Arg. Whole post lost because my attachment was too big. Attempt Deux:

So I've been following alot of tutorials, making small test areas, and it seems that it's better to make areas out of many brushes (walls, ceilings, floors) instead of making 1 brush and hollowing it. This has pretty much solved my "how do I make paths between rooms without using carve" question.

My next order of buisness was to address the "boxy" problem I seem to have. Everything is all rectangles and squares. So I followed this: http://csm2.net/site/mapping_tutorials.php?gallery_id=76&PHPSESSID=04029f380fd232679fc6e2c16c6677db

Trying to make an arch. It seemed to make sence up to the bit with the vertex tool. He dosn't...explain...anything. I searched for a while trying to figure out what exactly he was doing. Been sifiting through tuts all day.

In my dabbling while bored with trying to figure out his crap, I came across the 'arch' brush tool and made this:

http://www.fragspersecond.net/oldfps/arch.jpg

But thought of 2 problems. 1 is if I wanted this to be an inside area I'd need the flat top that he has or else there will be a gap if leading into a room of normal shape (leaks?), which is what I suppose the vertex tool bit was aiming to avoid, make the flat top and sides, while keeping the arch shape on the inside...any help on that?

Second issue is it seems this method creates more faces...is what I have an r_speed nightmare or should I get used to seeing complex shapes like that?

So far the advice has been great, I only hope everybody's patience for my insolence continues :p

Yeah, the idea with the vertex tool is to make the top flat. And yes, that's a lot more faces. You can get away with fewer, one of the advantages is that during the lighting (radiosity) step the shading can be made smooth across it, so you can get away with fewer faces and still have a smooth look. I am not at home so I can't exactly whip up a picture, but if you grabbed the top vertices of you arch and pulled each one straight up to the height you want you would have an ach that could meet a square room flush, right?

This what your going for?

http://files.dodnetwork.com/users/27/images/arch.jpg

Originally posted by Epinephrine
Yeah, the idea with the vertex tool is to make the top flat. And yes, that's a lot more faces. You can get away with fewer, one of the advantages is that during the lighting (radiosity) step the shading can be made smooth across it, so you can get away with fewer faces and still have a smooth look. I am not at home so I can't exactly whip up a picture, but if you grabbed the top vertices of you arch and pulled each one straight up to the height you want you would have an ach that could meet a square room flush, right?

Yes, but is the amount of added faces a performance issue? I think I know what you mean about pulling up, would it look like what cole posted?

And cole, that's what is in the tutorial, but I can't figure out how to do that.

Hers a blown up pic of what you posted


Youll see i made a green dot and representing the vertext points, select each of those points with your mouse pointer and pull them out, to conect with whats in the edited pic, the red dots, do that all the way around until it looks square
http://files.dodnetwork.com/users/27/images/arch2.jpg

after you pull out 1 side it should look like this


http://files.dodnetwork.com/users/27/images/arch3.jpg

cole, while you're at it, might not hurt to show a 3D view with the vertex tool on so that you can show him that he needs to drag the side out, not the corner vertex.

sorry, I'm not home either :D


*edit* btw, using the vertex tool doesn't create any more faces, just stretches the ones you already have. you could create fewer faces by lowering the number of sides to the arch.

http://files.dodnetwork.com/users/27/images/arch4.jpg
http://files.dodnetwork.com/users/27/images/arch5.jpg

Thanks Cole. I'll give it a shot when I get back to my own machine.

Ive found this thread very interesting .

Still managing to fsck it up. I'll post pics later.