I decompiled dod_flash and i noticed how there is only one hint brush throughout the enire map. it covers the entire surface and rises from the ground to about double the player height.
how does this work exactly?

Yeah, I noticed it too. I think that anything above the hint brush doesn't get "chopped up" into triangles so it compiles quicker, although I'm not exactly too sure.

I've only rarely used hint brushes a few times before with bumpy terrain but tend to stay away as they scare me!

You didn't need to decompile it, the vmf is in the SDK .gcf file!!

Weird. Maybe there doesn't need to be as much detail anything above twice the player's height?

:confused:

Reading through multiple tutorials and such, I still dont understand how to apply the hint and occuluder (sp?) brushes...

wow you should see donner man, its got like max vis blocking, the thing is messy :P but serves its purpose :)

occluder brushes are easy man, ima write a tutorial just for you later today~


orrrrr you could read this (http://www.student.kun.nl/rvanhoorn/Optimization.htm)

Hint brushes are simple

You create a brush with the SKIP texture on all sides, then apply the HINT texture to one of the faces, whereever the edge of that face touches will be split durring BSP, this causes the engine to better occlude areas depending on your placement of the hint brush

Basicly it just gives the user better control over how the leafs are split

The problem being (and that's what most people have a problem with) it can also be counter effective. Place your hints wrong and you're increasing the number of leaves rendered at any one time, thus decreasing FPS.

Originally posted by Furyo
The problem being (and that's what most people have a problem with) it can also be counter effective. Place your hints wrong and you're increasing the number of leaves rendered at any one time, thus decreasing FPS.

exactly they're a double sided sword, on one hand done correctly they're great, done wrong and well yer......

Frankly I've never used hint brushes, haven't had to.

*cough* desolation

Originally posted by Furyo
The problem being (and that's what most people have a problem with) it can also be counter effective. Place your hints wrong and you're increasing the number of leaves rendered at any one time, thus decreasing FPS.

Thats why they scare me so much! I used to use them all the time for splitting bumpy terrain though, but hardly for anything else as I was scared of placing them incorrectly.

I've got the hang of them now and will be using a few in my most recent map (well, the second beta anyway...need to get something playable out for now!)

Originally posted by Neutrino
I decompiled dod_flash and i noticed how there is only one hint brush throughout the enire map. it covers the entire surface and rises from the ground to about double the player height.
how does this work exactly?

If you noticed, it's about the hight of the wall leading from the Axis first flag to their field.

It just stops players "seeing over" the wall.

The hint brush will cut a line throughout the whole map regardless of how big it is anyway.

Also See:

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Optimization

NOTE: There is a link at the bottom Controlling Geometry Visibility and Compile Times. I would post it here but the forums here seem to break the link :sheep:

Originally posted by travis
occluder brushes are easy man, ima write a tutorial just for you later today~


orrrrr you could read this (http://www.student.kun.nl/rvanhoorn/Optimization.htm)


good read. i knew what hint brushes were and what they were intended to do, but i never knew how they were supposed to be used until i read that.