Warning: Brush_6 : Brush is planar

[HornedBeast]

Hello!

I am trying to use a planar to show a holographic display. This display is simply an emmissive texture with alpha transparency (and works great on cubes and other brushes already). So, I figured I'd use a Planar to put it in my level, but I get "Warning VolumeTest Brush_6 Brush_6 : Brush is planar" error whenever I add a Planar brush.

Any ideas what i'm doing wrong and if Planars are not the way to go, how can I go about adding simply a sheet with a material on it to use as a display?


Thanks in advance!

[haldolium]

while I am not quite sure why this error always appears, it's not recommended in general to use BSP brushes today in Unreal for much more as prototyping.

Use a simple static mesh (model) instead, costs a lot less performance.

[HornedBeast]

So, creating a simple Planer in Maya and applying the material would also do the job I was thinking???

I'm trying to avoid using 3D packages for the moment as im trying to just get to grips with scripting and the editor, but sadly everything crosses over at somepoint - so just trying to get a good understanding of it all.

Would creating the planar brush and then doing a "CovertToStaticMesh" work and reduce the performance hit still? (One assumes yes).

[shadowlurker]

If you want to have a floor just use a box and shrink it down a bit. However its just a warning and nothing more. But usually for planes collision is only one way. In other words you can walk through the backface. Converting it to a static mesh would work fine if you decide to go that route. But for the most part it seems you are prototyping and just learning things. So id stay with BSP brushes and if you need a few meshes just use the ones given with udk. Hope this helps.

[HornedBeast]

I am trying to use a planar to show a holographic display

Not quite a floor, but I thank you for you're advice on planes being only one way. As its just for holographic display (almost just a decal), it needn't be a cube at all as it will sit against a wall. I found converting the plane to a StaticMesh worked great except the offset from the pivot point was a mile off. Guess it takes the center of your map as the pivot point much like Maya or Blender would.

[shadowlurker]

Ahh I see what your saying. As for the pivot point, you should be able to right click it then go to pivot and their should be some options to change the pivot there. I believe the bsp mode makes the pivot point all funky when your pulling edges, faces etc..

[haldolium]

So, creating a simple Planer in Maya and applying the material would also do the job I was thinking???

I'm trying to avoid using 3D packages for the moment as im trying to just get to grips with scripting and the editor, but sadly everything crosses over at somepoint - so just trying to get a good understanding of it all.

Would creating the planar brush and then doing a "CovertToStaticMesh" work and reduce the performance hit still? (One assumes yes).

Yeah a simple plane would do it. You can flag any material in UDK as "two sided" so even a single polygon will do if you're able to walk around it for example.

as far as converting goes: Should work fine. The only thing here would be the question, what Unreal does with the UVs when creating a mesh out of that simple BSP. I only tried it once for a more complex brush and it worked out pretty well actually.

I'm not that much a programmer, but even for simple scripting I'd create some basic meshes and prototype with them, instead of using brushes which behave differently in the end and don't offer you as much freedom as meshes do.


BSPs are good for prototyping levels I'd say, but even then you can run very fast into performance issues without even using anything else as brushes and light. After I once created a small/medium enviroment without anything but blocks and some lights and it became very laggy, I just switched over to do prototyping with Max and meshes. It's an awful workflow anyway with the brushes in UDK.