Converting Brushes to Actors
Posted: 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.
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.
