevel. Lining up with the vertex of each side of the bevel and the invisible corner.

You could do that, yeah, or you could do what I think most people do and do this. You'll have to paste this image link in your address bar,it's kinda big, and I don't wanna fuck up the thread and this phpBB crap doesn't have any lvlshot in it, so ... :icon32:

http://members.shaw.ca/mrduplicity/curves.jpg

I don't think it actually matters either way how you do it, but this is always the way I've done it.

Thanks for the help! When I get around to remaking my map, I'll have to show you some of the pipe work I'm going to be doing. The map is actually going to be a powerplant, the contents of the pipes will be this red slimy goo stuff. There's an underground area with electrical walls and pipes on the ceiling running along four different staircases up to the main outside area. Then the pipes run up the side of a huge wall with spiral staircase (about 2000 units, half of the staircase is inside of the wall) so it may take some tinkering to get caulk built for them. My main goal now is just to build the caulk hull, leave a specific amount of space for the pipes/details, then add the detail later on. Making sure vis works perfectly before adding all the crazy detail. I'm sorry about not posting any screenshots, things are not up to the standard I want yet but all I have to say is this will map will be an insane frag fest like no other map seen before!!!