Creating complex interiors with QuArK [BETA]

Author: beffy (c++programmer)

Creating complex interiors with QuArK [BETA, unfinished!]

Portals and Detail Brushes

Okay, we will be talking about the details how to setup portals and LOD for a building like this one (done by Jens of the 3D-Diggers) in QuArK for use with the Torque Game Engine (TGE):

To switch between the various interior rendering modes in Torque I highly recommend Desmond Fletchers "InteriorRender" utility!

Here is a first look at the portal setup of the building's front:

The "grids" where you can see through are grouped "detail" brushes:

On the outside of that "grid" are portals with the light setting to: "ambient_light (pass through)", on the inside there is another portal with the light set to "does not pass". Those "grids" really have to be detail brushes, otherwise you get weird lighting problems in Torque. And the light shining through from the outside really gives some nice effects. The detail brushes themselves are triangle shaped and go straight down from top to bottom.

The portals are only setting the borders/extends...

Here is another view on the portal zones inside the building:

Setting up LOD

A general introduction to LOD can be found on Desmond Fletcher's great website.

Here is a first screenshot of the detail brushes at the front of the building:

The main building

Due to the large size of the building we raised the pixel count in the worldspawn settings.
Here are the general settings for LOD 0:
Brokers_0
Detail_number 0
min_pixels 250
The rest is set to default values.

Detail brushes are used quite a lot for that building, as the following screenshots show:

And here are the settings for the next detail step, LOD 1:
brokers_1
detail_number 1
min_pixels 150
changes to the previous (default) LOD are:

deleted all the "invisible" interiors except for the lights (tables, doors, computer terminals, steps, etc.)
deleted *some* selected lights so that no change in lighting is recognizable
closing the building, i.e. filling the "window holes" with solid brushes

LOD 2
brokers_2
detail_number 2
min_pixels 60

replaced all exterior details with simple brushes
(the "grids", the tower, the platform on the roof, the exits, ...)
deleted all inner structures and lights
only the overall structure and exterior lights are kept

Okay, here comes the final LOD, LOD 3:
brokers_3
detail_nummer 3
min_pixels 30

no "original" brush is left here
it's all only a "block" with textures to show the rough shape of the building

Now, to save/generate the DIFs, the following steps are required:

save each LOD to a separate *.map file
name them NAME_0.map to NAME_3.map (where "0" is the highest detail version)
start the build (command line would be: -v -h -o ./maps -t ./textures %mapfile% (without the "d" param)

Here are the LOD details from Map2Dif for that particular building:

- file size: 4.85MB
- takes 25 min to export from QuArk...
- 4 LODs
- 10 floors, 4 partly accessible, 1 fully accessible, accessible roof
- size: width=2048we/ length=4096we/ height=3584we
- (heli) landing place on the roof
LOD1:
STATISTICS
- Total brushes: 3420
+ structural: 1503
+ detail: 1850
+ portal: 67
- Number of zones: 58
- Number of surfaces: 14926
LOD2:
STATISTICS
- Total brushes: 1279
+ structural: 667
+ detail: 575
+ portal: 37
- Number of zones: 15
- Number of surfaces: 5790
LOD3:
STATISTICS
- Total brushes: 731
+ structural: 663
+ detail: 61
+ portal: 7
- Number of zones: 6
- Number of surfaces: 3048
LOD4:
STATISTICS
- Total brushes: 48
+ structural: 48
+ detail: 0
+ portal: 0
- Number of zones: 1
- Number of surfaces: 269

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