BSP vs. Static Mesh

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The Twiggman

Instagib 4 Life
Would you rather use bsp or static meshes for making your levels?

I tend to like the original bsp. I find that static meshes just look to good and its rather cheating. Lol, select a mesh and place. Where bsp takes effort. It all really depends on how pro you want the level to look after though eh. I really don't care about looks that much, I just like to do some brushwork on my spare time. Static Meshes always seem to come last on the list of things to place.
 

Bot_40

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Nov 3, 2001
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Well the fact is that just placing epic meshes DOESN'T look good because everybodies already seen them 200 times before.
tbh, I thought it would take longer for this to happen, but already I find that instead of looking at a map and thinking "That's decent architecture", I'm thinking "That could be decent architecture but he's used that same ****ing epic mesh that I saw in the last 200 maps and I'm starting to get sick of it".
Ironically, the people who rate "Cube filled with epic meshes" maps highly on looks are probably the same people who moaned about all the richrig davidm clone maps that were released for UT and were moaning about the lack of original maps :hmm:

N00bs like Hayden, who prolly couldn't make a decent UT map to save their life are making a bit of heightmap and filling a cube with random meshes and suddenly they think they are god because they can make a 40,000 poly map in a few days. And to make it worse, they are getting hired because most game companies are just as blind as the people that give cube maps 10/10 on nalicity. They don't realise that it takes absoloutly no skill whatsoever to fill a map with random premade meshes.

I like working with meshes myself, simply because when I'm making my own it's almost the same as working with bsp, only it takes a bit longer to do, the extra detail you can use however is a much greater benifit.
[/rant]
 
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Twrecks

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Mar 6, 2000
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BSP is polycount limited in UT2003, and perhaps, from my findings, more prone to hole/HOMs than UT.
However, Meshes made in Ued3 look like poo unless you really choose your textures well (shadows, look at the feakin shadows in the textures).
Mesh making does open the polycount up considerably, like from 400 to 40,000! Optimizing is a bit rough using blocking volumes, zone volumes and anti-portals. BSP still has its place, namely for dynamically lit surfaces and accepting projectors, just too bad they nolonger occlude. However ,the payback using meshes is well worth the extra effort. If anything the gap between players and mappers got bigger. Those who can combine both effectively will suceed.
 

Bot_40

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Main reason I still use bsp quite a lot in my maps atm is becuase sometimes vertex lighting just won't do. I don't have Max5 so I can't use lightbaking, although I imagine it's more trouble than it's worth getting the light levels and shadows the same in max as they are in the editor.
 

Aggressor

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It's a fact that mesh-filled cubes look like pur3 c4rp, so unless you make the majority of the level in Max (which may actually cause problems), you have to stick to BSP, and a complex one, that is. I am making a map of this sort right now; I may post shots in the future.
 

Hourences

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Aug 29, 2000
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no, it depends how you do it, you can perfectly fine combine bsp + mesh
bsp only, high poly, takes to much time to make, and is slower, has bugs etc
no smoothingroups etc

it takes time to get used to the system of prefabs, on how tomake your own mesh which works best for you, a mesh that you can use in 2000 different situations
making the whole map at once in max wont work, only if your realy good you could try, and it would still be rather frustrating at times
 

Aggressor

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'bsp only, high poly, takes to much time to make, and is slower, has bugs etc no smoothingroups etc'

Huh, I've been misunderstood; I didn't mean pure BSP archi in UT2k3, not at all (my god, THAT would make crappy map), but that we should avoid just subtracting cubes and filling space with meshes, i.e., there is still some space for complex BSP, just not too complex or too abundant.
 

Hourences

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but if you can use meshes really well, you really dont need more then a couple of bsp cubes :)
just takes some time, for everyone, even very good mappers are having probs with it in the start

prob im having atm is that its hard to make a very large prefab, that can be used a lot for large architecture, its all so damn small and stuff, so sometimes i use my bsp as well to create that large architecture
but thats not the best way :)
 

Willis

Is Interested
Nov 28, 2001
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Ugh, lol. UT is so much better than UT2k3, static meshes ARE STUPID!
I have Max5, and I could go and make some super high poly wicked meshes, but it just doesn't feel right when I place them in maps... I mean, it's like a tree from UT, say tree06, the palm like one, it's just this mesh that looks crappy in the editor, and doesn't light as good, and I just dont like it...

Personally, I think I'll stick with UT-SP, because with semi-solids I can still make super detailed maps using BSP that prolly look better than goddamn UT2k3. Allthough they might run a little slower.
 

Bot_40

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vertex lighting = alright once you learn to build your meshes around the limitations of it. It's obviously never going to be as good as lightmapping but I'm more concerned with things like the buggy sunlight actor and liquid plastic fluid surfaces