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Simple VIS tutorial for the curious [message #-995805] Thu, 25 July 2002 01:18 Go to previous message
Anonymous
There's already a VIS tutorial on the forums, but here is where I expand on it a little.

Basically, open up the hourglass gmax scene that was included with the mod tools. Go to the select by name thingy and you should see a group called VIS - select that, hide unselected, and ungroup the VIS group. You'll see that basically each POLYGON on the map has been cloned - these are VIS sectors, essentially any mesh (preferably hidden) that has the VIS collision option on w3d settings. However, these polygons were chosen because these are places where the CAMERA (ie, infantry, vehicles, aircraft) can move to. I think you should be able to figure things out from this - you'll have to mimic the VIS setup on the hourglass gmax scene on your map.

Now, in the case of aircraft, you must have several layers of VIS sectors, separated by 10 meters on the Z axis (this is directly affected by the VIS sample height in the auto-generate VIS, but use 10 - it's the default). This is where things could get laggy! (gmax only - map would take a bit longer to load in level edit but no FPS lag) Understand me so far? I hope so [Smile] .

Now, generating VIS should be the final stage in making your map. First, as the map setup do***ent included with the mod tools stated, Discard VIS data (under the VIS menu), Repartition Culling systems (under the Edit menu), Build Dynamic culling system (under VIS menu; you'll need to have human pathfind generators on your map, preferably with the pathsolve sectors already generated), Auto-generate VIS (VIS menu; this is the longest part of the process!), and place manual VIS points.

In the Auto-generate dialog, you should set the granularity to 5 - it's what I use, although it may take a LOOOOOONG time, but this should definitely save you time on the manual VIS point part. Once this part is finished, enter walkthrough mode and walk through your map, looking for VIS glitches - places where items on the map disappear when they shouldn't. When you find one, while looking at the invisible object, hit Ctrl + ~ (the key above the TAB key right by the 1 key) and the object should appear into view. If you get a "backface leak overflow rejected" error, bring up the VIS window and look for items in green - these are backfaces and you'll have to do something about that backface in gmax in order to get rid of the VIS glitch in that area - hopefully you won't run into too many of these. Common places for manual vis points are the doors of the buildings, tunnel entrances, etc.

BTW, after generating VIS data, if you close level edit and decide you need to make more changes, repartition the culling systems before you export the second time you edit and that will save you a lot of time instead of having to re-generate VIS data all over again! If you don't do this, the VIS data will be counter-productive and actually slow FPS during crunch times.

If you have anymore questions let me know.

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