Converting Brushes to Actors

Topics relating to Modeling with Reality Factory.
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gekido
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Converting Brushes to Actors

Post by gekido » Fri Jan 13, 2006 2:22 am

I wrote up this short guide for my students, figured i'd post it up here as well.

http://www.pureanarchy.net/files/ActorsFromBrushes.pdf

This tutorial requires:

1) RF Edit Pro (RFEditPro.exe, included in the RF install)
2) Milkshape 3d (unexpired trial or full version)
3) Actor Studio (Astudio.exe, included in the RF install)
4) RF Texture Packer (RFPack.exe, included in the RF Install)

What this describes is the process of creating geometry in the RF Editor (specifically RF Edit Pro) and then exporting & converting the models into .act actor files afterwards.

This is useful for a number of things.

The biggest reason you'd want to do this is to optimize a level. It's easy to create geometry in the editor that ends up slowing down the engine due to the sheer complexity of the generated BSP file.

By breaking the geometry into actors, the engine handles the polygons differently and you can get significant framerate improvements as a result.

another big reason you might want to do this is that actor-based geometry can utilize the built in Level of Detail that RF provides, whereas BSP based geometry cannot. Exporting detailed areas of your level into actors allows you to swap out the detailed geometry on the fly with lower detail, or simply culling / removing the geometry from view. The staticmesh entity provides several flags for visibility culling, which can give you a big performance increase.

another big reason you'd want to do this is to speed up the editor itself. When you get a complicated level in the editor, simply doing anything can often result in a 'rebuilding bsp...' message that seems to go on forever. touch anything else, and get the same message - even with 'rebuild bsp' unchecked, the editor still ends up having to rebuild the tree every little change that you make.

by converting geometry to actors, you can disable the actor viewing in the editor, which can mean a massive performance boost for your editing - particularly the later stages of the game design process usually involved tweaking entities, adding paths etc, and the faster you can get the editor, the quicker you can finalize your gameplay.

NOTE: using groups and the built in visibility settings in the editor can speed things up as well.

On a side note for any programmer-types out there (nudge nudge wink wink) - the built in 'groups' and visibiltiy settings in the editor works perfect for hiding geometry in groups that you aren't working on, but when viewing actors in the editor, the actor brushes are visible no matter what, even if the entity in question is hidden.

It would speed things up a LOT if the actor brushes behaved the same as the normal bsp brushes in the editor (ie you can group them, hide them, color them etc).

Hope this helps - if there are any questions, please let me know and i'll try to clarify where necessary.

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AndyCR
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Post by AndyCR » Fri Jan 13, 2006 2:39 am

Thanks for the tutorial, stickied.
On a side note for any programmer-types out there (nudge nudge wink wink) - the built in 'groups' and visibiltiy settings in the editor works perfect for hiding geometry in groups that you aren't working on, but when viewing actors in the editor, the actor brushes are visible no matter what, even if the entity in question is hidden.
i'll keep that in mind for rf2.

gekido
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RF 2

Post by gekido » Wed Jan 18, 2006 2:57 am

I guess this would only apply if you were planning on using RF Edit Pro for RF 2 - otherwise this kind of grouping / hiding of objects should be planned into the editor from the start.

For example the BV editor handles LOD the same no matter whether you are in-game or in the editor - you can have hundreds of thousands of poly's in your world, and cull whatever isn't visible easily to keep the framerate up when editing the world.

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AndyCR
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Post by AndyCR » Wed Jan 18, 2006 3:03 am

it will use a rewrite of rfeditpro, and will use octree culling for the 3d view (uses the same engine as rf2), so i suppose it wont be a problem, never thought of it that way. i will probably still add showing/hiding due to some levels becoming a spiderweb with models being used as level geometry etc., too complex to get a sense for whats what, if that makes sense.

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Post by hike1 » Thu Jan 19, 2006 8:39 pm

i will probably still add showing/hiding (of .act files, I assume)

Could you do that for World Editor also? Because Rfeditpro
crashes on my machine.

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AndyCR
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Post by AndyCR » Sat Apr 22, 2006 11:02 pm

Of anything, including actors (which are now most popular model files), level geometry, entities, etc. And no, I don't plan to write a version of WorldEditor or RFEdit for RF2's initial release, only RFEditPro. However, RFEditPro is being completely rewritten for RF2, so RF2's version should run on your system.

gekido
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Fixed link

Post by gekido » Tue Aug 29, 2006 12:38 am

Must have cleaned up the site at some point and removed this file.

It's back up for anyone interested.

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Scorch
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Post by Scorch » Tue Oct 30, 2007 10:03 pm

hey i was wondering tf anyone had some free time to make me a couple of models? if so tell me at nukeem1009@yahoo.com thanx!
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Agentarrow
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Post by Agentarrow » Tue Oct 30, 2007 10:29 pm

or at Agentarrow1@gmail.com, scorch is with me
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Sph!nx
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Post by Sph!nx » Sat Nov 10, 2007 3:29 pm

The download link for 'ActorsFromBrushes.pdf' is no longer functioning. Can someone upload it for me, please? Thanks ahead!
Regards Sph!nx

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vrageprogrammer
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Post by vrageprogrammer » Sun Nov 11, 2007 4:53 am

Even I need it, please do upload. :lol:
It was not Possible to determine the dimensions of the image....

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Sph!nx
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Post by Sph!nx » Sun Nov 11, 2007 4:09 pm

Hmmm, Haven't really looked into it, but is there perhaps an option to give a brush (or group of brushes) the atributes of a model? In other words, is there a way to make brushes be rendered like models in the engine?

Edit :
Ah I found it out. It's actually quite simple. Select all brushes from your desired structure and export it to 'Autodesk 3DS'. Open up Milkshape and import the .3ds file and its ready for further editing!

That means, removing unnesesary or unseen faces and welding all vertexes together before venturing on to UV mapping.
Last edited by Sph!nx on Sun Nov 11, 2007 4:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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QuestOfDreams
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Post by QuestOfDreams » Sun Nov 11, 2007 4:47 pm

Well, I don't think I have the pdf somewhere, but the steps are pretty simple.
Open RFEdit Pro
Create and texture the geometry you want to turn into an actor
Select the geometry in question
Go to Files->Export->Autodesk 3DS
Select Export Selected
Press OK and save the 3DS file
Open the txl file you used to texture the geometry with the rfPack tool and extract the textures you have used (or use the original textures if you have them)
Put the textures in the same directory as the exported 3DS file, make sure their names are not longer than 8 characters (limitation of the 3DS file format)
Open Milkshape3D
Go to File->Import->Autodesk 3DS... and select the previously created 3DS file
Reassign the textures to the material if it isn't done automatically
Edit the model if you want
Go to File->Export->Genesis3D BDY ... and save the bdy file
Use the AStudio tool to build an actor from the bdy file

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Sph!nx
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Post by Sph!nx » Sun Nov 11, 2007 4:49 pm

Excellent! Thanks alot!
Regards Sph!nx

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metal_head
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Re: Converting Brushes to Actors

Post by metal_head » Wed Apr 02, 2008 3:29 pm

Thanks,but how do I increase the brightness of the model because when I import it into the game it's so dark...

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