triggering brushes in level?

[jister]

here's the deal, i made a huge displacement (a valley with a lake and a village, surrounded by mountians filled with some forests)
now i wanna save out on the engine so i'll use models for the most part, like forests and the village from a further view.
i would like to make them entrable houses if you close in.
so i tought:
1 i could do a change level but them i'm stuck with a load in between
2 some way of triggering the bush based houses with an auto logic orso...?
3 work with the hintbrush and put one in every doorway so the inside houses only renders when you enter... i think (didn't use it yet)

so the ultima would be trigger a beter house model when closing in (with a door spared out) and then do the hint thing so the inside is rendered...
any of you have a clue on how to fix this?
thanks

 

[UltraProAnti]

use areaportals on the doors (and make the doors prop_door_rotating) and hints elsewhere

decorate the houses with models but give them fade distances so they don't draw from across the map. most models switch to a lo-poly version automatically at a certain distance anyway

important thing is to keep an eye on your budget overall rather than obsessing over one thing (type +showbudget in the console to see what's eating your GPU/CPU cycles)

 

[jister]

thanks i'll try that.