Caulk:

I was just wondering where you would use caulk brushes in Quake 3 Arena Maps. I already know you use caulk behind curves to seal off the map from the hull. I also know that you use caulk anywhere in the map where a player can't see but the answer is where exactly; is it in between brushes, the outer side of the skybox (Facing the hull of the map), behind brushes where you can't access and see, example: The brush faces towards the hull of the map, or if there's a room with two floor brushes; do you put the caulk in between them and caulk the faces facing the hull?

I also wanted to know if you do use caulk brushes in the way listed above, does the performance of the map increase, example: Do the Frames Per Second (FPS) increase and r_speeds decrease for better performance/Playability in maps?

If any of you experienced mappers or anyone that knows how you use caulk brushes please post a reply.

PaN61

Caulk brushes are used on surfaces of brushes that do not face the void. Surfaces that are covered with the caulk texture do not get rendered ingame - thus the amount of triangles drawn gets reduced. If you do not use caulk q3 will render every surface of the brush, disregarding if you can see them ingame or not. (afaik)

Faces who are facing the void will get removed regardless of the texture used. However, faces who are facing an enclosed space that you are never able to see (faces under stairs, faces under curve patches, faces that are covered with detail brushes) ought to be caulked.

I try to use caulk as the default texture when building then texture only the faces I can see. This does not always happen, but it is what I try to do :]

Thanks for the reply cityy, tehSandwich and Tigger-oN :). Now I know exactly where you use caulk brushes in Quake 3 Arena maps :).

PaN61

That's a good one, and a lot easier than caulking everything later. :)

Caulk can also be used to enclose a wall consisting of multiple brushes (think for example of making a chess-board-like textured wall out of 64 brushes instead of using an appropriate texture). The entire wall can be made non-structural and then as said enclosed in one single big caulk brush to have WAY better map performance after compiling since the game only thinks of the one caulk brush this way and not of 64 smaller brushes.

It also works wonders for terrain. Due to the uneven nature of terrain brushes, if you make them structural you will face long compiling times and large .vis data. Make the terrain detail, then caulk around it. Little to no sacrifice and performance, and it cuts down on a lot of unneeded compiling time. Also works good for terrain maps like Overlord or Distant Screams, surround the whole map with a skybox and then put a bunch of caulk within the mountains as a vis-blocking utility.
Edited 14 seconds after the original posting.