3d skybox caused vvis to flip out

[Geowil]

well, Im finally starting to get the hang in 3d skyboxes after reading about 5 tuts xD and studying a lot of the ones from out of hl2 and ep1.

So i decided to make a test one in miniature for a map im making, so i made some brushwork gravestones added displacement hills.

compiled it, vvis too 7 minutes, so i was lie, hmm w/e let it finish loaded up the map.

at this point i was like "what the hell?" since all of the arches i had used to making to tops of the gravestones had flattened and extended out the entire length of the map.

so, i decided it might have been from the 50 Microbrush errors i had gotten while compiling the bsp. (using a 1/16th scale at this time).

so i unscaled the skybox, rescale it to 1/8. compile, still get microbrush errors.

unscaled rescale again to 4 this time. no microbrush errors now.

when it got to vvis it worked its way up to 7 fairly quickly then just stoped.

I let it run for 30 minutes and it only moved up by 1 .

so i kill off vvis and vrad. unscaled and rescale to 1/2. same thing happens.

so, heres the problem.

How can i scale this skybox of mine so that it doesnt freak out vvis but also plays nicely with the arch tool?

so, first question. are func_details scaleable? (that is one of my first options to try to reduce vvis's compile time, might also be good to note that vrad takes 27 seconds to finish)

second, if its possible, is there a way to merge brushes together? (like make it all one brush [NOT grouped i mean like fused together] in case that was causing vvis to portal the hell out of everything).

other then those i dont have any idea bout how to make this work xD,, so some help is very much appriciated.

[cfoust]

so, first question. are func_details scaleable?
Yes. You can go ahead and func_detail everything in your 3D skybox. It won't hurt.

second, if its possible, is there a way to merge brushes together?
No. All you could possibly do is delete them and make a new brush. Merging brushes would more often than not make an invalid brush, so it's a good thing you can't do it.

You are probably getting too detailed for skybox geometry. If you are scaling down 1/16 and want to avoid geting microbrushes, you should make every brush 16 units or larger.

[zyklus]

Microbrushes? How micro are we talking about? If you convert those brushes -- every brush inside the skybox -- into a func_detail, then it might fix the problems.

Pro tip:
Every world brush splits vis leafs; anything that should be considered as detail, which is any object that doesn't contribute much to controlling visibility, should be func_detail. With mapping practice, you can tell when and when not to use func_detail. My advice would be that the basic shape of the room or hallway should be regular brush, anything else to shape the room, and the objects inside should be func_detail.

[MiKa523]

If you build the 3d sky with world brushes, it is even possible that the sky camera can't see the whole 3d sky enviroment due to additional leafs and vising, which you will recognize in some map areas then, because some parts of the 3d sky are missing.

I don't see the point of adding world brushes into the 3d sky at all, except brushes with blocklight texture for instance.