How to create smooth stuff like this?

[Shaviro]

Eh, it doesn't really scale like that. You pretty much missed the point of my post or just glanced right over it.

I'm sorry, but all the posts you create in this forum point towards you not knowing the program properly; even this very topic.

 

If you have all the answers I'm surprised you haven't just Houdinied a few awesome levels yet :)

[hardcore_gamer]

31 minutes ago, Shaviro said:

If you have all the answers I'm surprised you haven't just Houdinied a few awesome levels yet :)

 

Haven't even learned the program yet. Been busy with other things. I will post the cool stuff I have made if this works out.

[Caffeine Freak]

1 hour ago, hardcore_gamer said:

 

It becomes a problem once that 1 hour turns into 15 hours.

 

5 min in houdini x15= 1.15 hours

1 hour in Doom3Edit x15= 15 hours

 

 

I mean, it may be true that it takes less time to create the same room in Houdini as it would in Doom 3, *assuming* that you're running Houdini with the level editors it was designed for, but you're also completely overlooking a number of other factors. 

 

Unless you want to just re-use existing model assets from Houdini/UE4/Unity, I'm assuming you'll want to make your own, yes? That's going to take a lot of time and effort when you account for all of the pre-planning that goes into size dimensions and how each asset will be applied to the game environment. This is somewhat similar with brush-based editing, in the sense that you end up re-using a lot of brush prefabs many times through your levels. Model prefabs are re-used countless times across levels, as are brush/patch prefabs. The workflow may vary, but that's one crucial thing that remains the same, except that model prefabs tend to take a longer time to create than brushes, at least until you reach a certain level of geometric complexity. You're also adding a certain amount of work by forcing yourself to do an extra layer of collision mapping, since all the brushwork that the AI would normally use to navigate is now gone. Assuming you want the AI to run well, you're going to need to make sure you don't leave any gaps or areas the enemies can get stuck, or any areas the player can magically hide from them, all of which takes an extra amount of effort when you make *everything* out of models. 

 

 

1 hour ago, hardcore_gamer said:

 

Fact is brush based editing is by nature just a cumbersome method of making levels.

 

It really isn't though, not if you know what you're doing. Model-based level editing may be the norm now, but that's not so much because of how much time it saves as it is that it tends to be more memory efficient, plus the fact that modern hardware and game engines are more adept to the task of processing all the extra triangles that tend to come with levels comprised entirely of meshes. (This is another thing to keep in mind, since you're using an older engine.) Both model and brush-based level building involve an awful lot of duplication, and minor tweaking of the building blocks that you're using. The difference is that models can be tweaked in minor ways in modern engines without extra memory consumption, whereas brushes cannot be. This doesn't mean it's necessarily faster to use models, though it may be more advantageous for the reasons I just gave.

 

What I'm really trying to say here is that a crucial part of this is understanding the pros and cons of brush-based levels vs. model-based levels. It isn't entirely one way or the other, particularly when you're talking about using a modern tool like Houdini to build levels for an engine it wasn't designed with in mind.