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How to organise your map:-
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The following organisation concerns are important for when the exporting phase comes, especially if other team members may be handling the exporting for you. This can be done by either using layers, naming prefixes or entirely separate map files.
'Clip'
- Extreme low-poly simplified version of your entire map, not in sectors, no LOD, used to reduce complexity of interactions with physics, player, AI and other world collisions. Made entirely of brushes, must be CSG-merged.
'Sectors'
- Geographical areas of your map for the sake of enabling/maximising the benefits of LOD.
'LODs'
- All 16 stages of LOD for the map sector.
'Basics'
- This geometry exists in all LOD stages, are typically broad flat quads that constitute the most surface-area. This is needed to be exported separately mainly for the purpose of calculating the lightmap UV channel differently.
'Vertcol'
- Components using vertex colours, both for colourisation of filter decals, effects and material-blending.
'Luminant'
- Components using light-casting surfaces with illumination, both for lightmaps and offline-rendering.
'Decals'
- Anything that could be considered a decal (or bandaid, etc) should be separated, incase z-fighting needs to be fixed by means of enmasse depth-offset adjustments.
'Particles'
- Prefabs that combine the porportions of the geometry, classification of type, and assignment of material in order to assemble a new basic particle emitter for both engines and rendering software.
'Lightmesh'
- This is (textured) geometry where every vertex can be transformed into a point light with the colour of the vertex controlling the hue, brightness and size of the light, typically used only for lightmaps.
Some things (much like particles) may be possible to conceptualise from within Radiant with custom keys and values:-
'Physics'/'Entities'
Many other concepts will benefit from separation for easy exporting, although will be redundant to varying degrees, some considerations for organisation may involve:-
'Flares'/'Dust'/'Litter'/'Liquid'/'Warping'
All lights should be organised into layers to be exported separately. Although they don't abide by sectors or LOD, there are the technical categories and user settings to consider:-
'Cat1light1' (layer) (primary)
'Cat1light2' (layer) (secondary)
'Cat2light1' (layer) (primary)
'Cat2light2' (layer) (secondary)
'Cat2light3' (layer) (tertiary)
'Cat3light1' (layer) (lightmap)
'Cat4light1' (layer) (irradiance)
'Cat5light1' (layer) (radiosity)
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Extended values and keys:-
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(lights):-
'intensity' (integer for overbright diffuse light, 1 is normal, 2 is equal to 2 overlapping lights).
- Used to overdrive the brightness of lights, especially enhancing specularity of all materials.
'attenuation' (integer for length of attenuation, maximum is length of top/right to origin).
- Controls the gradient of the light from sides to middle width-wise.
'falloff' (integer for length of falloff, maximum is length of target to origin).
- Controls the gradient of the light from start to end length-wise.
'specular' (RGB for individual specular tint, default is 0,0,0 (black)).
- Used to soften specularity of saturated lights, or combine hues of specularity.
'shadow' (RGB for individual shadow tint, default is 0,0,0 (black)).
- If the individual shadow needs less contrast for whatever reason.
'volume' (1-10 for intensity, default is 0 (for off)).
- If the light is rendered as volumetric and how dense the fog effect should be.
'lens' (1-10 for intensity, default is 0 (for off)).
- If the light is rendered with its own lens-flare effect and how intense it should be.
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