Portals wont save correctly in Constructor
by William Freeman · in Constructor · 07/31/2008 (12:41 am) · 6 replies
I've been banging my head on several problems with portalizing my interiors.
I can get a certain part of an interior working with portals.. but when I save it.. and then re-open it won't export correctly. I know two things are happening, they could be related.
a. The brushes seem to form gaps between them when an interior gets re-opened.
The are small but they are there.
I know this because scaling the points to 0 so they line up again on all the axis fixes
the problem.
alternatively setting the grid to snap and nudging the points does the same thing.
it seems that when the file is re-opened the points aren't loaded precisely as they were saved.
b. I get portals working, have 2 zones on export, save the file and then open it back up.
I re-export and boom, I have 24 zones, when I should only have 2.
This would seem to be the gap thing mentioned above.
On top of these issues, I get very odd errors on loading a "working" dif. I exported the same file last night. It worked fine. I opened it today and re-exported it and I get the 24 zones/gap thing. I fix this so that it exports just the 2 zones it should have. But when I open it in TGE 1.5.2 and the lighting gets considered, I get the following error.
This is very frustrating. I can't edit any old files for fear of screwing them up. If I drop the portals it'll export but obviously the .difs are less than optimal.
I get the error mentioned above quiet often but can't figure out what causes it. I searched all over the forums for answers but no mention of an error like that. In addition I havn't seem mention of gaps being created on re-opening a file.
I've tried re-installing constructor from scratch (twice) I've deleted my prefs, I've tried exporting with different settings. I've tried resetting all the brushes. I've tried re-creating all the portals from simple boxes and not doing any transforms on them before I export. Short of rebuilding the whole model and exporting it all in one go before I quit out of constructor nothing seems to work.
Any body have a clue as to what the issue is.
Is there a better tool for working with interiors than constructor when it comes to portals?
any help or comment is greatly appreciated.
Colin
I can get a certain part of an interior working with portals.. but when I save it.. and then re-open it won't export correctly. I know two things are happening, they could be related.
a. The brushes seem to form gaps between them when an interior gets re-opened.
The are small but they are there.
I know this because scaling the points to 0 so they line up again on all the axis fixes
the problem.
alternatively setting the grid to snap and nudging the points does the same thing.
it seems that when the file is re-opened the points aren't loaded precisely as they were saved.
b. I get portals working, have 2 zones on export, save the file and then open it back up.
I re-export and boom, I have 24 zones, when I should only have 2.
This would seem to be the gap thing mentioned above.
On top of these issues, I get very odd errors on loading a "working" dif. I exported the same file last night. It worked fine. I opened it today and re-exported it and I get the 24 zones/gap thing. I fix this so that it exports just the 2 zones it should have. But when I open it in TGE 1.5.2 and the lighting gets considered, I get the following error.
Fatal: c:torque\tge_1_5_2\engine\interior\interior.cc @ 733 error, this shouldn't happen! Invalid winding in itrCliptoPlane:2
This is very frustrating. I can't edit any old files for fear of screwing them up. If I drop the portals it'll export but obviously the .difs are less than optimal.
I get the error mentioned above quiet often but can't figure out what causes it. I searched all over the forums for answers but no mention of an error like that. In addition I havn't seem mention of gaps being created on re-opening a file.
I've tried re-installing constructor from scratch (twice) I've deleted my prefs, I've tried exporting with different settings. I've tried resetting all the brushes. I've tried re-creating all the portals from simple boxes and not doing any transforms on them before I export. Short of rebuilding the whole model and exporting it all in one go before I quit out of constructor nothing seems to work.
Any body have a clue as to what the issue is.
Is there a better tool for working with interiors than constructor when it comes to portals?
any help or comment is greatly appreciated.
Colin
#2
07/31/2008 (6:50 am)
Before I get too far into this, Is there any reason that people need to "save and reload" as .Map files? I can see the need to import .Map files, export to a .Map file for import into another app, or to process by an older map2dif, but then why would someone need to reload that same map file - is it just for recovery in case of a lost .CSX file?
#3
So is maptodif the preferred export. I've just been using the export dif button not the maptodif stuff?
thanks for the quick responses.
07/31/2008 (9:23 am)
I think you guys misunderstood. I am saving as a .csx file. and reopening the .csx file. So its doing it to the standard constructor files as well. I tried .map files but they lose some things on reopen that makes them useless as a storage device.So is maptodif the preferred export. I've just been using the export dif button not the maptodif stuff?
thanks for the quick responses.
#4
Are you relying on super-precision to make sure there ar no gaps? If so, you will probably always have issues due to rounding errors. The best way to address this is to make sure your portals overlap the geometry at the edges. Also, making sure that your structural brushes (the ones that define a zone) are grid aligned will help with the rounding problems on normal brushes, though you could always make them overlap a bit as well if needed.
There were problems in earlier versions of constructor if you had scaled your portals - portals choose the largest face of the brush as the defining portal. If you scaled it, it would use the prescaled value. This was fixed in a later version.
07/31/2008 (10:54 am)
You're right, I didn't get that part - I've heard before about issues with reloading maps, but not with .csx files. I've tried to duplicate it under the latest version (1.051), but have not been able to.Are you relying on super-precision to make sure there ar no gaps? If so, you will probably always have issues due to rounding errors. The best way to address this is to make sure your portals overlap the geometry at the edges. Also, making sure that your structural brushes (the ones that define a zone) are grid aligned will help with the rounding problems on normal brushes, though you could always make them overlap a bit as well if needed.
There were problems in earlier versions of constructor if you had scaled your portals - portals choose the largest face of the brush as the defining portal. If you scaled it, it would use the prescaled value. This was fixed in a later version.
#5
Any idea what that winding error is about?
Thats the main thing thats keeping me from getting work done at this point.
07/31/2008 (1:20 pm)
I don't know about super precision? but I have all the brushes next to each other not interpenetrating each other. I do have them snapped to the grid. And I have my portals overlaping the four brushes around it.Any idea what that winding error is about?
Thats the main thing thats keeping me from getting work done at this point.
#6
I've also noticed that even though I turn of Hidden surface removal in the export preferences, That faces still get removed (not as much as if I have HSR turned on (I've never gotten that to work by the way).
I would think turning HSR off would make all structural brushes behave similar to detail brushes, but in my case it does not.
Is there any guidance or documentation of a proper workflow anywhere? Every thing I've found is quark specific.
I'm sorry if I sound desperate but I've been banging on this for months now and am at my wits end.
www.colins-loft.net/free/examples/tunnel.zip
07/31/2008 (2:51 pm)
Man. I can't get this file to act the same way twice. I'm posting a link to a zip here in the hopes that it helps you fix this problem or at least you can tell me what I'm doing wrong. I have literally tried everything and I can't get it to work.I've also noticed that even though I turn of Hidden surface removal in the export preferences, That faces still get removed (not as much as if I have HSR turned on (I've never gotten that to work by the way).
I would think turning HSR off would make all structural brushes behave similar to detail brushes, but in my case it does not.
Is there any guidance or documentation of a proper workflow anywhere? Every thing I've found is quark specific.
I'm sorry if I sound desperate but I've been banging on this for months now and am at my wits end.
www.colins-loft.net/free/examples/tunnel.zip
Associate Steve Acaster
[YorkshireRifles.com]
I've no idea why this sometimes happens when you save as a map file but csx isn't affected by it.