area portal need to be tied to door?

Hi im trying to optimise my map.

Ive read tutorials on area portals, but they always involve having it tied to a door. Is there any way of just having an area portal in a door frame which "closes" when it cant be seen and "opens" when it can be seen? I tried setting it to "start closed" but then u cant see anything thru it until you physically walk thru it.

Thanx

In the tut you could try using areaportalwindow

Well, i'm guessing its just a doorway with no door in it. In that case, you can put an area portal in the doorway and just leave it open all the time. It will actually still seal your area off and can help a lot with optimizing the map. With the area portal there, the things being rendered behind the portal will be clipped to the size of the area portal (in other words, instead of trying to draw everything in the room behind the doorway, it will only try to draw what you are actually seeing behind the door). If you use sv_cheats 1 and then mat_wireframe 1 in game and look throuh the doorway, you'll see more clearly what i'm talking about.

Also, the areaportalwindow should work too, as long as you can afford partial visibility from a distance.

thanx for the replies

:smile: