Constructing level items for T3D?
by Martin Askestad · in Torque 3D Professional · 05/24/2009 (1:12 pm) · 8 replies
Hello
I've been away from torque for a few years, and torque 3d inspired me to try again. And with the risk of sounding like a total noob, I was wondering if Constructor is the app to use when building interiors for Torque 3d?
I've been away from torque for a few years, and torque 3d inspired me to try again. And with the risk of sounding like a total noob, I was wondering if Constructor is the app to use when building interiors for Torque 3d?
About the author
Always have ideas for new games. But not always the motivation or the skill.
#2
But yes, you can still use Constructor for building interiors in Torque 3D. You might want to try and experiment and compare performance though to see which art method works best for you.
05/24/2009 (1:32 pm)
Most people are being encouraged to make use of polysouped meshes, since for the most part they perform better than the old BSP tech of yesterday -- especially on today's hardware. I think that one of the dev's is working on a portal/occlusion object that can be used with them -- which is really the only remaining benefit (sort of) for using Interiors.But yes, you can still use Constructor for building interiors in Torque 3D. You might want to try and experiment and compare performance though to see which art method works best for you.
#3
05/22/2010 (12:24 am)
Ive been building a city scene the past couple of weeks, with the sole intention of comparing DIFs and Collada files. I really didn't see any major advantage to using either one for both interior buildings and static buildings. I chose to stick w/ Collada just because that's what the community has adopted...and if what Joseph said is true than it seems to be the obvious choice :) 
#4
05/22/2010 (7:36 am)
I remember reading a paper somewhere about the automatic portal system used by the canned Outcast 2 game (it was supposed to be released early in the PS2 life). Since the game never made it, I don't know how valid it is, but the basic idea was to pre-process the scene offline using volumetric algorithms to determine zones and the portals between them. Very, very memory intensive. 
#5
is there something terribly wrong with difs that i dont know about ?
because if it aint broke dont fix it, sure add new stuff i love new stuff but also stick with what works and what we know how to work with.
personally i hope GG could keep the difs in T3D as an option, more options is better imo.
so please dear GG devs dont take away the dif format its a great FEATURE of your engine :)
05/22/2010 (2:51 pm)
difs are great for portaling up areas i havent been able to get anywhere near the optimisation using dts / dae, so i sincerely hope that if difs are taken away theres something that will give us the same functionality. is there something terribly wrong with difs that i dont know about ?
because if it aint broke dont fix it, sure add new stuff i love new stuff but also stick with what works and what we know how to work with.
personally i hope GG could keep the difs in T3D as an option, more options is better imo.
so please dear GG devs dont take away the dif format its a great FEATURE of your engine :)
#6
05/22/2010 (11:01 pm)
I agree with Mahendra, DIFs work just fine, and it would def be beneficial to have multiple options when creating my worlds...an official response as to whether DIF will be yanked or not would be nice.
#7
Bill you should be seeing a lot of increased performance if your difs are culling the interiors correctly. (assuming you have details in the interiors to be culled), if you want fps quality interiors and detail in a large city type environment you have to use difs.
on one large level im working on my map runs at 55fps with difs and 4fps with the difs converted to dae. so yeh difs do make a DIFerence, :)
05/23/2010 (8:49 am)
Yes some official response would be good i dont want to go building a load of assets and then find out they cant be used. i know you can convert em to dae but without the portalling the whole environment design will be messed up.Bill you should be seeing a lot of increased performance if your difs are culling the interiors correctly. (assuming you have details in the interiors to be culled), if you want fps quality interiors and detail in a large city type environment you have to use difs.
on one large level im working on my map runs at 55fps with difs and 4fps with the difs converted to dae. so yeh difs do make a DIFerence, :)
#8
Personally I always found DIFs to be a pain to use. That was mostly due to me not being an artist and my inability to create any without light leaks. Most of the environments in my previous job were easily created anyway using static shapes.
05/23/2010 (1:46 pm)
DIFs are still going to be around in the immediate future. Beyond 1.1 though I don't know what their fate is planned to be.Personally I always found DIFs to be a pain to use. That was mostly due to me not being an artist and my inability to create any without light leaks. Most of the environments in my previous job were easily created anyway using static shapes.
Associate Joseph Euan
IIRC, that will change next year... dif will be removed, then it's just .DTS and Collada