Importing a mesh as geometry- any suggestions?

[realityfactoryusr]

Building with RFeditor took a while (matter of fact it took as long as Ive ben a part of the forum to build a small canyon leading into a water plant...), but for flexibility I need to manipulate vertices. I read that a mesh can be imported and used as geometry. Is 3DSMAX the ONLY option for importing mesh data?

If so, already im t hinking of making the mesh the modeler I use, exporting it into a functional 3DS file and using the converter to get it into Reality Factory. Any suggestions at all will do.

Thankyou.

EDIT: Will using Actors for geometry be faster or slower than BSP? Or will it run at the same speed? I only ask because "Actors" sounds like it will take up more processing power to render. Of course if Im typing nonsense and need to do more research, feel free to correct me. Im here to learn and eventually teach RF!

[Juutis]

Will using Actors for geometry be faster or slower than BSP? Or will it run at the same speed? I only ask because "Actors" sounds like it will take up more processing power to render.

Actors are definitely faster to render, but AFAIK BSP geometry has faster collision checking.

[bernie]

Is 3DSMAX the ONLY option for importing mesh data?

You can use almost any modeller to create mesh. Use Equity to convert it to .act and use it in RF. Equity supports ms3d, 3ds, obj, nfo & bdy files for mesh.

[Jay]

Will using Actors for geometry be faster or slower than BSP? Or will it run at the same speed? I only ask because "Actors" sounds like it will take up more processing power to render.

Actors are definitely faster to render, but AFAIK BSP geometry has faster collision checking.

Which is why the best solution to make terrains is with nems and export to both obj and map, and use clip brushes for collision and actors for rendering.

@topic:
You can import *.map files in the level editor. Maybe you use a level editor which exports to *.map and has vertex editing? This might be the easiest way.

If you want to use actors for your level geometry:
If you can export to a *.map file in the modeler, it would be good for the collision checking. You would import the map file in rfeditpro with "Open..." and then selecting to choose *.map files. Then select all brushes, in the brush properties change the brush type to 'Clip' and you're done.

Or you build invisible (=clip) brushes around your actors and do the collision yourself. I heard bernie does this with his game. This will definitely be faster than the actor per-poly-collision.

To speed up the rendering performance, you should split your level into several actors, and not use a whole big level actor file. With a big level using a big level actor file that contains all geometry in the level could crush performance, because then the engine would render it all every frame even if big parts aren't visible. To only 'advantage' would be that the framerate would be the same in the whole level, but as it will be low, this won't benefit you at all.

That said, it is certainly sure that large open areas render faster as actors, but when you have an indoor level with many corridors, rooms, etc, it would be reversed, as the BSP culls away many unnseen thinghs. If you have something like a canyon for example, or an outdoor which has both occluding areays and open space, e.g. a terrain where there is a huge wall in the middle and you cannot see over it, you could use both - but with all those thinghs here in the forum it should be no problem to find out how.

Hope this helps.

[bernie]

Or you build invisible (=clip) brushes around your actors and do the collision yourself. I heard bernie does this with his game.

Yes that is true the whole of the first level is SEP (static entity proxy) set with no collision and clip brushes for collision.

[realityfactoryusr]

Actor geometry renders faster but collision checking is slow
BSP renders slower but collision checking is faster than Actor.

IS the collision checking REALLY slow? If it is, than ill stick to BSP.

Im more concerned about in-game speed and smooth collision. So I guess its better to stick with BSP. Ive worked with buggy collision before and it made me F U R I O U S. Not to mention it took more time than necessary to iron out. And mind you im NOT a programmer. I just dabble in code from time to time. So if BSP take s alittle more time to render the maps, who am I to complain?

Thankyou for the advice, Ill stick to BSP.

[bernie]

Actor geometry renders faster but collision checking is slow
BSP renders slower but collision checking is faster than Actor.

That's the reason I used actors and clip brushes for collision... to get best of both worlds and it works.

[Veleran]

Model with Bsp,exported as .map from a modeler if you can,as it was mentioned.
Bsp is more playeable,and what you see before a compile is most of the times what you ll get.

Lets say six to eight arrayed bsp boxes give you a bridge if you vertex edit them with snap and type in transforms (for accuracy).

Actor meshes as level geometry are more like eyecandy with lower speed,so it is better to have bsp at the parts where the faster action is.
You can leave space between meshes and spread them around so you cant see all them on screen at the same time.


Anyway,if you make al the surounding from actors -the actors wont block visibility,so the pawns will always see the player and shoot him,no matter where he hides.
Unless you place smaller bsp brushes inside the meshes.

Bsp lightning may look more natural,with faster shadows,as they re static (under medium lightmap scale).
Even the dynamic light wont slow down a game much,unless the bsp faces are very very big and have a lightmap scale like 0.15.

[realityfactoryusr]

Im only really good with Blender and im not going through a detailed registration process just to use shareware software. Add to that, gMax seems to be unavailable last time I checked and thats the only other program I know of thats capable of exporting .map geometry correctly.

Unless you know of another

[Allanon]

Blender can export MAP files, if the built in exporter doesn't work there are also a few 3rd party MAP export scripts for Blender.