Optimizing RAD Created 16 years ago2007-08-08 07:01:46 UTC by DragonFly

I keep finding quides o how to make vis run faster but as it is vis only takes around 2 min. RAD hourever is approching the 1 hour mark and I haaavn't made half the map.

Are there any way to speed the rad process up?

Well how big is your map? If it is big then the lights will take longer to bounce off each side so it'll take longer to compile.

Can't really speed it up unless you plan your map ahead of time and build it around VRAD's needs.

Heh didn't mean to double post Anyway I was going to add if you want to just test it then tick fast compile and it will do it in seconds.

well the entire map would fit in a 9000 x 8000 x 2500 box but alot of it is corridoors between areas.

I think rad doesn't like the hanger bay which is a 4000 x 3000 x 1000 room. I can't really make the hanger smaller as it needs to be that big for the ships in eternal silence to be able to enter and exit. (and have enough landing space to give the players a good selection of ships)

My map is currently only the one capital ship but es_ maps tend to have 2 such ships plus a large space area which can be up to around 10,000 cubed (space is 1 to 40 scale so in game it seems much bigger than it is).

Source engine, huh?
In the 3D window, select "lightmap grid view" and start giving high values (32, 64 etc) to faces where you don't really need to see defined shadows. That should speed up the process a lot.
In any case, since you're probably doing a type of map not really meant for the engine, you'll just have to learn to wait patiently. I've made some 4-hour RAD maps in the past, and it's a pain in the ***.

Some additional info:
1)Buy 4-core procesor (Core Quad 2.4 ghz- 400$). VVIS/VRAD effective use multicore systems as i know.
2)Overclock 4 core processor to 3-3,2 ghz
3)VRAD can be run with additional params:
-fast - realy fast VRAD, but lighning realy blocky and crap. Good for dev-mode.
-final - realy slow final light rendering for release. Maximum VRAD quality
, but hours and hours for compile.
-noextra - makes lighning bit poor, but speeds up VRAD. dev-mode.
4)Use VisGroups in hammer. You can group all what you need (if it non cause LEAK of course) and hide/unhide with one click. Objects, that hidden - dont render by VRAD and dont appers in game, it realy improve perfomance for VVIS/VRAD.
5)Of course dont compile with HDR - its makes 2x longer VRAD calculations.
6)Make good VVIS optimisation (by Hint-brushes) - its also speed up VRAD ambient lightning.
7)You can use cordon tool to cut little part of map and render it.

well i jut compiled a small part of my map as i see no point in waiting for rad to compile areas which don't have lights yet.

Build face lights took 2 hours and 10 minutes out of a 2 hour and 25 min compile...

I'm sure the areas in HL2 with the airboat and buggy were more open than my hanger and related corridoors...

How does vrad handle nodraw? does it just bounce the light off it or does it waste time making a full light map on it?

Nodraw-texture ignored by vrad, as a texures with unlitgeneric shaer in vmt - so it improve compile speed a bit.

Btw - make lightmaps value big, as Kasperg says. 2 hours for small map too many oO

After that long wait my map gives an assert on load and when i say to ignor it it crashes to desktop...

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_SDK_Known_Issues -

lol..i know exactly what the assert was caused by already. Just the fact after spending 2 seconds fixing it i need to recompile again

Well then perhaps the long compile is related to an error in your map. If it comes to it you could always upload the map in the mapvault and we'll look at it. When you said it was for Eternal Silence I assumed it was the space bit that made it take ages.

Use external map compile tools and run VVIS,VRAD,VBSP with -low parameter - then you can work with hammer parallel to compile process

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/TCG_-_Batch_Compile_GUI - for sample.

Ive already got a batch compiler though and i use hammer at the same time anyway. (need something to do for 6 hours a day while maps compile lol)
the hanger i was talking about is in the pic.

And this compiling 2 hours oO? Something wrong here :D. On my old PC (AMD barton +3200 and 2gb ram) room like this take 10 min max :D, if lightmap scale not 1 or somethin.

Looks like Ehernal silense map

Some of the stuff in the 3.0 beta includes the vmf for some of the offical maps. es_aethra compiles in like half the time that room takes with a full compile even though it's like 8 times bigger.

The light map value for that room is 16-32 depending on where the shadows are more noticable (eg the floor is 16 as I don't want crappy shadows because all the spot lights point down while the walls which don't have much shadow are 32)

I really can't see why my hanger takes so long though... I'll try compiling without the supports as there pretty complex and might be causing the problems.

EDIT: after recompiling crashing, loading an offical map and crashing ive decided the crash I mentioned above isn't map related...
It seems to only happen my my dev version of es but seeing as I built my map for the dev version I can't really test it under 2.3. It was working this morning and I havn't updated it to the curernt svn so something must have changed on my system... starts reinstalling things