Indoor enviroments

#1 You dont have to use the terrain at all. if you want , you could make a map like quake or halflife and have it play like that. It includes alot of the standard quake level features like portals etc.
you could make an entire level without using the terrain

#2 I have some additional questions.

When making an indoor map can you export it from worldcraft as one single object or does the map have to be constructed of smaller prefab-like objects for performance?

Also, Quake3 has shaders for doing effects like shiney floors, alpha channeled textures, vertex deformation, waterfalls, fountains. How does v12 generate these effects and can you create things like waterfalls, Alpha-channeled textures?

#3 Large buildings are built as single objects. You can build them out of small pieces if you want, but it's not as run-time efficient (though useful to do so sometimes).

Material management is handled differently than Quake, and for players, trees, etc. is handled almost exclusively from within Max. You can animate textures, vertices, and use alpha channeled textures and environment maps, etc.

#4 So you mean that "carving" as much as possible from one big block (soon to be building) is better than say, creating the floor, then walls, then roof, ect. I realize the first method would be better but I thought with World Craft the second method was pretty standard practice.

Or are you saying that a building with a guard tower just outside (or on top) should be grouped as one item?

#5 No what I believe he meant is not that the building is a single polygon (as it were) but a single entity as far as the V12 engine in concerned for example:

You build a 2 level tower say:

|--|
|..|
|--|
|..|
|--|

.. denotes empty space -- a floor | a wall
Now you build your tower in as many pieces as you want in Worldcraft, but it is a single entity as far as the engine is concerned. Another method of building this tower could be by creating the pieces below

|..|
|--| <- A floor

|--| <- Roof


Which would then allow you (in theory) to construct as many levels to your tower as possible, by using the various pieces as glorified bits of Lego which "clip" together, but each floor and the roof itself would be considered seperate entities by the engine.

Owen

#6 Thanks. I think I understand what you are saying. Though he mentioned that you can make a building out of pieces but it's not as run-time efficient. This is where I am getting confused. I assume when he mentions run-time efficiency he means that it is easier to calculate and render a building with 3 parts (grouped as the same entity) than 15.

I am under the assumtion that grouping really wont make as big a differance as less polygons (hidden or not) to render. Am I wrong here?

Thanks
Aaron

#7 When the building is processed as a single entity, the map converter builds collision and visiblity information into the shape. The run-time engine uses this information to speed up collision, track visibility between rooms, etc. If the building is constructed out of small pieces it makes for more run-time work :)

#8 Thanks.:) I think I was just having problems making the transition from other editors where EVERYTHING is an object you have created to v12 where there are relatively few objects sitting on the terrain board.

I could have the last part of that statement wrong but I do understand the entity importance now.

Thanks again.
Aaron