Level Design Making the toast darker...textures and antiportals

[jeffduquette]

Jake Johansen used to do this comedy routine in which he was talking about the light to dark knob on your toaster and how it really isn’t hooked to anything. You can set it to light or dark but the toast will come out the same level of toastyness regardless of where you set the knob. You had to be there, but it was pretty damned funny.

I have a question about texture settings. You can flag various things for a texture to do in the texture properties. Unlit – invisible – portal – blah blah blah. One of the tetxture flag options is antiportal. Lets say I have made a simple BSP volume – I slap some textures on it and than begin merrily checking the various flag settings for the textures I have attached to the BSP. If I click the flag for the antiportal setting am I really getting a texture that will function as an antiportal? Or am I just trying to make my toast darker? In other words does a texture with its antiportal flag checked really stop all rendering from occuring on the other side of the texture? Has anyone experimented with this to know for certain?

Thanks
Jeff

 

[jeffduquette]

Sorry -- somewhat related question. Can antiportals be placed inside of blocking volumes? In other words can I use the same brush shape to simultaneously create a antiportal and a blocking volume that occupy the exact same location?

 

[smokeythebear]

I think they work. I remember not being sure myself so I did a test to see if my fps would improve with a texture flagged as an antiportal. It might have been a different kind of antiportal though it was a long time ago.

 

[Murphy]

Sorry -- somewhat related question. Can antiportals be placed inside of blocking volumes? In other words can I use the same brush shape to simultaneously create a antiportal and a blocking volume that occupy the exact same location?

Antiportals should never be visible by the player since they occlude everything behind them. If a player can see them there is nothing that can be shown there so the player would see those backdrop streaks. Hide anti-portals under terrain mountains or inside StaticMeshes.
It is possible to have a Blocking Volume match the shape of an Antiportal brush but it makes no sense as players shouldn't be able to get that close to an anti-portal.
It's not possible to have a volume that also acts as an antiportal though, as far as I know. So you would need one Blocking Volume and an anti-portal. It can't be combined.

The flags that can be set for bsp surfaces all do something as far as I remember. Some might need a rebuild to take effect though!
To build anti-portals or portal-sheets I usually use the Add Special Brush button and select what I want there. It automatically sets the appropriate flags and makes the brush solid-, semi-solid or non-solid depending on what you selected.

 

[jeffduquette]

Thanks Smokey and Murphy.

I tested the texture settings last night and yes they do act as antiportals if flagged as such. My issue turned out to be using a BSP brush and setting only one surface texture as an AP. The BSP brush was occluding when looked at from one side, but not occluding when looking from the other side of the brush. These were volume BSP brushes rather than BSP sheets.

Dunno if BSP sheets will occulde when looking through both sides. I know they will definately occlude in one direction but havent tried looking through the sheet from the opposite side to see the effect. Think I will experiment with it right now

Just a quick follow-up --the texture placed on a sheet BSP does occlude in both directions if the AP option is checked....