Editing walkmesh
This is the area for questions and answers for all the "How to?" of model creation.

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Bannor Bloodfist
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Post by Bannor Bloodfist »

Zwerkules wrote:There is a maximum distance a placeable can be away from the PC for it still to be rendered.
If your fog distance is very high you will see placeables in the distance disappear abruptly because
they are too far away and aren't rendered any more. I get the feeling that distance is somehow
even shorter for doors. I can only move a few tiles away from doors before they become transparent
and soon they disappear altogether.
You can even notice that the placeables aren't rendered throughout an area at all times if you use
the DLA willows or birches. Once you walk near enough and they get rendered there is considerable
lag. If I use more than one of those on the same tile the game slows down to a crawl.
Yes, there is a REAL limit on placeables... it is why the total placeable count in an individual area, AND in the total module has to be kept as low as possible.

The way the NWN rendering engine works, an area is 'loaded' when you first enter it, EXCLUDING all placeables... IE, the tileset is loaded first, then rendered down to just the tiles actually used and this is controlled by the fog distance... placeables are then re-added AFTER the area is loaded, and what is viewable is re-rendered every step you take... placeables are required to be re-rendered each and every step you take... each and every step... this greatly increases lag. Now add in creatures, NPCs etc, and you get even more lag.

That is why sooo many of the Bioware tilesets, especially interiors, already had 'placeables' baked in... IE,. bookshelves, tables, etc. that are static... They only get painted, and re-calculated ONCE when you first enter the area... where if they were actual placeables, they would have to be re-rendered, every step you took...

I don't know exactly what the placeable rendering distance is, but it is NOT controlled by fog, IE, placeables will render, THEN the fog distance is calculated and overlaid on top of what is 'visible'...

It is annoying... but, it gives the builder a greater ability to change the default terrains to make their mod specific to their own vision.

Increasing your max cache ram for nwn, which has an actual limit of 64 meg of cache, regardless of how much memory your computer has, helps, but it still is not enough to overcome the actual engine limits... NWN was created in win98 days... 64 meg max ram available etc... NWN has been updated a bit, thus the ability to force more ram into the cache, but it's max is now 64meg... regardless of what you attempt to set it to. So, on my current system, with 4 Gig, running XP, I can only use 3.5 gig as the other .5 is grabbed by vid card, soooo, even with 3.5 gig, the max cache that NWN will accept is 64... setting that number higher has no effect.

Multi-core CPU's don't really help at all with this, as the engine itself only uses ONE core regardless. I have a dual-core, but can only run NWN on one... So, the latest and greatest quad cores are sitting idle more than 75% of the time, regardless of what you would like to happen. The engine just doesn't understand nor is it written in such a way to actually utilize multi-core cpus. You can force the engine to work, or run, on a multi-core, but you have to do it by telling the engine to use only one core.

Anyway, these things are not going to change now, not unless Bioware releases the game engine to the community, which has a fat chance of ever happening.

Guest

Post by Guest »

Sadly but true. RAM isn't big problem, but CPU really limits sometimes too much...
However, i often use more then 300 static placeables in 1 area and can you believe or not it even do not lag =)))

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Pstemarie
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Post by Pstemarie »

Armor Darks wrote:Eh, didnt understand... blocker placeable mounted directly to the tile? As part of mdl?
Exactly what I mean - the new tile has the placeable added to it as part of the tile. Its a time consuming process, but as Bannor mentions later on, having non-interactive placeables as part of the tile decreases many of the issues associated with rendering.

For example, some time ago I did a placeable set for use with Maxam's Classic Dungeon tileset. The original plan was to have a large ransacked library with lots of placeables - standing bookshelves, fallen bookshelves, paper scatter, book piles, etc. Once I had the library mapped out and the placeables in place, I drew a sketch then modeled four new tiles with several of the placeables modeled as part of the new tiles, killing two birds with one stone:
  1. It eliminated over 100 placeables on a set of four tiles, and
  2. Made path finding much easier and more reliable.
I have found that any time you can reduce the number of placeables in a scene is a good thing. I sometimes try to combine small groups of static placeables into one larger, new model. It doesn't even necessarily have to be a reduction in the number of overall faces - just the number of models will suffice. The trick is to keep the pwk as simple as possible.

Thanks also for the notes about why the pwk was a box and not a plane. I'm testing out some of what you've noted and will post the results once I'm done.

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Winterhawk99
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Post by Winterhawk99 »

I find the only time i have problems is large pent and circles renderings. i have up to 500 placeables in areas myself with no considerable lag until a group of 7 or 8 pcs walks into the area carrying 10 bags of holdings a piece. Theres only two areas i currently have big troubles with.

1. a cave area thats 8x 8 tiles. it inclused sunjammers magic, shipwrecks placeables and a pent and circles display of over 1,000 invisible placeables all with vfx on them

2. A Lord rozenkranzt mountian tileset 12 x12 with about 100 cep maple trees on it each having their own animations.


all things consider i find myself lucky not to have too much lag on harvest moon but as we build more areas i may have to consider how much space the mod is takeing before the size of the mod itself running starts lagging things out currently loaded and opperating with the database and nwnx2 its about 109,000 kbs

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