hello,
I've put portals in my map and they are working fine but are screwing up my map at the same time. I put them in all the places the hek tutorial told me to and set up my exact and general portals in the proper places. The problem is when I walk in a certain area or look a certain way, half my map disappears from site.
Can someone please explain to me how these things work? my map really needs the speed boast and my comp can't render the whole map at once and still keep up to at least 15fps.
thx.

Look at Beaver Creek's portals. Use the BSP Model Converter to make an OBJ that you can import into max. Portals and exactportals will have the same ID, but exact portals will be exact to vertices, in doorways and such. It would be worth the effort to import it and fix it up, for reference

each edge that composes the +portal geometry should not intersect the bsp more than once.

The circled vertice by itself is not enough. I sketched in more vertices where they're needed. The red lines connecting 2 pairs are to indicate vertices that could be collapsed.
With the added vertices, each edge has one vert in, one vert out of the bsp
If it were only the one circled vertice, it would not work
Edited by bobbysoon on Mar 19, 2008 at 06:54 AM

that's a little helpful, thanks. but i still don't get how these things physically work. what do you mean by the edges can't intersect the bsp more than once? i would attach a picture of my portal schematics but I don't know how.
btw, I understand exact portals and have them set up properly, its just these normal portals that are confusing. how do they judge what not to render?

EDIT:
I used that model exporter thing but it only exports the map, not the portals. it's still pretty useful tho.
Edited by yukonmuffin on Mar 19, 2008 at 11:57 PM

the spaces that are defined by an exact portal cannot be intersected by an "ordinary" portal's plane. Well it can but it'll cause graphical glitches. What he means (atleast i think) by "the edges cant intersect the bsp more than once" is that an edge cant go outside and back inside and out again,

Let's say the point is a hill, and the inverted point is a valley or depression in the landscape:

  /\
/    \___       ______
         \    /
           \/

Now let's say that the "---" is the bottom edge of a plane used to portal:

  /\
/    \___        ______
----------\---/-----------
            \/

I think he means that the portals bottom, top side (or any edge) shouldn't do that..

Also, the portals should be on TWO (2) different ID's because there are two materials, +exactportal and +portal for exact portals and normal portals respectively. What he meant by "exactly on the vertices" is that you create faces over the door *thus sealing it* and then gives those new faces the exact portal material. You do this over any windows, other doors and any openings that the structure has, then it'll be given its own volume. Just make sure that your "ordinary" portal's planes dont run through a building thats exact portaled.

Hoped this helped

EDIT: spent like 15 minutes working on my darn pictures :|
Edited by M6dEEp on Mar 20, 2008 at 04:43 AM

thank you, it helped a bit. I just figured out how to look at portals in-game and found looking at ice field's portal system made things a bit more clear.