Hello

I am new to Source mapping and over the last couple of weeks I have been learning how to make brushes and clip them and how to place entities etc and how to make a 3d skybox and so far all seems to be going well.

I am now at a level where I can start to build my map but need some help with the following.

When you open the Flash .vmf in Hammer and move around in the map it is full of Player Clip/Area Portal/Clip/Hint and Skip brushes and to be honest I just do not understand the concept of these.

Can anyone help or point me in the direction of a good tutorial which will explain exactly what these do and when I should and shouldn't use them.

Thanks

Player clips and clips basically block a player from going past that point. it's an invisible texture that makes it so a player cant pass through it.
(Have you ever tried jumping from the bridge on Anzio, to the Allied broken house in Source and thinking, it looks like something I can jump up to! well there's a player clip there.)
You should also clip all your buildings at least the roofs, it's pretty bad if you're playing a map and have to worry about someone being on top of every building.
(I usually just do it like the official maps, make a clip all the way around the building from the roof all the way up to the top of the skybox.)
doesn't have to be all the way around, just a figure of speech :P just as long as the player cant get on the roof.

Hint's are for optimization if you're planning on making your own map, you really must learn how to use them. (unless you're fine with going from 100fps to 20 in some points) They help maintain the most fps in your maps. The skip texture is on all of the other sides of the hint brush, hint on the side you want vis to split the leafs, and skip for all the other sides of the brush
look here (http://www.student.kun.nl/rvanhoorn/Optimization.htm) and here (http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Optimization)

I haven't really experimented with area portals, but that first link should tell you about them, and how they function.

Thanks for that Dart I have had a look at the first link and whilst at the first read it hasn't really sunk in I can see that the link is going to be very useful in helping to explain their usess.

Now all I need to do is put it into practise.

Appreciate your help :D