disappearing models

something · Post by **something** » Fri Apr 30, 2010 7:48 am

i have created some entities for use as environment decoration.

that seem to disappear when at the edges of the screen or when viewed from certain angles/positions.

below is a screenshot showing what it should look like.

and a few steps forward and it disappears.

**the red is the entity bbox
i am using darkplaces

i thought i had fixed it. but the problem has come up again.

has anybody experienced this.

ceriux · Post by **ceriux** » Fri Apr 30, 2010 12:08 pm

pics are too tiny, try imageshack or photobucket

something · Post by **something** » Sun May 09, 2010 5:23 am

heres a video of the problem should show you what i mean.
engine is darkplaces

http://rapidshare.com/files/385167560/d ... y.avi.html

x264 avi format

frag.machine · Post by **frag.machine** » Sun May 09, 2010 2:35 pm

Interesting. I'd say it's a DP bug.

Teiman · Post by **Teiman** » Sun May 09, 2010 10:16 pm

Maybe (this mean I don't have idea):

The engine calculate that the object is not visible, so is not send to the clientside.

So you either break it in different parts, make it a bsp, or force it to be visible everywhere, or stuff like that.

something · Post by **something** » Sun May 09, 2010 11:03 pm

it has happened to a couple of models.

the boat did have it happen when i first created it. but i dont know what i did to fix it. and at one point the 'dock'/'pier' did not have it happen. and then after a seamingly minimal change and another export it happened again. so now i dont know what the conditions are that cause it. but i had a feeling that it had something to do with normals. but after going over the entire model i couldnt find any problems this time around.

ill try using the latest autobuild of dp. and see how it goes.

st3ady · Post by **st3ady** » Tue May 11, 2010 1:59 am

i haven't inspected the pics or the video but it could be that there are 2 or more triangles in the model that are in the same locations, which can cause wierd things to happen. Be sure to inspect the model in a modeling program like max and make sure there arent multiple vertices and faces overlapping. If it is brush work, then check in the mapping program.

good luck

something · Post by **something** » Wed May 12, 2010 6:32 am

still cant seem to work it out. i couldnt find any overlapping tris. but i did have a couple of oddities when i created it..

im using blender. and have moved away from max but ill check it out in it.

has anyone 'anywhere' experienced this? it seems a bit strange since its a fairly simple object. im going with the idea that overlapping or strange geometry is causing it like st3ady suggested

frag.machine · Post by **frag.machine** » Wed May 12, 2010 12:10 pm

AFAIK bad model geometry wold result in tris flickering/disappearing, not the whole model. Looks like the engine sometimes miscalculates the entity size and then remove it from the PVS.

mh · Post by mh » Wed May 12, 2010 5:32 pm

As a test you could try loading the map in a different engine and see if the problem occurs there. DirectQ has a handy sv_novis cvar which you can set to 1 to cause the server to send all entities to the client irrespective of whether they're in the PVS. Run it as a listen server and connect a DP client and you should then get a very good feel for whether the problem is a client-side or server-side one, as well as whether it's a DP bug or a model bug (or even an inherited GLQuake bug, although I would doubt that with DP as it's code is so different).