Hi =) I am waiting for my model to be compiled and I realised that it is taking a rather long time. Is it normal??
I used misc_model to import my architectural model from 3dsmax and the sizes of the various files are as below.
myModel.ase 26,000 KB
myModel.map 10 KB
myModel.bsp 12,555 KB
It is taking me around 15 mins to compile the model. Are there other methods to compile in a shorter time???
depends heavily on the compile options you use and power of your machine.
bsp -meta is the fastest, any vis compiling can take longer especially if you have a lot of structural brushes in your map, and light compiling will be slower if you have additional options (switches) like -filter or -samples or -bounce, and the more lights your map has will affect that compiling stage.
so if you only testing geometry and textures, then a bsp -meta compile is probably all you would need.
if you testing vis, then you can use a -fast switch on that stage of the compile.
and if your using a sky shader, especially one with q3map_sunext then the last to values can be lowered to speed up the light stage.
also with both vis and light compiles, if you dont need to test the whole map, then region compiling is a great time saver, which is set up from radiants region menu.
For me generally:
BSP: a few seconds
VIS: seconds to under 2 minutes
LIGHT: ranges from couple of minutes to 10 hours depending on complexity
P4 3.0GHz, 1024MB RAM
Are you using the autoclip feature on your model?
Is your model lightmapped or vertex lit? Lightmapped models will obviously increase light compile times significantly.
How complex are your structural/detail items and hints in your map? Lots of small structural items can increase vis compile times. Convert them to detail if they aren’t significant towards creating vis-portals. Hints, though necessary, do increase vis compile times slightly as well.
@ratty: if using -vis -fast, it pretty much disables the vis stage altogether. It’s only really useful if you want to override the vis stage and continue to the light stage.
@obsidian, oh I didnt know that, Ill stop using it then and just use bsp for fast tests and full vis for proper test, thanks 
Use this at your own risk, but I’m pretty sure you can redo the lighting stage on a BSP where VIS has already been run. It must discard lighting info when it begins to run light again.
The size of my .bsp file is ard 12,000 Kb and I realised that it is much much bigger compared to the standard .bsp quake files which are normally around a few thousand KB.My map is not really complicated. Probably I created the model in 3ds Max and that might have created a lot of unnecessary brushes??
I did a full compile BSP -meta -vis -light -fast -filter -siper 2 -bounce 8. and it is taking me mroe than and hOUR!!!
My computer is P4 1.8Ghz…
I was using autoclip, but then changed to manual clipping due to overflowing of brushes count. Anyone have any ideas???
you dont need -filter or -super, most of us dont use those any longer, here is the full compile options I use for et:
-meta -vis -light -fast -gamma 1.4 -compensate 3 -bounce 8 -samples 3
with the gamma and compensate, I think they make the lightmaps look better but your need to tweak your light values in your shaders and map entities to use them, probably lower them by about 40%, also I don`t think those two options slow the compiles down but I might be wrong about that.
for fast test compiles I use either:
bsp -meta
just for testing geometry and textures.
-meta -light -fast -fastgrid -gamma 1.4 -compensate 3
notice there`s no -vis stage, and the inclusion of -fastgrid …I use these options mainly for quick tests of the lighting.
for some reason -compensate doesnt seem to look good in ja so for that game, I use the same compile options as et just with out the -compensate and also the light values seem higher then ets but I think thats ja just being odd, et is probably more like other q3 engine games in terms of lighting... someone in here should correct me if Im wrong though.