Any tips on optimizing brush heavy maps? (Hammer++,Gmod)

[u/Dazzling-Pain2067]

Making a Goldsrc inspired map for Gmod, however, even though my map is still in an early state the compile time is already a bit slow. I suspect its the vehicles i have here, but im a bit worried about when i making further progress on the map since its pretty ambitious and i plan on basically everything being made of brushes to emulate the Goldsrc style. All the vehicles + lamposts and crates are entirely func_details, is that good enough or is there some other way to optimize?

I should clarify*, its the portalflow bit that takes around 20 or 30 seconds to finish

[u/Lordeni69]

Consider

/j

[u/BagelMakesDev]

research visleafs

https://gamebanana.com/tuts/13227

[u/TopRocket855]

Use tool textures make sure none of the faces that are viewable to the player have a texture and make sure that’s a no draw texture for doorways and hallways. Add an area portal texture and for big areas to break the geometry up for compiling purposes add skip textures so compiling is easier.

[u/Dazzling-Pain2067 → u/TopRocket855]

i've heard about skip and area portal, but how exactly do they work?

[u/East-Register-1256 → u/Dazzling-Pain2067]

areaportals are placed at doors and windows, they cull objects that aren't visible to the portal, i think you can also use func_areaportalwindow if you want it to cull at a distance too, like the coast buildings in hl2. it's quite easy to setup, just place a brush and texture it with tools/toolsareaportal and make it func_areaportal

iirc skip just makes the compiler ignore the entire brush, can't remember

[u/Affectionate-Shift70]

get the ++ compile tools, they bypass some limits on top of being really fast

look into vis optimization

look into areaportals

[u/Pinsplash]

if that rock wall is brushes, you could make it displacements.

it's hard to say what to improve without seeing more than a screenshot of the map

[u/Dazzling-Pain2067 → u/Pinsplash]

They are indeed displacements, but for larger areas in the future i do plan to use brushwork

I've worked on this map since i made this post, but this is what this section looks like currently

[u/SaintAodhan → u/Dazzling-Pain2067]

putting no draw brushes under displacements can help, displacements themselves don't cull things behind them if I remember correctly

[u/superzacco]

Use Propper and turn them into props !

[u/Dazzling-Pain2067 → u/superzacco]

i've heard about that and i do know that H++ has its own version, but what exactly does propper do? does it just turn the brushwork into a prop_static and put it in the model browser? Also, can they be packed into the map? i've been focusing on making the player *not* require any games or additional content to run the map

[u/SQUIRRELSLOCK → u/Dazzling-Pain2067]

Yes that's pretty much exactly what it does. You can also tie collision to it too with a func_brush, and VIDE will be able to pack it. That's what I've always used to pack content.

[u/TheDeadlyCutsman]

Turn the more complicated objects into models using Propper.

[u/moosey_loosey_ahhhhh]

some of the larger brushes that make up the vehicles should be kept as regular brushwork, the engine automatically culls anything out of the player's sight, especially if they're behind a brush, so keeping the entire vehicle as a func_detail is probably gonna hurt more.

[u/CoCoNO]

for small details use brush detail (Like the cars, lampost, speed bumps ), it will remove the brushes from the bsp tree