Custom building Path LOD

[animander 10]

I'm having an issue with my path LOD for my custom building, and I'm hoping someone here can help me. Basically, I'm using zeus to give ai waypoints, and they won't go into the building. If I place them inside myself, then I can get them to move into some other rooms, but not all of them, and they won't exit the building. I've double and triple checked that I've named each point correctly and in ascending order without missing any. I don't think the geometry LOD is getting in the way, because I can walk around inside the entire building fine with no difficulty, and the path moves through the centre of each doorway, so it shouldn't be too close. Is there anything else I'm missing for setting up the path correctly? Any help is very much appreciated. Screenshot of my path LOD here:

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Try moving the entry point farther away from the building. I've understood that it has to be outside of the boundaries of the building.

[animander 10]

Thanks for your reply, but I have tried that, and the same thing still happens. It was already outside the object's boundaries, but I moved it even further and still nothing.

[m1lkm8n 411]

are the faces facing upward?

[animander 10]

Yes they are.

[m1lkm8n 411]

Try moving the pathway up in the model a bit. Also just so you know the pos#s don't have to be in order of movement, just marked in the model then the ai can stop and any of those defined positions

[animander 10]

So it turns out it was the geometry LOD after all. Even though it matched the dimensions of the resolution LODs and I as a player could move through the whole building with no problem, the ai still didn't like it. Once I pulled them back a bit from the edges of doorways, the Ai will now travel through them all normally. The new problem is that now because of this, players clip through the edges of doorway walls a little bit. Also the ai still won't got up stairways. Is there any information anywhere about how wide doorways need to be for an ai to go through it, because the way they were before, a player could still pass through just fine. I've opened up Arma2 models to look, and my doorways look the same width as theirs, yet for me the AI won't go through unless I make them wider. I feel like I'm missing something here....

[m1lkm8n 411]

Actually once on a pathway lod the ai completely ignore geometry and can pass straight through it like a ghost.

[animander 10]

Really? I don't understand what's going on then. Before, the AI refused to walk through most doorways. I widened the gaps for the doorways in the geometry lod, without making any changes at all to the path, and now they will walk through the doors. If they ignore geometry lod then I really don't get what's going on..

[m1lkm8n 411]

It's hard to say from that picture. If you want you can pm me or post it here and I can look at the model for you and see.

[animander 10]

PM sent, thank you!

[m1lkm8n 411]

ok animander I sent you a link to download the models ( I only edited the house model you can just copy how I did that one to the other ones)

first off..nice job man! those model look fantastic!

now to the observations :)

I noticed in your models that the resolution lods only went to about 2000 faces..you will want to lower that to about 200-300 at the max. remember at that distance IRL you wont be able to make out great detail anyway.

next the geo,fire,viewgeo lod. I noticed that there are open components and non convex ones as well...anything in these lods needs to be closed and convex and the best practice is to keep them to simple geometry.

the shadowlod...this one is a bit trickier but firstly I noticed that there was textures applied to it. the shadow lod doesn't get textures/rvmats applied. also I noticed that some faces were not triangulated or closed has sharp edges. also, and this doesn't work all the time but its a start, for some objects you can select the first res lod part and copy it to the shadow lod then remove the textures/rvmats and shrink it just enough that it fits inside the volume of the first resolution lod area...remember if it protrudes from the volume it will have weird shadow effects in game

only other things I noticed were with your config, one thing not required but the other is. first is that you only have one config in the main folder for all the models. it can be easier one yourself if you create a config for each model in the folder the model is in. this way if you have, say 40 models, your config is not 5000 lines long because it is split between all the folders. next thing, and this is required, is that the LAND_XXX must match the model name exactly or animations will not work.

For instance the house.p3d. In your config it is land_animhouse1

if you want it to be called that then make your p3d model animhouse1....although I would strongly urge you to make it anim_house1

reason for this is the anim_ would be considered your tag. unique to you(provided it's not taken...check ofpec.com and register it) and it insures your models to not interfere with any other models...other modders create...remember there can be only ONE anim_house1 in existence at a time otherwise one will be overwritten

but as far as the ai moving about the model..i added a half moon shape triangle thingy(for lack of a better word :) ) and 5 in positions and the ai navigated the entire house just fine

[animander 10]

Thanks again for all your help, I really appreciate it! going through my buildings now to implement your suggestions.