Weird missing texture issue

[Bikerdude]

Afternoon

 

What the hell causes a missing texture in the following screenshots... ive had this problem before but just replacing the brush generally fixed it. But I want to know not exactly whats caucusing and how to fix it correctly.

 

Doing a r_showtris 1 show the issue is fixating on the triangles but I haven't got a clue here...

[Mortem Desino]

I can't tell for sure from the screenshots, but it looks like you're either doing some nasty csg subtracting or your material definition is bad. Any more info you can pour on us, like what texture you're using, what you're trying to accomplish?

[Bikerdude]

I can't tell for sure from the screenshots, but it looks like you're either doing some nasty csg subtracting or your material definition is bad. Any more info you can pour on us, like what texture you're using, what you're trying to accomplish?

 

 

Ive not done any CSG in/on or near that part of the map (as a rule I dont CSG unless I absolutely have to). The brush is still there, but for some reason DM3 is giving me this in-game corruption.

 

Any... I've narrowed it down to the the tower thats directly above, (I saved the whole thing as a prefab, then deleted it and the wird issue was gone!) So I am slowly saving and removing parts of what i have done today as FS's to find out whats causing this.

Edited June 27, 2010 by Bikerdude

[Bikerdude]

Well I thought Id found the problem but no that turned out to be a blunt, after 7hrs+ I'm so fucked of trying to figure out what the problem is I'm going to just delete and recreate the entire tower.

Edited June 27, 2010 by Bikerdude

[Serpentine]

It should be some complex geometry directly linked to that area by triangle edges, you can try aligning the vertices around the area but otherwise it's a bit of a mess to solve... as you've noticed

[Bikerdude]

around the area but otherwise it's a bit of a mess to solve... as you've noticed

Well 5 times today Id thought Id solved it, but the 'issue' just moves to a different location in the general vicinity..

These type of bugs in DR/TDM make me want to give the whole thing up. its just soul destroying that when after hours of work to get stupid cuntfuck problems like this.

 

The ONLY thing thats stopping me from deleting TDM & DR from my system is the fact I had the foresight to enable the 'snapshots' feature in DR..

Edited June 27, 2010 by Bikerdude

[Serpentine]

Hahah, you could just ask for some help

 

If you throw the map up some place I'll have a look at it in the next hour and a bit before bed

[ungoliant]

I had this problem designing the roof in my big FM.

 

http://modetwo.net/d...post__p__213240

 

unfortunately, I could never find the offending source, so I ended up redesigning the attic from the original pieces it was cut out of. As shown in that link, I had a small hole that turned into a GIANT hole when i converted to func_static. The real solution to those holes is mostly readjusting angles, or vertex alignment, or increasing the width of brushes that are very thin. In my experience, I believe that converting to func_static helps more with performance than optimization, although it certainly influences it.

 

Basically, somewhere in that mess you got, theres something causing D3 to optimize those areas away. Its not that its lost the texture, and the area is still soundly sealed. But as far as rendering, D3 just plain decided that based on your geometry, "you didn't really need those triangles anyway, so I'm just not going to render them"

 

edit: very similar to the insides of your walls get cut out by dmap so you never see them, even if you noclip into the wall. Visportals get resized this way as well, so they form-fit the doorways/windows/etc. It optimizes away parts that never get seen/used during gameplay. Your problem is your actually using what it thinks your not using, and dmap throws it away.

Edited June 28, 2010 by ungoliant

[nbohr1more]

Can you set "optimization exceptions" for specific brushes or models? It seems you can globally disable dmap optimizations via cvar:

 

Modwiki dmap cvars

 

I know that Mortem Desino used "special" qualifiers in the dmap compile for NHAT 3/3.......

 

It'd be a shame to loose some brilliant designs to these "optimizations"...

[ungoliant]

So you are saying then that theoretically you could get away with csg_subtracting like 20 brushes sticking into eachother, selecting all the splinter brushes that you DON'T want optimized, convert them to func_static entity, and specify via cvar not to optimize that entity during dmap?! that would be awesome!!!!

 

edit:

It seems you can globally disable dmap optimizations via cvar:

 

oops i misread that... okay globally not optimizing anything would probably suck. But there must be something that can be done.

Edited June 28, 2010 by ungoliant

[Mortem Desino]

You might try using the internal func_group entity, but vanilla D3 never liked it.

The dmap scissors touches all worldspawn, unless it's textured with a global surface parameter noFragment.

 

Either: turn it into a model.

 

Or: define your own texture using the "noFragment" parm.

[nbohr1more]

Cool!

 

Also, so that these problems don't seem so mysterious, modwiki has an illustration of the Brush shapes that Doom 3 doesn't like:

 

Brush Shapes

 

(yeah, I'm sure you guys know this one but us newbs read this forum too )

Edited June 28, 2010 by nbohr1more

[Mortem Desino]

That's not just doom 3. Every game that uses binary space partitions (bsp) must use series of convex shapes for geometry.

 

The concern here is the dmap scissors and when it converts all its crap into loads.

[Serpentine]

I've only had this a few times really, mostly when I was still getting used to DR and brush work etc... now I have started to migrate away from brushes for a lot of my work and increased patches with manually configured tessellation. I find it provides a seamless and expected look, the default patches look far too 'graphy' for lack of a better term. That's quite off, but performance scales way better once you figure out where brushes/patches/func_statics work best... but it does take time and most likely BD has it figured out... after working with the cathedral components I sure as hell did :/

 

Anyway, BD do you have gtalk/msn/some other IM? I'd prefer you moaning at me than getting annoyed with mapping - but so long just upload the map somewhere and pm me a link

[Bikerdude]

That's quite off, but performance scales way better once you figure out where brushes/patches/func_statics work best... but it does take time and most likely BD has it figured out... after working with the cathedral components I sure as hell did :/ Anyway, BD do you have gtalk/msn/some other IM? I'd prefer you moaning at me than getting annoyed with mapping - but so long just upload the map somewhere and pm me a link .

 

Its ok Serp and I appreciate the offer, Ive gone back to a earlier snapshot.

 

On the subject of patches I would love to be proficient with them, my towers would all be perfectly round and smooth instead of hexagonal.

 

And after looking at the illustration in this article - http://www.modwiki.net/wiki/Brush I know for sure of atleast 2 patch/brush prefabs I designed that possible have this problem - so will need redesigning.

Edited June 28, 2010 by Bikerdude

[nbohr1more]

"noFragment"

 

From what I can tell, you would need to add this attribute to every texture variation for the affected geometry, correct?

 

Maybe a scripted action in Dark Radiant could do this for us lazy folk so we could paint the "no Fragment" attribute with ease ?

 

(Or maybe it's in DR already and I'm really out in the river... )

[Komag]

How do you add "noFragment" exactly?

[Serpentine]

There's really no point in using noFragment for doing this, you shouldn't be trying to fight dmap rather to create brushes which are better understood, because most often those are best practice methods anyway.

About the only useful thing out of the cvar options is knowing that you can crank up optimization of shadows and such for release as well as completely disable opt to see if that is what is causing a problem (doing this removes the need for nofragment anyway).

[Komag]

But if my whole map is fine except for one little sliver missing in one spot, it would be nice to stick "noFragment" in that one spot as a quick fix rather than rebuilding stuff.

[nbohr1more]

Yes, I see the philosophical reason to discourage this method but I fear that many beautiful designs have landed in the scrap-heap due to this kind of frustration.

 

If it helps, here is a material shader (from our wiki) with the noFragment attribute (I havent gotten around to serious searching on this topic yet...):

 

textures/env/water_pool

{

qer_editorimage env/water_pool_up.tga

 

noFragment

noshadows

noimpact

nooverlays

forceOpaque

nonsolid

 

{

forceHighQuality

blend add

cameraCubeMap env/water_pool

texgen reflect

}

}

[Serpentine]

Beaten to the example

Edited June 28, 2010 by Serpentine

[nbohr1more]

Yep there's extra bells and whistles there but a material definition is where this attribute would be found so:

 

 

textures/example/example_texture

{

example_path/example_texture.tga

 

noFragment

 

{

 

I think that would be the minimal declaration?

 

 

Global Key Words

[Komag]

I still have no idea what to do though. Can I select a brush face and add some setting to the Entity properties? It sorta looks like you're making some script though, which smacks of coding, which I turn retarded near.

[Tels]

[quote name='Komag' date='28 June 2010 - 05:40 PM' timestamp='1277739639' post='221440'

I still have no idea what to do though. Can I select a brush face and add some setting to the Entity properties? It sorta looks like you're making some script though, which smacks of coding, which I turn retarded near.

 

No, you need to make a new material, and then apply this material to the surface that gives you problems.

[Bikerdude]

It sorta looks like you're making some script though, which smacks of coding, which I turn retarded near.

Same here on that...

 

On another note Ive spent most of today building a blacksmiths forge out of patches. I found the easiest way was to simple building it out of brushes first, then select all the faces that are gonna be seen then select the decal patch option.

 

Even then I found some of the patches were showing the same bloody problem as yesterday, so all i did was was change the vert points on effected patches and that seemed to fix it.

Edited June 28, 2010 by Bikerdude