I’ve been doing a lot of testing on this and though some results have been inconclusive I have managed to find a pattern. I really want someone who knows the engine to try to shed some light on this issue because I’m getting some very strange triangle readings.
Anyway through some testing it seems that radiant regards the faces of a closed object as objects themselves and splits both sides of the surface. This does not happen always. From what I’ve been able to conlude it seems that when the model is created from pure solids (3d max primitive geometry) the triangle splits are fine. When the model however is created from planes or splines, and then these surfaces are joined through things like vertex weld, than radiant splits the surface on both sides creating twice as many triangles. For example a box made from 6 rectangular faces with welded vertexes in such a way so that there are 8 vertices total and there is no leakage from the inside of the box to the outside, would be split into 24 triangles in radiant. While a box made from a primitive geometry object only has 12. Granted a box is something simple and no one would build it from planes. But when making any kind of complex model, like a tank, you have to use splines and surface tools because it’s the quickest and easiest way.
This problem seems to be true for many of the default models. For example the street lights in goldrush are about 150 triangles each (lamp and handle) when they should barely be half of that. Some of the tree trunks from the trees also have about twice as many triangles.
I’m still not sure if the case is indeed so. If somehow either the ase export, or radiant itself does not recognize the full object but insted its component faces and so splits each of them as if they were a spearate entity.
Help, splash, ydanr…someone.