polygon count

[johnnyblaz20]

I'm trying to put some detail a few finishing touches on my map. It'll probably be like a week or two till i'm done with it but i'm just wondering what is an acceptable range of triangles/verts on my map. I'm closer to 8000 triangles right now and i think thats too many. Oh and if its way too much can i use portals to make it still run smothly? I'm not exactly sure to set up a portal but i read up on it a little bit. P.S. 2nd map with no tutorial. Probably not gonna release it but i might post some pics for input.

On another subject. I oppose cheating and will totally never play this game again if a certain app is released. If the wrong person gets it it'll spread like the black plague than the game will be ruined. End of subject.

[Tweek]

dude.

i make a single helicopter thats 8000.

try to get your map to have lets say: 100.000, and make em all count.

8000, what are you making, a box with some more boxes in it? maybe a tesselated box too?


On another subject. I oppose cheating and will totally never play this game again if a certain app is released. If the wrong person gets it it'll spread like the black plague than the game will be ruined. End of subject.
what the hell are you talking about?

[Kalub]

IAWTP


For gods sake, 8000 polies? Thats it?!


Please apply a MeshSmooth modifier and crank up the iterations till your computer fries.


I take no responsibility for the action(s) that you may/might take after reading this.

tranny porn

[johnnyblaz20]

Thats what i wanted to hear. In some tutorials i went through they were talking about watching your count over and over again and i just wanted to know the limit.

This is what i have so far. Its not much but i'm adding a waterfall into the sewer that goes around down to the water. And my 2 structures need much more detail. Kinda boxy but still work in progress. And you can only see like 1/2 of my map.
http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/869/11022685mp8.jpg
(http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/869/11022685mp8.jpg)

Oh and i was talking about the contents of the h2vedig v2 mods post below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSpDc4fPzoE

woop woop, shot tags. ~Timo

[Phobias]

It looks fail...but hey, what would I know, I've never play H2 nor have I ever modeled/made a map.

[Patrickssj6]

AA/WSHOT FFS

Also, looks bland.

[Vicky]

For gods sake, 8000 polies? Thats it?!

Please apply a MeshSmooth modifier and crank up the iterations till your computer fries.


So you're saying you can get up to 100,000 faces in the BSP ? Tool sort of gets nuts if you put in too much is my experience...

And for the map, it could be very good... can't judge it without walking or playing it, simpler maps can be very good too.

[Rob Oplawar]

Yeah I don't know much about H2V, but if it's anything like Halo CE, which, er, it is, well:
The short of it is in Halo CE your bsp shares memory space with your tags, so if you have lots of tags, your poly count can't go much higher than 60,000, but if you don't have many tags then you can conceivably go upwards of 100,000. Since Halo 2 was designed for the same XBox with the same amount of RAM, I'd figure these limits still roughly apply.

[Tweek]

the singleplayer maps i made a long time ago were well over 350k together, and those were 3 BSPs

tool handles it fine. the only hickup you might get is framerate drops, and whats what portals are for.

if only you knew how many polys you can use, as long as you use em smart

[Vicky]

Well i've seem to run into other trouble when using a lot of faces (and making a mega-level) collision bsp3d is too large... with fewer faces it works though.

[Kalub]

If you know how to use the engine to its fullest you can pull off some sweet things. Portals are golden, but that was CE. I haven't touched H2V.


And Johnny Your stupid. Those mindless hacks have been around for every game. It never seems to hurt anyone, its just a minor annoyance.

[johnnyblaz20]

And Johnny Your stupid. Those mindless hacks have been around for every game. It never seems to hurt anyone, its just a minor annoyance.

I'm allowed my own opinion, and to me it would ruin the game. Sorry you dont agree but thats no reason to verbally assault me. If you seen that youtube video you could tell that would be more than a minor annoyence. People would be leaving the room because somebody is running around the map at 100mph meleeing everyone.

Anyways thanks for the help with my question. Also do you set up portals with a planes? I know it has to be set with a special material, i can find that out in the tools help file.

[Vicky]

I've already put in several portals but that doesn't do the trick for this error.

@Johnny for making a portal, make a plane, make sure it's bigger than your level, rotate it to vertical position move it so it cuts your level and none of your level sticks out at the side (to prevent portal leakage). Make them mesh, give them a material named +portal.

[johnnyblaz20]

For multiple portals do you do something like +portal1, +portal2 ect. or how does that go?

Oh and if i want an area not accessable but you can still see it how would i go about doing this? Like a border at the top of a cliff. Example. danger canyon on halo 1. The upper area is not accessable without a teleporter.

[Kalub]

I'm allowed my own opinion, and to me it would ruin the game. Sorry you dont agree but thats no reason to verbally assault me. If you seen that youtube video you could tell that would be more than a minor annoyence. People would be leaving the room because somebody is running around the map at 100mph meleeing everyone.



I'm sorry you got butt-hurt by my reply, but if you cant seem to grasp the concept that your opinion doesn't matter to me, and the way you state it sounds like its a fact. Far different from a opinion.

Its nothing more than an annoyance, and thats it.

Now, back on topic. I always just used the +portals for every one in the level. But, there are more than one type of portal, there are exact portals and then the portals described above. Atleast thats how it was in CE don't quote me.


Edit: You have to use a player clip for the invisible walls.

[Vicky]

In 3ds i give the portals itself different names although i'm not sure this is a must, but all portals the +portal material, i'm not even sure that's the right way but it worked. For a non accessible area you could simply use the +sky as material, or something see through for that matter like glass, although that might give you the idea you're in an aquarium or something.

[johnnyblaz20]

Now that you mention it the +sky would probably do it - in my opinion. lol. I'll try it when i get home, Thanks. +awsome

How do exact portals work?

I'm sure i could find out but how do you set up a player clip?

P.S. Kalub. Your right... I actually like the idea of superman with a halo suit on. Just not in multiplayer.

[Kalub]

Oh more thing, if you just randomly place these portals they aren't going to help you at all.

[johnnyblaz20]

Alright, so how do you place portals so they do help?

[Vicky]

They will help to get rid of errors like 'there's too much geometry on your level' or 'too many triangles'. If you don't get those you probably won't be needing portals.

Btw, for the unreachable areas... did you think about putting kill trigger volumes there? Don't know where or how those areas are located but maybe it's more what you're looking for.

[johnnyblaz20]

Well i know its not what you were talking about but i only have 1 error on my map and for some reason i can't get rid of it. But anyways i have from what i hear a low poly count and i still get a strange lag when i try my map out in halo. The whole point of me starting this thread is that i want to know what it is from and how to get rid of it. I brought up portals because from what i read it kinda sections off your map for seperate rendering. I may be wrong but thats what i got out of it.

[Kalub]

Btw, for the unreachable areas... did you think about putting kill trigger volumes there? Don't know where or how those areas are located but maybe it's more what you're looking for.

Jesus, you didn't even read that whole little bit about PLAYER CLIPPING

Make a plane, give it a player_clip material (Thats not the actual name for the material) and.... TADA


Oh, and no, no it won't help get rid of those errors. All portals do, if used wisely, is block off certain parts of the level from being rendered. The faces are still there. If you have those errors its because you suck at using your limit/polies correctly, and just decided to TurboSmooth™ the whole BSP mesh for "lulz".

[johnnyblaz20]

I brought up portals because from what i read it kinda sections off your map for seperate rendering.
Right?

Thanks kalub for the player clip idea. It does mention player clipping in the help menu but does not specify how to use it and what material to use.. any help?

I'm still wondering why my map lags. Its not my computer by any means. Its not because of errors. Its not because of high poly count as i now know. I'm stumped. Would portals help me at 8000 trianges? I'm sure i'll atleast double my poly count after i'm finished with the map but i'm just trying to take care of my problems one at a time.

[Kalub]

Well, after a brief skim of the HEKtutorial for CE you would name it something along the lines of "playerclip*" where "*" denotates the material as collidable only.

Good luck,

And yes, the concept of "sectioning" can be applied to portals.

Edit: 8000 Polygons is nothing to be worried about, you might be receiving lag by some new thing they implemented into the game. Try running the lighting to full quality and make sure your shaders use the full quality, although this will take hours, upon hours, and may end up wasting your life.

[johnnyblaz20]

:lol: I'm going to try to implement these ideas into my map. Thanks alot. By the time my map is done i'm guessing i'm going to be around 20,000 triangles but from what you guys told me that shouldnt be a huge problem but I'm just learning still. You wouldnt believe how long this map has taken me so far though, Alot of time. Off and on for 3 months, And i dont think i'm even close to being done because i keep learning new things and fixing problems from my previous modeling skills.

playerclip*

Can't touch this. lol


Oh. How would i make a swinging door? I know of a couple in halo 2 and i would really like a couple in my map.