.Map :: MoHAA Mapping

i need some help with this caulk stuff.what do ya need it for?

Do a search

Caulk is a texture used for sides of a brush that are "unseen" by the player. Using this on sides of a brush that a player cannot see will increase compiling time beacuse the compiler does not have to compile a texture for it. For example, if you build a house, leave the bottom in caulk becasue i player cannot see the underside of it, also, if two building are toughing, leave the outer side of the brush in caulk because they cannot be seen either. However, make sure you texture all the sides that you want textured or else you will beable to see through it.

Something more specific: What are the differences between caulk and sky caulk? Sky caulk seems to have the same end result to me, but I really don't know how to work with it either.

"Caulk Sky" is for use on sky boxes when you want the sky to have the exact same colour as you far plane. You use it as a normal sky texture and not as any thing else.

"Caulk" is a texture that will block vis but not be drawn in the game. This should be used for faces that are normally never seen by the player, but could be seen if a wall or floor where transparent.

It is not necessary to caulk the mitre joints of walls, they will be remove in the compile stage in any case. This goes for any area that is completely blocked from view. Like crates placed on the floor ___[]____ <--- like so. The part that is touching the floor will be removed. No need for caulk here.

Hmm, hard one to explain, hope you get it.

I beg to differ. Any surface that you have textured will be drawn. Whether it be normally visible in-game or not. Miter joints included. The engine is not "smart" enough to know that you don't want the bottom of a crate drawn.
You have to tell it. You do this with caulk.
Don't believe me? Make a room out of a hollowed brush. Texture every single brush face. Surround it with a skybox large enough for the player to get outside the room. Add light and a player start. ENTER YOUR MAP IN SPECTATOR MODE, and go INTO the wall and look at the corners. Then tell me that your mitered joints don't need caulk.

Kill Ya Later!

You may differ all you want, you are still wrong. Any surface that are not accessible by Q3map is removed. That's what the "5% fewer faces -- 95 faces from 1000 (5 removed)" means during compile.

As for your test? Have you actually tried it yourself? or did you just make it up?

rOger, my deepest apologies.
I did indeed test this, I don't do anything without first testing.
However, what I did not realize, was that I still had my compiler settings on "-fast" for vis for the previous testing I was doing. Therefore, none of the faces were removed.

I am fully aware of the face removal process of the q3 engine.

I stand humbly, hanging my head.
Sorry for the false information.
I will however, continue to build everything from caulk and texture only the faces that I want. Foolproof, even for me.

Kill Ya Later!

Roger... maybe I missed a step or did things wrong, but last I tried to use sky caulk I just got the repeating, crazy, strange oblivion caulk effect I do normally when I miss texturing a face, just covering the whole sky. Is it farplane settings in worldspawn I'm missing? And why would I choose this over using a sky texture on normal caulk?

sky caulk changes its color to your farplane color. if you use sky caulk, you have to use farplane, and you get really dense fog. look at this early pic from one of my maps...



see how its all fog, and no clouds or anything? thats sky caulk.

if you want a dense fog that looks like that, use sky caulk. normal caulk doesnt change color, and sometimes when u use farplanes with normal sky, you can see bad looking culls in your maps because the farplane doesnt match the sky background.

Hmm, Yes. I must confess to making an assumption here. In the common.shader file the caulksky is followed be the comment "For removing the sky entirely, mainly for fogged levels" I have however never used it.


However i did make a testmap and it worked just fine. Make sure you have farplane_color and farplane set in worldspawn.

in that pic i set it from the script and no problem.

Thanks again. I'm still in the make small map, find major problems, make new map with things learned stage of mapping. I appreciate all the help you guys give here in this forum and with the tutorials you've written. Hopefully I'll have a small underground deathmatch map done well in a couple weeks... just have to curb grand aspiration and stay simple for now or I'll never get through a project.

Thats a problem we all have I'm afraid. I will however release a map this weekend, hopefully. Just Team DM, but should make a good objective map as well with some scripting.