Texture brushes not seen Created 20 years ago2003-10-16 02:13:21 UTC by Snake-Eyes

Hi all,

I seem to remember something about texturing brushes that are never seen byt the player with the AAAATRIGGER texture to improve r_speeds. Has anyone tried this, does it work?? Just curious before I get too far into my map andhave to redo it.

BTW great siteguys, it's already helped a lot so far.

Well, I've never heard that myself, although I have heard that the SKY texture does this. Never noticed any difference, though. Also, I thought AAATRIGGER didn't show up in game! Does, lit very oddly though.

Mmm, Yeah I fell for this early on in the game...
Any brush that is assigned a texture regardless of the type of texture will be rendered by the engine. If the engine has to render the texture on a brush even if it won't be visible in the game then the poly count will go up. AAATRIGGER is only "unseen" when it is applied to an entity. So if you apply it to a normal brush, then it will be rendered and you will see it.
Confused yet?
Entities do not increase r_speeds, models and textured brushes do ! So there are no savings by using the AAATRIGGER texture on an entity, it is there to make it easier to find your triggers and buttons in Hammer.
There are some savings by using the SKY texture on brushes that can not be seen by any player, but I have yet to prove the theory, and the Null texture works well also, but the place to use this is on roof's and unaccessible rooms.... Caution though, you can stuff this up, as I did last night :
My advice for what it is worth, is to map like there is no tomorrow, compile often, and check the speed. If it starts to go over 600, then look at the areas of possible saving. For a unique insight look at the tutorial called R_speeds

well andy pretty much said everything i was going to (or at leats was going to think of writing)

the 'skip' texture can be extremely handy - with hint brushes etc..

i'm still looking for a tutorial on hints that's usefull to most mappers and not just the hardcore that's been here since the quake days

Thanks Andy, and kol. That cleared up a lot (and saved me re-doing a fair bit of work - I like being lazy)...

VERC and Handy Vandal have good tutorials on Hint Brush theory and application. Even I can understand them

Hint Brush tutorial on its way. I have been doing some CS stuff that I set a hard figure of 500 poly's on and had to use a few hint brushes. Once I have the text together I will post the results and you might be surprised by the outcome, I was....
MattyB is right, the good stuff is over at VERC, but the Hint brush tutorial over at counter-map is also worth a look.