How should i best deal with this window

The map that i am currently making for CS:S is very big. Therefore i want optimise as much as possible. I have a very large complex window in one of the rooms which i wanna know how best to deal with.



There are no overlapping brushes currently. But i want to add glass.

Should i A: create a massive brush which strectches over the hole thing (func_wall). Or

B: Create lots of tiny glass brushes to fit in all the holes. Or

C: ???

Is there anything else i can do to help reduce compile times etc with this window?

Any thoughts would be great. This is a recreation of a leisure centre so i dont want to change the layout of the window.

Cheers

Although overlapping brushes are best to be avoided, the won't kill your
framerate like so many small brushes will. Go for A. OR, if you're not
supposed to go outside, you can make a large window brush and place it
beyond the window bars. No one will notice.

if you dont plan on the glass breaking, then make one big brush.

I think that as long as those frame brushes are func_detail then you will be ok as far as placeing a large window.

Also on a side note, be sure to apply nodraw texture to anyface the
play will not see inside your map (i.e. the top of those horizontal
window frames, but not necessary on the outside of walls that face the
'void')

Either way if you have several brushes or if you have one large brush,
it shouldn't affect your compile time at all. If they aren't
going to be breakable, and you have a texture that will fit right, I
would make it into one large brush, since that should require less
polies. But its really up to you, I doubt it will make that much
of a difference in the end. But maybe try both and see, shouldn't
be too difficult to try both.

By the way func_wall is deprecated, use func_brush.

So would you say it was better to have all the frame work overlapping each other for less poly's or keep it as i have it now with no brushes overlapping?

ben_j_davis said:
So would you say it was better to have all the frame work overlapping each other for less poly's or keep it as i have it now with no brushes overlapping?

the only sure way to find out would be to try one of each, and see if either of them affect framerates better than the other. my 1st thought would be to make all the vertical brushes as world brushes, and overlap them with horizontal func_detail brushes. i'd also stop the vertical world brushes from touching the roof or floor. the glass would be a one piece func_detail, and the whole thing would have a clip brush over it to stop players snagging.

Probably the "cheapest" way to do it would be to make the whole window
(glass + frame pieces) one big brush, with a custom texture that used
an alpha channel to control the transparency. Make the frame parts of
the texture opaque and the window parts transparent.

You'd also probably want an envmapmask so that the window parts were
reflective and the frame parts non-shiny. And if you really want to go
for it, a bumpmap so that the frames looked like they had some depth.

That should give you a much better render speed than making it out of
individual brushes, though I'm not sure how nice it would look close-up.

At the moment its difficult to tell any large difference in framerate, cos as it's in the eary stages of the build, FPS is like 200+ most of the time.

If the player cant see the outside of the window then I would do it like this.

| | |

first line is one big pane of glass, make this a func_detail.

second is the vertical bars. These are also func_details.

the third line will be the horizontal bars, also func_details.

so each object rest infront of the others, so you dont have to have a
bunch of small brushes and you also dont have to have the brushes dont
pass through each other.

Or option C: if your any good at modeling, go in and make those windows a model with the glass in place, then use them instead.