Creating Building Models

Buildings are loaded like any other StaticMesh. Currently Lilith3D supports loading .ac files which can be created by AC3D and Blender. The pathing geometry is detected from the mesh itself - there is no special meta data, and you don't need to create a navigation mesh. However, there are special rules to follow if you creating a building that you want to be able to path over.

Of course, if your building isn't pathable, you don't need to follow these rules.

Once you have placed the building in the world (most easily with BuildingMorph) you can see the pathing information by setting the renderer to RENDER_PATH (F4 in the demo.)

The pather will attempt to connect edges to the terrain that are exactly at the integer bounds of the building and near z=0. For example, if you have a building with a bounding box from (-0.1, 0.0) to (2.2, 3.1), the rounded integer bounds are (0,0) to (2,3). Anything edge near the ground (z=0) Lilith3D will assume is a possible walkway into the building. It is advantageous (but not required) for walkways to be near integer bounds as well - it results in cleaner paths.

The Pather will then try to connect walkable surfaces in the building. It can connect both Quads and Tris, but the quad/tri vertices must line up perfectly. You will generally want to use "Snap Vertices by Distance" in the modelling tool. This restriction can be a little challenging in practice (you may need to plan ahead in your model creation) but prevents models from dropping through or getting stuck.

Models may be any height, or have any number of stacked floors. But be sure to leave enough space for you animated model to walk through the geometry.

Examples are provided - and remember to use RENDER_PATH to when testing building models!

Generated on Fri Mar 23 19:36:22 2007 for Lilith3D by  doxygen 1.5.1-p1