Design idea/question

[MC]

I started thinking... Instead of making a building or some kind of object entirely out of brushes, would it be better to make a model? This is how I have it thought up in my head right now:

Valve Hammer: Use it to make the landscape/terrain, set up the map, make mountains, lakes, rivers, geographical features, etcetera.

Model Maker: Use to make buildings, trees, plants, and other things of that nature.

Would that be a good way to approach making a dense city map or any map for that matter?

 

[Cold Steel]

That's how esf maps basically are made. The terrain and buildings with brushes, and everything else is made of models.

 

[Theoboy]

But can you use buildings made in a model maker (.mdl) instead making them with brushes?

 

[Grega]

Thats easy. But the thing is that you cant walljump off models.

 

[Ravendust]

If you have giant models, does it lag up the server?

Otherwise why not construct the entire map out of models? =P

Also, can you choose to make models solid or not? (i'm thinking of solid hollow spheres for DBZ-style buildings, impossible to make in Hammer).

 

[donnierisk]

You can do that....BUT your bounding box is always square as far as I know, or atleast for this engine, so you won't be standing directly on the objects, and remember, it's not just wpoly that causes lag, you also get epoly you know. but a combination of models and brushes work very well for some maps.

Oh and making models takes a bit longer if I remember correctly, you need to place every vertice and then make a face out of every few, that's long and hard work....

And for the hollow spheres thing, it could work, but like I said, it's a sqaure bounding box, so yeah.