Collision tutorial

#1 It's best to create collision volumes as part of the shapes hierarchy in your modelling app. Applying collision shapes through the Shape Editor is kind of a stop-gap method for basic shapes that don't include proper collision meshes.

If you need collision inside a building that doesn't have premade collision volumes. make sure it's placed as a TSStatic (as Mesh, not as a Scripted Shape) and select "VisibleMesh" as it's Collision Type under it's Collision properties in the Editor.

#2 I'm using Deled to model the structure. Until I'm allowed on the forums on that site, I cannot find any menu item to allow collisions to be applied to any shape within the Deled app.

for T3d, I did find the VisibleMesh attribute, and set it, do I now have to use the Shape Editor to finalize the setting?

#3 I'm unfamiliar with the operational use of DeleD, but in most modeling apps you can setup nodes or markers in the hierarchy of an mesh. It is to these nodes/markers that you attach an invisible mesh that is in turn used by a game engine (some) for collision. Torque allows multiple collision volumes on a shape or one convex primitive. There should be information about it in the Artist's area of the Documentation, or you may be able to extrapolate from another modeling app's tutorial.

Using the toggle for Visiblemesh collision means that a TSStatic will use the actual mesh of the object for collision instead of collision meshes - no modification needed. However, keep in mind that more and more complicated shapes will require greater resources to handle this type of collision.

#4 Are you familiar with Unity Michael?
It sounds like <err, excuse me, reads like> you're describing something that Unity uses.
see www.3dbuzz.com under the Unity videos

#5 The attaching of separate collision meshes to an object and forming a prefab is actually much easier in Unity than in Torque. It's mainly my personal preference that I'd rather have the model built to contain the collision mesh(es), as it's more optimized that way. Visible mesh collision, polysoup, OPCODE, or a few other terms depending on engine, is fairly common nowadays - it just eats up more cpu cycles.

#6 should I search the site for polysoup then?

#7 Not unless you're just wanting to do research on it. It's a built-in feature of T3D and is enabled by selecting it for a specific object.

Finding a Torque-related tutorial for setting up collision meshes for your modeling app would be a more pertinent search

#8 ok! thanks!