Concave polys

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tarquin

design is flawed
Oct 11, 2000
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Does anyone know what Unreal engine's position on concave polys is?
I mean polys on a brush as it's built, not the polys that result from subtractions which are AFAIK several BSP polys that the engine edits in one go as a convenience to the user.

I thought they were a big no-no, but I was fiddling with a new build of the Extruder (no surprise there!) and a concave shape I made looked fine.
I've made a map with some examples.
Some display bad polys, some seem totally fine, but I'm not sure I've looked at them under all possible angles :)
 

tarquin

design is flawed
Oct 11, 2000
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Look at the green cylinder from where I've put the light -- above the missing slice, looking down at it. It's hard to catch it right, but the engine draws the polys across the gap (across the mouth if you think of it as pacman :) )

one of the subtracts next to the main box is bad too.
 

Slick_Willy

Anyone Else Want Some?
Only problem with your map is that these shapes can be made just fine but they need to be made in the 2d editor so they get the proper vertex slices drawn right or whatever they are called. Look at the picture below, it is a much more complicated Concave brush than yours but since it was made in the 2d editor it works fine because it adds all those little lines linking up the vertices. Now if I tried to make a 19 sided cylinder and tried to duplicate this shape by moving verticies then it would be all screwed up.

beziersegments.jpg
 

tarquin

design is flawed
Oct 11, 2000
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I'd always thought a brush's wireframe had to be made of convex polys, it's just when I was fiddling with the extruder I made one of the shapes in that map, and I can't find the right spot to see the BSP error.
Since I already knew that vertex-editing a cylinder into Pacman fouls things up, it got me thinking maybe some concave wireframe polys were ok and some weren't.

Written a neat function for the extruder that tests to see if the shape is convex.
I was going to use that to write something that will divide up a concave shape into convex polys. Polys rather than triangles, so the wireframe isn't as messy.
This would then divide up the cap polys for the extruded brush so a concave shape could be used.
 

MeTHicAL

New Member
Mar 5, 2001
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In my opinion, convex polys ARE a little touchy. Here is a brush I made in the 2d shape editor. The entire sidewalk and street are one object. Notice how the curb part is flipped and the "underneath" shadows are forced to the top surface, making everything look all black. (At least I THINK that's what is happening here) I tried making the curb in the 2d shape editor as a separate object, with the same result.
 

tarquin

design is flawed
Oct 11, 2000
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is the dark bit a sort of gutter thats lower than both of the things around it? Hard to tell on that pic.
the 2D editor will always split a brush up into 'nice' polys that the engine can handle.
if it is a dipped area, that's a lighting engine quirk -- narrow trenches don't get terribly well lit. select those polys and in the flags, try HighShadowdetail or bright corners.
 

Mambo

Metallica Head
Mar 25, 2000
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i know this sounds pretty obvious, but what exactly does bright corners do as opposed to not using bright corners. also, for what surfaces should this be used?
 

ChrisToth.hu

Level Designer
Oct 2, 2000
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Atlantis
Bright corners will make the surface lit in the corners too...
You've probably noticed that if you place a light in front of a surface then the corners will remain dark...

(This is especially good on terrains...makes lighting more realistic...)