Smoothing issues with misc_model terrain

(motorsep) #1

I modeled a terrain and exported it as ASE file. Now I am trying to compile it and it gets all jacked up:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/48777284@N02/4495367888/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/48777284@N02/4498374671/

What I need is for q3map2 to leave misc_model alone and don’t smooth it. I need to it to preserve smoothing groups that come with the model.

It happens only if I compile my map with no -meta cmd option:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/48777284@N02/4497652006/

Though in that case I can’t have lightmaps, q3map2 does vertex lighting only.

Any possible solution?
Thanks.

(motorsep) #2

can anyone help me, please?

(obsidian) #3

[QUOTE=motorsep;221900]It happens only if I compile my map with no -meta cmd option…
Though in that case I can’t have lightmaps, q3map2 does vertex lighting only.[/QUOTE]

Probably not a smoothing issue then. If you want to lightmap that thing, it’s going to be hard for Q3Map2 to map out seamless lightmap coordinates across that irregular shaped mesh. It’s like trying to wrap up a baseball glove with a sheet of paper without any overlaps, cuts or folds - your model is the glove, and the lightmap (a texture) is the paper. You’ll probably have to think of some way of splitting up the model into chunks.

It doesn’t look terrible vertex lit though. Maybe leave the mountainous bits vertex lit and set the bottom floor to be lightmapped.

(motorsep) #4

thanks obsidian.
i tried splitting that model into 5 chunks and it didn’t help whole a lot… in addition to the existing issue, I got seams in between chunks…
How would I mix vertex lighting and lightmaps? I wouldn’t mind having terrain vertex lit and the floor lightmapped.

P.S. The level is huge, the polycount of the terrain is ~50k polygons.

(obsidian) #5

Several ways.

Enable spawnflag 4 on the floor model only.

Setting different lightmap and vertex shaders.

Building the floor with brushes.

(Detoeni) #6

I’ve come across this before, I wanted to model vertical cliffs into W:ET map and thought ase would be the way to go. As you have seen it don’t quite work right. Even when using every shader trick in the book to blend the lightmap edges, I still got noticeable seams in the lightmapping.
The bad news is there is a way to make it work, I say bad news because you’ll need to remake your terrain in brushwork. Not sure of the in’s and out’s, but it does work.

(motorsep) #7

well, it seems like splitting the terrain into chunks worked. I split mine into 16 chunks (including floor).
and I don’t pass it through meta (no spawnflags 4 or q3map_forceMeta in the walls shader). I got minimum amount of artifacts. However, I have issues with deluxe maps now. Will be investigating further.
As far as converting mesh into brushwork, I have no problems with that. There is an exporter for Blender that exports any mesh into .map file. The issue is my terrain has vertex alpha for texture blending. I’d have to manually place alpha volume brushes if I export my terrain into set of brushes.

EDIT: The issue with deluxe mapping arises when misc_model is not passed through the meta deal. Though, forcing meta messes up smoothing no matter what. I split terrain into 38 chunks and I got the same results as with 16 chunks. What puzzles me is that when I re-complied one of the ydnar’s examples (ase terrain), I had no issues with smoothing. q3map2 told me that 0 vertices were smoothed. How exactly it was achieved, I don’t know; I need for q3map2 not to smooth vertices of a misc_model passed through meta.

(ailmanki) #8

I am not very advanced in this…
but well first off, this does not look like a game I know.

If ydnar’s example works fine, yours should also, if it does not - yours is different. I think ydnar has not used smooth groups.

You do not mention which version you do use for compiling and which program to create the ase.

I suggest to try again with netradiant’s q3map2.
http://dev.alientrap.org/projects/netradiant/wiki/Additional_map_compiler_features
http://dev.alientrap.org/projects/netradiant/wiki/Complete_list_of_entity_keys (check misc_model flags)

Just as example: http://www.bakdesign.net/tm/tutorial/3dsmax_tutorial.html

I can hardly imagine it does not work. If q3map2 can light brushes correctly, it should be able to light ase’s also correctly.
Also on wolfedit.com, there are caves made with ase… and they are perfectly lit… problem there was clipping.

As said not really advanced in this, but afaik an ase can have no smoothing in q3? So then this would only apply to the lightmap? if that is the case, I would use different shaders with different “q3map_shadeangle *” values instead of smoothing groups.

I hope I am more or less on the right thing. lol.

(motorsep) #9

It’s all understandable, ailmanki, but I have hi poly terrain (~50k of polygons) and it’s huge area wise.
I decimated terrain and got the problem part down to ~18k of polygons. Now I almost nailed it. There are few artifacts remain, but I can live with it. I will post the results later.
After success with lower poly terrain, went back to 50k terrain. I keep on getting weird zebra effect:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/48777284@N02/4506891996/
Does anyone know what could cause it?

P.S. The difference between my ASE file and ydnar’s was in *MATERIAL_SHADING line… It suppose to be Phong, but for Blender’s exporter saves it as Blinn.