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Umbra Volumes

For the most part, you should be able to simply use the preset in the Build Wizard to build umbra tome and PVS. However, there are times when the preset misses small areas in certain locations, such as small holes/cracks.

In such cases, you can use Umbra view volumes to fix these problems.

warning

Umbra volumes can dramatically decrease performance, so be sure to remove any umbra volumes that do not fix an issue and are therefore unnecessary.

Helpful Commands​

Before beginning your work on adding Umbra volumes, here are some helpful commands that you may need:

CommandIntention
r_showUmbraStats 1To check if Umbra is running - if "Umbra" is shown on screen, it's running.
r_showPVS 1To check if PVS is running.
r_useUmbraCulling 0/1To turn Umbra culling on/off.
r_showViewVolumesTo see if the current view position/player camera is inside a view volume - used to help debug Umbra visibility issues.

Umbra View Volumes​

There are two kinds of Umbra view volumes:

  • Auto-generated volumes are automatically generated for your map.
    • These are hints as to where the player camera can go during normal gameplay.
  • Manually-place volumes are ones that you edit and position for yourself.
    • These are usually used to fix problems.

We recommend that you limit how many manually-placed volumes you use, as they can greatly weigh down performance and cause crashes.

tip

You should only use manually-placed Umbra view volumes to fix a legitimate bug in the run-time visibility, or if the auto-generated view volumes do not already occupy some area the player needs to go during actual gameplay.

How to Add Umbra View Volumes​

When adding Umbra view volumes, make sure that it is no larger than the additional area where the in-game player camera is allowed to go. It is okay to use multiple overlapping volumes to define an area.

However, if you cannot see something while flying around or working on your map, you do not need to add a view volume for that. Instead, enter the command r_useUmbraCulling 0 to disable Umbra.

To add Umbra view volumes:

  1. Open your map in idStudio.
  2. Open the World Camera view tab.
  3. Right-click where you want to place the entity.
  4. Select New Entity → Volume → Umbra → Volume to place the Umbra volume.
  5. Re-size and edit the volume as needed.