I was wondering about putting a densely wooded area on a map (as in a hill with copse on it or somesuch), admittedly this wouldnt be so good with the tiny little empires trees that are the standard, but anyway. Would a good way to do this without supercomputers (since its many dozen models) be to use area_portal_windows in a box? From a distance the portal window would show a "line of trees obscuring view" texture which would be transparant at a few thousand units leaving the loads of models to be drawn. Not sure I explained that well. do portal windows work like that and do they work in multiplayer? is it even needed or is it ok to have lots of models all visible? should fog and max draw distances be relied on instead? secondly, is there anything that can make mud a map feature? ideally being damaged by shells to get muddier and slippier. if there is nothing would it be worth raising as a suggestion?
If you want models to be invisible at a distance, just use the fade parameter. And ultimately, a good mapper should know how to control how much rendering is done in one scene, there's no set way to do it, and no set limit either, it depends on what sort of performance you want and how your map is built.
He doesn't just want the trees to be invisible at a distance, he also wants to draw a sprite or surface that shows a solid line of trees. I'm sure theres a way to do this without area_portal_windows but I don't know how. I wouldn't use area_portal_windows because this will slow the computations down alot (especially if there are two such hills that can be seen in line with each other) and standing inside the copse would rape your computer.
As far as distance-based brush fading goes, two things come to mind: areaportalwindows, and illusionaries with the "hologram" effect. Could you create a custom effect that makes the fade happen at the correct distance, without all the flickering?
I believe that is called image based rendering, it's used in a lot of games, including episode 2 if I remember correctly. Or just use the func_lod entity, it's what it's there for.
with the trees I was just looking to not have them kill fps since there isnt a nice way to block vis to them (unless its a tree filled valley) so wondered about something artificial like the portal window. If fading helps then its all good. Does anyone have any thoughts on the mud? having an area where vehicles find it hard (preferably easier on the tracked ones) and infantry are a bit slowed down could be interesting on a map, but I wouldnt know how to do it. It maybe something that'd need special support from the mod or there may be something there that people know of (like the slippery snow, just more mud like)
