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Barrier Settings
These settings relate to the barrier system and it's actors.
Many of them relate to the specific detection system that barriers use.
Barrier Volume Class
What class should volumator use as barrier volumes?
There are three types of barrier: volumes, planes and fences. Planes are 2d shapes,m always of the class Volumator Barrier Plane. Fences are chains of planes, always of the class Volumator Barrier Fence. Volumes by default are the Volumator Barrier Volume, however this can actually be changed so that barrier volumes can be any other volume class.
This is covered in more detail on the page on Barriers, but this setting is where you'd change the barrier volume to a different class. The default is obviously the Volumator Barrier Volume.
The default Volumator Barrier Volume class
After changing the Barrier Volume Class to AkAcousticPortal, creating a Barrier Volume now creates an AkAcousticPortal instead, and future detection scans will be blocked by it, and drones will not be able to pass through
Additional Barrier Classes
If your project has a number of volumes that could be used as 'fake geometry' then you can add them here and Volumator will use them as geometry just like any other barrier.
An example would be, say, if your open windows have a 'window volume' over them, rather than you having to manually place barriers over the windows, you can simply add the window volume class here to save yourself hassle.
Barrier Opacity on Create
Barrier volumes and planes by default have no opacity so can be hard to see and select.
The wireframe of these actors can be masked by geometry, so when you're inside a doorway, especially when the barrier has an Expand amount, the barrier can appear completely invisible, which can be confusing.
Therefore, Volumator's barrier actors have a DebugVisual component that has some opacity, making it considerably easier to see and select them.
However, because barriers are placed on important interconnecting areas, it could be annoying if they were enabled by default.
The 'Barrier Opacity On Create' setting determines whether this opacity component is enabled on newly created barriers.
You can easily toggle the opacity of all barrier actors in a map with the 'Enable/Disable Barrier Opacity' button in the Barrier panel.
Note, this only affects the Volumator barrier actors. If you switch out the barrier volume class to something else then obviously that barrier's visualisation will depend on whatever the actor class has going on.
The barrier documentation has more info about barrier opacity and visualisation.
Volume Depth
How deep a barrier volume is by default. This is just a starting point, you'll likely want to tweak this to match the length of the space and your needs. Doesn't affect planes or fences as neither have any depth.
Barrier Expand
Similar to the Expand Volume control for normal volumes, Barrier Expand will enlarge the barrier volumes and planes so they go into the geometry a little.
This is helpful to ensure that barriers gets good coverage over the whole space, especially if it is a jagged opening that may have small cracks in it.
Affects creating both barrier volumes and planes
Expand 0 - The barrier is as wide and high as the detected space.
Expand 20 - The barrier width and height are now expanded by 20 units in each direction, creating a buffer zone for extra safety
Scanning Points
When you create a barrier volume or plane, many detection rays are fired out left and right in an angel wings pattern, trying to find parellel walls.
The more rays you fire, the more likely you'll get good results, but at great CPU cost as they all fire out at once.
Increase Scanning Points to increase the number of rays.
The CPU cost is only incurred when creating.
Affects creating both barrier volumes and planes
Focus
As barrier plane and volume creation is a one-click process, determining the space can be challenging. A lot of filtering and testing is carried out and Focus lets you specify how discerning the system should be.
Higher values will result in volumes/planes based around closest clusters of points.
Lower values will incorporate further away objects. The points still need to have parallel geometry, but there can be lots of cases where this is a coincidence and not representative of walls.
Focus 0.8 (high) - while lots of points where detected, most were filtered out, leaving only the main clusters on the left/right where the doorframe is
Focus 0.1 (low) - less filtering has been carried out, allowing the points highlighted to sneak through. These points aren't part of the doorway and therefore the resultant barrier volume is larger
Min Fence Height
When building barrier fences, this is the minimum height of the fence.
The actual fence height will either be the height range of the points you've added, or this value. Whichever is largest.
Individual fence pieces can be scaled up/down after building with the scale tool when selecting their components.
Barrier Volumes as Planes
Somewhat of a special use case, enabling this will cause your Barrier Volumes to be detected as 2d planes at their central point, rather than 3d.
As example use case is when using Audiokinetic's Wwise audio system. Here you'd likely be using AkAcousticPortals as your Barrier volume class in Volumator. But typicaly portals really really long into the room, which would cause Volumator to detect this space cutting into the room, not ideal. Instead, be enabling this, those portals would instead be detected at the mid-point, making cleaner volumes with less headaches around these portal/barrier areas.
With Barrier Volumes As Planes disabled (default) this large barrier volume could cause the volume to cut inward to match the barrier, not great
With the setting enabled, the barrier is instead detected as a 2d plane at the central mid-line. The volume now clearly gets generated to this point, creating the appropriate volume to represent this shape.
The Barrier Volumes As Planes setting is a detection setting, meaning it needs to be set appropriately before detecting a space. If you want to see how it impacts things, you'll need to detect the space again.
If you're wrangling these situations it's also worth being aware of the 'No Edges on Barriers' setting in Generation Settings Advanced. Toggling this can change how volumator handles these barrier points. As this is a generation setting, you can toggle and regenerate to see the effect. Consult the relevant page to learn more.
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