Hey Ben,
Here's what VDC has (seein' as how you can't access it).
func_lod
From Valve Developer Community
Jump to: navigation
<http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Func_lod#column-one>, search
<http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Func_lod#searchInput>
This is a brush entity
<http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Brush_entity> available in all
Source games.
Entity Description
Brush-built
<http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Entity#Brush_entities> model
that fades out over a specified distance. Useful for creating world
detail that doesn't need to be drawn far away, for performance reasons.
* Note:*The fading is not always consistent; brushes may suddenly "pop"
into view depending on where the player is looking. This happens because
of a hardware issues with rendering translucent materials. Low-end cards
will fade nearer than the distance specified, and smaller objects fade
nearer than a larger object with the same fade distance.
* Note:*The overhead required by this entity is substantial. Use it only
for special effects or when fading very dense geometry, and one could
then argue, shouldn't that better be a model
<http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Model>?
As for waterindices, here's as much as I could gather:
"t-junctions are edges with more than two collinear verts. This happens
when dissimilar geometry meets sharing an edge, vbsp automatically adds
all verts along the edge to each polygon sharing the edge to avoid
cracks. vbsp has a -notjunc option that will skip this process, but that
will leave you with cracks in your level. You probably want the
t-junctions fixed. Cracks usually look like sparkling edges (bright
pixels in the skybox showing through).
There are several references on t-junctions online as it's a general
problem when processing geometry for any rendering engine. It's not
unique to anything specifically in Source."
Basically, it looks like it has to do with when you have two brush edges
with vertices along them that don't line up, so vbsp does some work to
prevent unsightly cracks from showing along the edges. I'unno, that's
my best guess.
And, thanks for your service (Army).
Benjamin J Dunbar wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am asking my questions here on the mailing list because I do not have
> access to the VDC at this time...it's considered by the US Army to be a
> "gaming" site, so they have blocked it on our machines.
>
> What exactly is func_lod, and do you think I should use it instead of
> func_detail? I have a high amount of func_detail in my map and after looking
> at Valve's maps I noticed some func_lod where I would have assumed to use
> func_detail. Can someone clear up it's purpose and usage for me?
>
> Also...same map as above...when I compile, I get 85% "waterindices", which
> the compiler calls "VERY FULL". But I have no water in my map at all. Can
> someone tell me what's up with that? What are "waterindices"?
>
> Thanks very much guys.
> _______________________________________________
> To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please
> visit:
> http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlmappers
>
_______________________________________________
To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please
visit:
http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlmappers
