HINT Created 15 years ago2009-01-31 13:37:15 UTC by Frozen Storm

I've read this tutorial but I still don't really understand what hint brushes are and how they work.
As I understand it, if you make a hint brush, then any brush or entity behind it will not get rendered until the player passes through the hint brush. Is that correct or not?

No. Hint brushes tell the game where to make visleafs. You need two hint brushes to have an area not rendered. Another tutorial, with more pictures:
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Hint_brush
And visleafs: http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Visleaves

all right I think I get it now. I'll have to check the rmfs in the tut when I get the chance though. Thanks for the help and the links.

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Glview
oh wait, that's source >.<

More tutorials:
http://www.countermap2.com/Tutorials/tutorial1e85.html?id=54
http://www.countermap2.com/Tutorials/tutorial0b30.html?id=2

And a tutorial about pyramid-shaped hint-brushes: http://home.comcast.net/~ninjagrinch/pyramidhint.htm

Wow ! Thank you all very much for posting these ! They are very helpful !

As if you couldn't find them yourself.

More tutorials:
http://www.countermap2.com/Tutorials/tutorial1e85.html?id=54
http://www.countermap2.com/Tutorials/tutorial0b30.html?id=2

Ah, so these are the tutorials that the zhlt site refers you to. For some reason I couldn't open them from there...

And a tutorial about pyramid-shaped hint-brushes: http://home.comcast.net/~ninjagrinch/pyramidhint.htm

Yes, this one I managed to find myself. Or rather from the link you gave me somewhere else.

Thanks a lot for the help guys.

I still don't really understand what hint brushes are and how they work.

I've found hint brushes largely not very useful, yet some people swear by them. Every test map i've ever tried either yields negligible improvement or even a DECREASE in performance using them. I guess if you're uberl33t and can use them moar power to ya, but i gave up on them a long time ago1 = )

More important is to have a well-designed map with visblockers, or world brush barriers seperating the different areas of the map, and have it properly optimized:

3===>--Func_wall or func_illusionary complex brushes like pillars and detail/trim work.

3===>-Don't scale your textures too low--scaling them below 1.0 especially for large areas will boost your VIS time DRAMATICALLY, and make your wpoly soar to amazing(and unplayable) heights. I scale my textures as big as i can without them looking bad--rarely above 2.0-, but Stuff in the background can be scaled even bigger--between 2-4.0, sometimes higher depending how far the brushes will be from the player's sight.

They really have to be used right. I still use them as a first attempt at fixing poor performance issues in my maps.

The best method, and i've tried them all, is to create a brush that covers a corner and cuts through the wall brushes slightly, it must extend completely from top to bottom so there is no way (if it was a solid brush) to get through, even a tiny hole to get around it and it won't work. Now cover the brush with the skip texture but make one of the large sides with the HINT texture. What happens is when you approach the HINT brush, everything you can't see behind the hint brush corner won't be rendered. Once you cross the HINT brush and can see both sides, both will be rendered. But then if you continue and cross the other side of the HINT brush, everything that you can no longer see around the corner is no longer rendered.

Its mainly used to help the engine when it can't work out what you can and can't see, when it can't figure it out, it just renders everything and slows the game down.

So hint brushes have to intersect the walls, not only touch them?

Intersecting will make them cut the BSP. just have them touch all faces, as if one side of the hint brush was the void; You don't want a hint leak.

Ah, yes of course, hotdog meant that it should intersect the corner. I saw that in the tutorial now.
OK, I think I understand how they work now. Thanks for the help guys.

You're welcome.