Help deleting faces in Hammer - Pic included

[glHalfLife]

I am wanting to create a bridge but am having problems with using a solid block and carving out a cylinder as it creates lots of small objects that overlap each other, if I go inside the model, I see faces as the picture shows.

My questions is how do I delete these faces as I notice that in old maps (i.e. non source maps), the faces are not drawn on the inside of a model.

 

[DoctorGordon]

Put the texture "nodraw" on them.

Or try "skip"...that might completely delete them.

 

[PvtRyan]

But are those faces even being rendered? I thought bsp.exe removed invisible faces.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

It does. Those faces will be automatically removed during compilation.

 

[brisck1]

Its still best to nodraw on those faces as it will drastically speed up your compile times and optimse the way BSP works

 

[ComradeBadger]

Also don't use Carve.

 

[RoyalEF]

brisck1--I haven't seen that proven for HL2.

There are a lot of things that people think are true but over the years have proven to have little value--like mitering corners of boxes. No real value if you've textured properly--and increases the complexity and likelihood of screwing thing sup later if you resize them.

BSP removes these faces cause they don't define player space, so they don't exist. It was true that the HL1 compiler tools would do rad work, even on the outside of a skybox--sadly this just showed the immaturity of what Valve was using internally. Zoner created massive optimization and made these tools much better. I haven't seen anyone show that what state the HL2 tools are in. In some ways they have backtracked to worse than Zoner's. I hope that what you say isn't true, but before we all spent all our time NODRAWing on 80% of the faces in our maps, someone should prove this out.

 

[RoyalEF]

Hey, just tested it for myself. SKIP and NODRAW on removed faces is not a valid optimization for HL2 with the current compile tools. SKIP on normal world brushes will destroy your map. One more Internet HL Legend put to death.

Constrcuted simple map wih a series of short walls all back to back side to side (like bricks) with only one face showing. I built the whole map in NODRAW texture. I then textured only the inside showing faces. THe wall was textured to be a single consistent face so BSP will join all the faces into as few as possible. I then made many copies of the wall.

774 solids in the map, 4644 faces total. 3822 faces with NODRAW on them, 822 textured faces.

I did a full compile.
Saved a compy and replace all the NODRAWs with a different texture. Compiled that one.

The compiles were identical.

Time on such a small map is hard to judge. BSP took 2 seconds, VIS 0 seconds, RAD 11 seconds. However the problem were' talking about showed up in other places like RAD patches.

ALl the stats were identical every step of the way.
RAD shows the map had 624 faces to be lit. (down from 822--it was a big room so chop would prevent too much optimization).
BSP showed 4644 sides in both compiles. SO NODRAWs count as a side no matter what as a brush or brushside (which may be part of a VMF limit).
There were only 216 faces. The least number of faces I calc'd possible was 112, but this did not count subdivisions(faces must break every 1024), so it looks like BSP join all those segments as one nice healthy wall--which it is supposed to do.
One optimization that hasn't been done is on textures. Even thogh nodraw or the grass texture are never used in-game, texture info is show as being consumed. Now the VMF has to keep this info, but it shows up in BSP stats. That would mean the text and texxture settings from unused faces are making it into the BSP. We can't know if this is a misrepresentation (basically using the VMF statisitics) or true that BSPs suffer from texture bloat. It was true for most of HL1' s life that unnecessary textures were embedded in BSPs. You had to make a habit of using REPLACE TXTUER tool to examine what textures you wre using and if there wee old ones in there to replace to conserve texture memory.

SO there is no reason to worry about textures or the compile tools spending time on the insides of brushes. It isn't happening.

Now SKIP... SKIP was meant for use with HINT and (to my memory nothing else). DON't use it on regular world brushes you will wreck your map.

I took the NODRAW version and replaced it with SKIP. Well the map doesn't compile cause all the outside faces leaked straight through the face (I think that is one of the four "hulls". You also can't have skip on any of th e SEAMS of the outside faces(by that I mean the outside brushes must have textures on the faces that but up against eachother. This is dangerous just on its own. However all the walls inside the map also vanished from the game--I don't mean invisible. All the walls were removed. The outer skybox(if you will) must butt up aginst real faces(not skipped). So to make the walls valid in the game all the outside faces of every wall(including thoses pressed against floor, wall & ceiling) had to have real textures. WHen I was doing futzing to get the map to compile to match what I had in-game, guess what??

All the compile logs were identical. This is a big relief to me. SKIP and NODRAW on missing faces is not a valid optimization for HL2 with the curretn compile tools.

Don't waste your time with world brush faces that are hidden cause they are pressed against other world brushes.
WORLD brush is the key here. If you are talking about entities against world or entity against a separate entity another story.