Blocky Terrain; Is it possible?

[Pew446]

I was wondering if I could take a slope like this:


And turn it blocky like this:



Is it possible? Like with the entire map. Would it be less laggy because it's all cubes?

Thanks ;D

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[Uristqwerty]

Depending on the size of the blocks, it would be even laggier. Actually, it probably would be laggier regardless. And that is even if it were possible at all, which it, unfortunately, is not.

You could reconstruct it yourself, but I doubt there is an automated way to convert it. And it would still likely lag far more.

[Wedge]

Terrain is made out of a series of triangles that fill in the area between a square grid of points. You can't make a perfect 90 degree slope out of them. If you made the transition between two squares next to each other you could get pretty close but it wouldn't look very good. Textures also tend to stretch out over steeper slopes.

With the current system used no terrain is any less laggy then any other terrain (except for non-repeating terrain). It's a pretty efficient (if limited) way to do terrain so if you're having performance issues with your map you'll have to look elsewhere for things to change.

If you absolutely have to have square terrain either model an interior that looks like terrain or just build it out of blocks.

[Uristqwerty]

Actually, the engine might have the capacity to optimize the terrain by not trawing terrain behind hills and using larger triangles for flat areas. Also, LOD optimization: Use fewer triangles for farther parts. (So, flat and/or mountainous terrain and/or low-texture terrain will be less laggy, but terrain would never be a major concern anyway)

Basically, converting it to a blockish version will almost certainly lag more, would require that it is an actual object(like slate's floor), and doesn't repeat forever like terrain does. However, creating a blockish model in the shape of the terrain would still be a good idea if you want it for the shape, not the framerate (and it would still get a very good framerate, I just suspect that the engine could do better with a .ter)

[Pew446]

Hm. Sounds like a lot of work. I just wanted to point out that this isn't for blockland. I have torque X.