Antiportals, skip and cell shaders...

(dONKEY) #1

:eek2:
Hi, first time to the forum and lagging behind…
Could someone please explain, or tell where I could go to find out,
what the differance between antiportal and skip shaders are?
Another very simple question, but do I need to put the new common shaders into my .pk3 before publishing a map, or are they only required during compile?
…also what is the lightmap shader for?..and finally…
thanks very much in advance.

(Raven) #2

antiportal and skip shaders are?

The skip shader is used on any hint, areaportal, antiportal etc etc etc face that you do not need. If you make an areaportal, five of the six brush sides should be made of the skip texture and only one of the forward faces should be textured with areaportal. This is a nice little efficiency texture.

Sorry, I was not able to release that document, because it was too specific to what we are working on right now. I am going to write something on it as soon as my new website gets designed, but the guy designing it is taking his sweet time so it may be a while. Sorry man.

There was a designer doc. written on antiportals that I can post for you,

[b]Antiportals

Quick definition: An antiportal brush acts like both a hint brush and an areaportal brush mashed into one single entity. Unlike areaportals, antiportals are not restricted to the inside of door brushes.

Antiportal restrictions:

*Antiportals cannot be lined up with structural brushes or the default 1024X1024 engine splits or they will cause a leak in your level. This is because they are like a void to existing portals and will devour them causing a tear in the level’s hull. They can be lined up with detail brushes.
*Antiportals cannot be visible in playable space or they will give you the nasty HOM effect. You must bury the antiportal faces of the brush inside of detail and/or structural brushes.

Uses and other information:

*You always use the skip texture in conjunction with the antiportal texture. Only one face of a brush needs to have the antiportal texture. The rest should have the skip texture.

*Antiportals are best used in terrain maps, where a designer is trying to find ways to have VIS blockage in between terrain sections.

*Hint, antiportal and areaportal faces always create BSP splits. This is how they function. They split the BSP along the plane of the face in order to segregate each side of the map for visibility purposes.

*One thing to keep in mind is that every split through the BSP, through empty player space creates portal(s).

*Antiportal portals are opaque to vis.

*Hint portals are transparent to vis.

*Areaportal portals block area floods, to split the map up into a number of seperate areas which can be turned on/off by door entities.
[/b]

Thanks Ydnar for both the technology and the corrections :slight_smile:

(fraco) #3

even when making them skip, i thought skip made it NOT split the bsp?

I’m confused again…

fraco

(Raven) #4

Doh…It is early…Excuse me…You are right :slight_smile:

(dONKEY) #5

Thanks Raven, as usual I am in your debt.
One last thing am I right in thinking I don’t have to add the new antiportal and skip shaders to .pk3’s. I know it’s a stupid question but I’d rather look stupid than make stupid mistakes!
Finally, any clues as to what the cell shader does?
Thanks again.
d.

(Raven) #6

I am glad to help when I can :smiley:

The cell shader is used if you are going to cell shade your map…Make it look cartoony :slight_smile:

You should include the skip and antiportal shaders and textures in your .PK3. Not everybody is using Q3Map2…Even though they should be :wink:

(fraco) #7

but then again, aren’t these shaders only used at compile time? The q3 (or derivative) engine would never need to access them, right? So I would think you don’t need to add them to the pk3. On the other hand, better safe than sorry. It’s not like a little text file will add to the pk3 filesize.

b.t.w. Raven, really good info

fraco

(ydnar) #8

Yeah, you don’t have to include them with your map. They’re compile-only shaders that aren’t loaded by the engine.

Celshaders, however, do have to be included… :slight_smile:

y

(Raven) #9

Thanks Ydnar :slight_smile:

(dONKEY) #10

:smiley:
The light has dawned!
Thanks! I understand now, which is always an unusual event!

(Raven) #11

Awesome!!! Glad to help :slight_smile: