Map editor for them static col objects with LOD's

Have you guys solved the static collision troubles for most world objects that dont have embeded collision? And is auto LOD matching a thing here, at least for the first sometimes second LOD models that still apply to a single object?

Would be a game changer, otherwise we have another prop editor on our hands… :pray:

Not yet, but it’s on the todo list to match collision polys near a visual object with some tolerance for moving/removal at least.

For placing, moving, or deleting?

Wow, that’s truly great news!

As for LODS, I’m only concerend for newly placed objects - an option to toggle related LOD’s would be really nice. As far as I’ve checked RAGE does batched LOD’s past certain level, those would be a nuisance for custom made maps where objects are spread differently.
But they do perform really well at long distances, perhaps a custom LOD batch tool could be implemented? Yoink remesher from blender source or something with a bootleg low res texture baker. :sweat_smile: This would allow a similar performance parity to original game world for custom maps.

This is probably in the area of wishful thinking, but I love what UNREAL has done with Octahedral Impostors, something like this would likely half poly count and add more detail to LODs. Might end up being a real performance enhancement for RAGE engine.

Modifying existing world objects would be a welcomed bonus but not essential.

Good point - composability of default map assets is something overlooked so far (and that I’ve not given much thought either: intent rather was to have some imported assets from GTASA with shader polishing as an example library for “bigger” art as they already have decoupled collision), but if we can manage to somewhat accurately carve out original collisions when moving based on a visual match (some triangle CSG algorithms matching a mesh representing a tolerance margin around the visual mesh’s normals should hit almost all physics polys as well, but there may be easier ways albeit less exact in regards to triangle splits), inverting that carve out should also indeed lead to a collision mesh to add to the library.

Similarly another thing you reminded me of is the fact that tree collisions when dynamically placed are a joke - batching collisions for static props into optimized BVH primitives would of course also be a prerequisite for any map that’s exported as “statically baked” (as opposed to runtime maps).

I would almost always vouch for static baking where available, as we have seen it in almost every game to date. Performance benifits are hard to argue against.

While we are on the topic, I noticed how RAGE neatly decoupled most static geometry into detail components (House with base model + dirt model, exterior brick detail model, some props models, grass/vines models etc.) that are sometimes re-usable. But I suspect players would not want to search and then add them by hand, a very time consuming and tedious process. Instead we could look into ymap data and check which models are grouped together. Thus provide something like “template objects” where you can toggle its components or remove them altogether.

I had a go with CodeWalker and made a small island from scratch with all the afformentioned details. My suggestions are derived directly from that experience, which was massively tedious and time consuming. But the end result was near indistinguishable from the main map, very convincing look and feel. This is why I believe if GTA5 current assets are to be provided in a reasonable format, we might have a believable interpretation of a full GTA:SA map done by next year. With the current quality of GTA5 assets the bar can be set really high.

To that end, terrain. The single most important foundation block for map creation, if this one is pulled off, the map editor will be ridiculously good.