face splitting

OK, my problem is, I've got a stairwell. The stairs are all world brushes, and they touch the wall, so I get a ton of polygons. The main problem is, the lighting looks horrible because of it. Is there any way to fix this, apart from moving the stairs away from the wall? I would, but I want them to stay on the wall for visblocking reasons.

You could move the stairs say 8 units away from the wall, then put in a diagonal trim to fill the gap. This trim shouldn't split the walls at all, and could look quite nice if you had it at the right angle to line up with the stairs.

Alternatively, construct your stairs as shown. Convert the steps into a func_wall and place a solid underneath. :smile:

make it wasy on yourself.. clone the walls that are split make them func's, then make them very thin and butt them against the inside of the walls facing the steps

Quickest solution I've ever received on a forum! Thanks guys, I'll try them and see if they work.

You both get marked correct, I'm feeling generous today, and either would work. :smile:

We aim to please :smile:

Is it just me or is there something innately satisfying about those blue posts? :smile:

Alien_Sniper said:
Is it just me or is there something innately satisfying about those blue posts? :smile:

mine coulda been blue too, but after i read your replies closer.. it only looked as if i copied them into mine.. so i left it green..

i shoulda looked closer.

I'm not sure if I'm reading the way you suggested right, but if you
just put func_walls at the side of the steps, would the sides and
undersides of the steps not be rendered?

I think the whole func_wall idea won't work in this situation because the stairs are some kind of vertical visblocker. I haven't seen the map but that's what he seemed to be saying.

Yeah, they are sort of vertical visblockers...

I made each flight of stairs a func_wall, and put a solid world brush under it. Now I'll have to compile to see how it looks...

Alien_Sniper said:
I'm not sure if I'm reading the way you suggested right, but if you just put func_walls at the side of the steps, would the sides and undersides of the steps not be rendered?

| | | | | | |
| | | | | | |steps
------------------------------- func_wall
___________________________
___________________________wall
___________________________

that's one wonderful piece of ASCII ownage, Orph. :smile:

Forceflow said:
that's one wonderful piece of ASCII ownage, Orph. :smile:

blushes

i would work on that fibbing talent there forceman :biggrin:

So you're saying yes, the sides and unsdersides will be rendered. :razz:

Alien_Sniper said:
So you're saying yes, the sides and unsdersides will be rendered. :razz:

first off, my way only stops face splitting.. which was the question..

secondly, func_walls are still rendered so your question makes no sense to me.. whatever the brush, gl_wireframe 2 will see it.. all i am doing is minimizing face splits.

Meh, nevermind. :smile:

just NULL texture any faces you can't see. I am a NULL whore bwahahaha

According to KFS that doesn't affect r's....

Back-faces aren't rendered (they're either culled in-game or during the compile process)... So essentially you need to NULL texture faces that you CAN see (stuff that's rendered but the player can't see anyway). Err, did that make sense? :smile:

Campaignjunkie said:
Back-faces aren't rendered (they're either culled in-game or during the compile process)... So essentially you need to NULL texture faces that you CAN see (stuff that's rendered but the player can't see anyway). Err, did that make sense? :smile:

yeah it did.. you have areas inside each map but out of view from the players angle of perspective..

i dunno how that would assist anyone, but i at least understood your point. :smile:

Basically what CJ means (I think) is if you have the world brush underneath the stairs, and the func_wall stairs on top, the topside of the world brush will still get rendered, even if its getting completely blocked out by the func_wall. NULLing the top face of the world brush will stop that and save some R's. This is what I plan to do (but I'm still using Zoners, so this wont work... for the moment).