Quark cracks from copying
by Tony Lamba · in Artist Corner · 06/16/2004 (3:27 pm) · 12 replies
I am working on an apartment building. I have one side working fine. In order to save time, I thought I would copy one side, then flip it 90 deg and place it on another side. But I am not sure what is goign wrong, I always get cracks between the brushes this way. Some are so obvious that I literaly can see right through the cracks? In quark the brushes are aligned perfect, even if I zoom far in. Just to be safe I then re-snaped them all to grid incase they were not. But I still get cracks between them when viewing in torque. Is there some kind of data getting corrupted somewhere in quark when copying groups of brushes?
About the author
#2
06/16/2004 (4:56 pm)
Check your options to see if floating-point coordinates are enabled. You _do_ want to have floating-point coordinates.
#3
Decisions decisions...
06/16/2004 (9:45 pm)
I have been warned about floating point causes your frame rate to be SLOW. As I'm trying to optimize my framerate (it seems slow enough as is), I am very weary of making the problem worse.Decisions decisions...
#4
06/16/2004 (11:46 pm)
I've never heard that, Tony. Perhaps someone else can enlighten us on this. It's just that I've never run into that problem.
#5
I think it would be helpful if you can show some pics of it.
Regards,
James Yong
06/16/2004 (11:58 pm)
Tony,I think it would be helpful if you can show some pics of it.
Regards,
James Yong
#6
Once it is converted to .dif it is all floating point anyway so there is going to be zero performance difference in-game. Your map2dif processing time may be a little slower in some cases but it will also be more reliable and far more accurate.
There is *no* reason to not use floating point values.
06/17/2004 (5:00 am)
Tony,Once it is converted to .dif it is all floating point anyway so there is going to be zero performance difference in-game. Your map2dif processing time may be a little slower in some cases but it will also be more reliable and far more accurate.
There is *no* reason to not use floating point values.
#7
06/21/2004 (11:14 am)
Quote:Hmmm... isn't it so that you can't really rotate anything in Quark?Uhm.. where did you get this impression? I use rotation in Quark all the time without any problems. If you are trying to do precise rotation (like getting it 90 degrees to the other shape) be sure to use the rotate buttons on the top bar after specifying the number of degrees you want... as shown here.
#8
06/21/2004 (1:00 pm)
Hmm maybe I was wrong, I thought I read that somewhere. I could have confused that with the fact that you can't manipulate vertices directly, but I'm not sure. Anyway, thanks for your comments. I found the rotate buttons and they sure are helpful :)
#9
06/28/2004 (12:20 pm)
I've been using Quark in my game for sometime now, and I think I know what your problem is. These "cracks" are just a lighting issue unfortunatly. see, in quark you can't use a cube shape and extend it to make it one object w/ several faces, instead you have to make several seperate objects and put them together to make it seem as one object. If your lighting is showing cracks, it will have a slight shadow of these seperate cube objects in torque making them appear to be cracks. Nothing you can really do about it tho, unless you try building in milkshape/cinema4d/maya/3dstudio etc. and use uv maps w/ collision box's. Hope this helps you. 
#11
06/28/2004 (1:16 pm)
Thanks Joseph, I'm going to try that out and post up the effects of that later =) 
#12
@Thijs, you can manipulate vertices, however QuArK makes sure that you always have a 'legal' convex shape....so, if you move one vertex, for example, you are really moving that edge and assoicated faces.
@Tony, another capability of QuArK is tagging points, edges, and faces. If you are trying to have two brush faces meet exactly (whether on-grid or floating point), tag one face and force the other to tagged. This is one of the slickest features of QuArK...it should get rid of the 'cracks'.
@Jeff, the lightmap issue you raise is most likely caused during the map2dif compile process as map2dif breaks up the original brushes into new surfaces. A lot of that can be avoided by good use of detail brushes when intersecting walls/floors and avoiding t-junctions.
07/01/2004 (9:01 am)
Quark rotates brushes from the centroid of the shape....unless your brush is aligned with the major axes (and you rotate 90,180, or -90) you are very likely to end up with vertices that are "off-grid". If you want integer coordinates, it would be a good idea to right-click on the vertices and select "force to grid". A better option is to drag the faces into place...this keeps the vertices on-grid (if they were on-grid to begin with).@Thijs, you can manipulate vertices, however QuArK makes sure that you always have a 'legal' convex shape....so, if you move one vertex, for example, you are really moving that edge and assoicated faces.
@Tony, another capability of QuArK is tagging points, edges, and faces. If you are trying to have two brush faces meet exactly (whether on-grid or floating point), tag one face and force the other to tagged. This is one of the slickest features of QuArK...it should get rid of the 'cracks'.
@Jeff, the lightmap issue you raise is most likely caused during the map2dif compile process as map2dif breaks up the original brushes into new surfaces. A lot of that can be avoided by good use of detail brushes when intersecting walls/floors and avoiding t-junctions.
Torque Owner Thijs Sloesen
Scattered Studio