Stupid disapearing models

Snaku · Post by **Snaku** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 6:31 am

Ok, so occasionally I've added something into a map and the model would disapear when viewed from certain angles. One example is the Longsword. However, I've found that when it's attached to another vehicle, like the Raptors or the Stingray, it doesn't disapear. Also, when I moved the front of the ghost's hull a considerable distance from the vehicle, it would disapear when viewed from certain angles as well, but if it was grounded on the vehicle (the motorcycle I've been working on) it wouldn't disapear.

Well now I'm having a slipspace shockwave scen spawn in my map and it's disapearing as well. Does anybody know a way to fix this? It's like when you look directly at the center it doesn't disapear, but when you look around a bit it does. Also, if it makes any difference I resized it: made it huge, but it was already disapearing before I did that.

[edit] Done a bit more experimenting and I've determined that it disapears as soon as the spawn point is offscreen.

ModzMaster · Post by **ModzMaster** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 8:50 am

well it's somthing called "backface", where like at the backs of some of those buildings in headlong, u can see through them, just search for tuts on how to fix backfase, i think you have to flip your model inside out, or just the parts that your not seeing

Snaku · Post by **Snaku** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 6:19 pm

No, the model is visible from either side. The problem is it disapears when the actual spawn point is off-screen.

DeviousDave · Post by **DeviousDave** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 8:38 pm

lol, how do you know if you can't see it? Have you heard of Schrodinger's Cat? Where you have a box with an atom, giger counter, a vile of poison and a cat in it. The giger counter with go off and break the vile killing the cat when the atom decays... but you won't know when that happens. So the cat is said to exist as both living and deat (or "the cat is 30% dead).

Anyway, how do you know it disapears if you can't see it? What I mean more is (becuas you can tell if something isn't there in halo because it will take time to load and reapear right infront of you face if you turn really quickly) why does it matter? YOu can't see it.

Snaku · Post by **Snaku** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 10:32 pm

The model is much bigger than the point it spawns at. When that point, which is at the center of the model, goes off-screen, the whole model disapears. It did this both before and after I resized it.
It's possible, I suppose, that the game is simply set up to not render what is not flagged as being onscreen (otherwise it'd have to render everything in the whole map all the time--something the xbox couldn't begin to do). But even so, there are clearly many things that do not suffer from this problem. If large machs did this, you'd almost never see them, because how often is your camera pointed at the center of the mach? Likewise with large scen's such as trees.

DeviousDave · Post by **DeviousDave** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 11:12 am

That's what I think too but I'm sure the game has a way of giving things priorities. I think machs are always rendered becuase the are like part of the map but something like an unimportant smg model sitting on the other side of the map wouldn't matter as much. How are you spawning it? Just through the itmc?

Snaku · Post by **Snaku** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 2:10 pm

I actually spawned it as a scen. Seemed logical since it IS a scen, but I guess I could try the itmc way.
By the way, machs are not always free of this problem either. I moved the crusher mach from waterworks into my map (map is a bsp conversion placed in waterworks, so the crusher is already there--I moved its spawn point into the new bsp) and it'll do it a bit, too. It's different though. Like I'm standing on it, and at certain angles it just goes away.

[users]jlddodger · Post by **[users]jlddodger** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 4:22 pm

It has something to do with a bounding box. The model may be extending out beyond the visual bounding box. So when you are not looking at the center of the object, Halo 2 thinks that you are looking at nothing at all, and so doesn't render it. It is forced to render things like vehicles because it is harder to predict when they will become visible, than to actually just render them. Also, the number of vehicles is relatively low. I had a similar problem when I spawned the Longsword in place of the teleporter scenery on Coag. Whenever I had a view where the teleporter would be out of range, but the longsword in view, the longsword would disappear. I never looked for a solution since it was never a big deal, but I bet that's what's happening.

DeviousDave · Post by **DeviousDave** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 8:32 pm

^^^ That's sorta what I was saying. The game indefenantly spawns some things like vehicles but others it won't spawn unelss it needs to (you're looking at it).

Tell me what results you get with the itmc thing because I wasn't offering it as a solution, I was saying possible stay away from that because itmcs would probably have the least priority in weather it's spawned or not (other than decorators which are only spawned in single screen multiplayer).

Snaku · Post by **Snaku** » Tue Jun 06, 2006 7:10 am

Don't suppose anybody can confirm this visual bounding box theory? Or, if it's correct, offer a solution?
I might try spawning something else that definately doesn't have the problem and then swap hlmts, but the problem may be in the hlmt or the mode, so it might not work.