Hammer question

[LaughingBun]

im no hammer guru, But i believe the awnser is no, as it is with all but the very latest game engines. You may be able to import everything as a mesh but the prospect of it working at all is not likely

[Gamedev]

really, no matter what engine you use, this is bad from a performance stand point. As one solid piece of geometry, it is much easier to work on and import but now you have to keep in mind that things like light maps would have to be huge. Dynamic lights would have also have to touch a very large surface and lastly, culling (or rather, not drawing what isn't visible on the screen) would be near impossible as many engines will draw all of an object even if only a small portion is visible making your frame rate crawl.

My suggestion, and this goes for source, build what you can using BSP, the rest make modularly in in XSI so that you can simply snap it together in engine.

[Synthesizer]

I think it is possible to export XSI meshes to Hammer as BSP, as long as they follow the BSP rules. I'm not 100% sure, but I do remember seeing an export to vmf in the XSI mod tool. There is a script to do it for Maya, but generally it's not worth the effort, as Hammer does a much better job of handling boxes (about the only safe BSP shape) than most 3D apps do.

As Gamedev noted, it's much better to do BSP for large things, walls/floors/etc, and then make detailed props you can place around.

[pimeto]

everything is possible.
you can export from XSI the whole level (if its not over 4-5k polys).
but the problem is the performance.
the idea is to model the base forms in hammer with solids, and then to add things.
for example, to add trees, gras, bushes, bottles, chairs, etc...

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