Coplanar Surfaces BSP Error

[Noxstant]

Well, I have a team on Filefront. We are making a Fall of Reach mod (which includes SP & MP) While I am waiting on voice actors to finish their work, I decided to make a few multiplayer maps. Since we are using the Havok Nuke, I knew I needed to create a simple map where teams could blow each other to kingdom come. That map is simply, what it is called, which is THEBOX. THEBOX is a medium-sized bsp with a grass texture on the ground and a space texture on the sky. I planned on having no hills, and having a few Havok Nukes spawning in the middle of the map while Red and Blue Team spawn on opposite sides of the map.

So, to those of you who actually are reading this far, I completed THEBOX (and a few other bsps as well) Exported it as a .jms. THEBOX is perfectly sealed, as I did not modify it, and it is properly tessellated, as am well aware of the procedures in bsp creation. I tried to use the structure option for it in tool, but I got the Coplanar Error Surfaces message in tool. I consulted the HEK tutorial and it said this was caused by faces at an angle. That is impossible on THEBOX, unless it was referring to right angles, which is pretty much impossible to avoid in 3D. Also, I tried to compile other non-box shaped maps and still got the same error. I even remade THEBOX and now when I export it in Bluestreak's JMS exporter, Gmax freezes.

Could this be caused by too many polys and how can I fix the Coplanar Surfaces error message? Thank you for your patience.

[Higuy]

You need to portal the map. Also, it should be able to go in-game because isn't Coplanar surfaces just a warning not a error?

[Noxstant]

Why doesn't the HEK tutorial have anything about this?

It says it is an error, but it says the bsp has been built. However, it is not saved anywhere. I do have my hard drive as E: maybe tool is saving it in a weird place. Or maybe not.

[Higuy]

It should be saving it Tags\levels\"mapname".
If not, im not so sure where its saving it. but it should be saving there.
You also need to run lightmaps.

[Bad Waffle]

I'm pretty sure he said he knows what he's doing when it comes to making maps.

Try adding a slight noise modifier in max to slightly throw off the angles of the faces to see if that works.

[Noxstant]

Posted by higuy :

It should be saving it Tags\levels\"mapname".
If not, im not so sure where its saving it. but it should be saving there.
You also need to run lightmaps.

I did state that I had everything with the bsp completed, just that stupid Coplanar surfaces error.
Tags\levels is the obvious first place to check.


Posted by Wave of Lag:

I'm pretty sure he said he knows what he's doing when it comes to making maps.

Try adding a slight noise modifier in max to slightly throw off the angles of the faces to see if that works.


I am not sure if this would do much in Gmax, but I will give it a shot, thank you.

[il Duce Primo]

The nearly coplanar warning is a wall or anything that is faces that are almost planar(planar is flat). Nearly coplanar means it's not exactly flat. The engine spits out this warning because sometimes walls are not exactly flat, this is when it gets into the thousandths of a unit off. They can cause weird geometry clipping and someone told me they can cause ghost faces, but I'm not 100% sure of that. You mentioned tessalation, that might be the problem because when you tessalate a surface it is dividing a plane into more tris. The modeling prgm might be making some of those new faces that were created and they might be off by a very small fraction of a unit causing the error.

EDIT: WOL, I believe the noise modifier would work because then tool wouldn't recognise it as something that is meant to be perfectly flat. This might be the easiest way of fixing this.

[Noxstant]

The tessellation had to have caused this, because THEBOX was simply that, a box. I applied no face editing or vertical production of hills or anything for that matter.

Is there a difference in the number of times you must tessellate in 3ds than in Gmax? Because if not, I cannot see how no one else has ran into this error.

EDIT : Could this be a problem with my Gmax application?

[p0lar_bear]

The tessellation had to have caused this, because THEBOX was simply that, a box. I applied no face editing or vertical production of hills or anything for that matter.

Then why did you tesselate it? :confused2:

[Inferno]

Because that's what the (retarded) tutorial for HEK says to do. Guess he didn't know not too.

[p0lar_bear]

Because that's what the (retarded) tutorial for HEK says to do. Guess he didn't know not too.

It says to tesselate the terraing because later on, you manipulate the terrain and make hills, a stream, and general uneven-ness.

[Inferno]

Yea I know that I'm saying that he didn't know that he shouldn't do that because he's just making a box.

[Gwunty]

hurpdee durr
are you the same idiot who ripped from WoW and claimed it as your own?

[Noxstant]

Originally Posted by p0lar_bear :

Then why did you tesselate it?

Well, as Inferno said, the HEK tutorial pretty much says tesselation is a rule that you must follow.

As my second map, however, I had a tesselated space bsp that received the same error. I went back added hills (yes, I know, hills in space) just to see if that would work. But it did not. I removed the hills and added a slight noise modifier and managed to fix it. Thank you Wave of Lag.


Originally Posted by CLS{GRUNT} :

Noxstant, do you remember about a year ago when I wrongly accused you of ripping textures from Wow? I mostly did it to make myself feel better, but I admit it was a bit farfetched. Since you do not even play WoW, and besides the fact WoW textures are not that good. And to top that off, I had no evidence whatsoever. Also, do you remember all the threads we turned into flame wars because I started instigating things that had NOTHING to do with anything. Those were good times, Noxstant. Good times.

[.Wolf™]

The nearly coplanar warning is a wall or anything that is faces that are almost planar(planar is flat). Nearly coplanar means it's not exactly flat. The engine spits out this warning because sometimes walls are not exactly flat, this is when it gets into the thousandths of a unit off. They can cause weird geometry clipping and someone told me they can cause ghost faces, but I'm not 100% sure of that. You mentioned tessalation, that might be the problem because when you tessalate a surface it is dividing a plane into more tris. The modeling prgm might be making some of those new faces that were created and they might be off by a very small fraction of a unit causing the error.

EDIT: WOL, I believe the noise modifier would work because then tool wouldn't recognise it as something that is meant to be perfectly flat. This might be the easiest way of fixing this.

Falling through map is common:P

[Gwunty]

Well, as Inferno said, the HEK tutorial pretty much says tesselation is a rule that you must follow.

As my second map, however, I had a tesselated space bsp that received the same error. I went back added hills (yes, I know, hills in space) just to see if that would work. But it did not. I removed the hills and added a slight noise modifier and managed to fix it. Thank you Wave of Lag.
No evidence??? I hope to god you are kidding, we posted 3 pages worth of evidence, did you go temporarily blind and not see that at all? :lmao:
Morons will be morons, just admit you didn't make that texture and ill move along.

[Boo Diddly]

The tessellation had to have caused this, because THEBOX was simply that, a box. I applied no face editing or vertical production of hills or anything for that matter.

Is there a difference in the number of times you must tessellate in 3ds than in Gmax? Because if not, I cannot see how no one else has ran into this error.

EDIT : Could this be a problem with my Gmax application?

It's been ages since I've done anything with map making but IIRC halo for whatever reason hates a box. if you put some kind of hill or dip in the middle for the most part it *should* work. But I'm trying to remember with a bad memory so I may be wrong. =P