Distorting Brushes?

[CommiKazi]

Hey,

Sorry if this has been asked or answered before, but I couldn't find it in a search of the forums.
I've just started mapping in the last few days, made my first few maps fine, got ladders, water etc all sorted out. The only problem I have is when I use large collections of brushes (each small, around 150 x 50 x 100, with the hole piece being around 592 x 2400 x 496).
My current example is the hull of a large tanker - I drew it out in Hammer with no problems, compiled it fine. However, when I go in-game to try it out, several of the brushes have changed, and become un-aligned, making the hull look distorted. I've tried leaving the collection of brushes as just brushes, making them into a func_detail and into a func_brush, with no successful results. Then, after I test it and find that the brushes have been distorted, if I save the map, close and re-open Hammer, the brushes are now distorted in Hammer too.
Is there something I need to do to them to get them to compile and save properly?

Cheers.

 

[M_Gargantua]

its because the vert's arn't aligned to the grid. make sure you have snap to grid on and use the [ and ] to adjust its size. then make sure all your verticies are snaped to it. If they aren't hammer will pretty much give them a random location near where you put it. causing it to distort when compiled and when the compiler saves the map.

 

[Kamikazie]

Hey,

Sorry if this has been asked or answered before, but I couldn't find it in a search of the forums.
I've just started mapping in the last few days, made my first few maps fine, got ladders, water etc all sorted out. The only problem I have is when I use large collections of brushes (each small, around 150 x 50 x 100, with the hole piece being around 592 x 2400 x 496).
My current example is the hull of a large tanker - I drew it out in Hammer with no problems, compiled it fine. However, when I go in-game to try it out, several of the brushes have changed, and become un-aligned, making the hull look distorted. I've tried leaving the collection of brushes as just brushes, making them into a func_detail and into a func_brush, with no successful results. Then, after I test it and find that the brushes have been distorted, if I save the map, close and re-open Hammer, the brushes are now distorted in Hammer too.
Is there something I need to do to them to get them to compile and save properly?

Cheers.
Reply With Quote

your name looks kinda familiar for some reason...

 

[CommiKazi]

Well, the vertices are snapped to the grid - does it matter that I used the smallest grid possibe?

 

[UltraProAnti]

it happens because you've made your tanker hull out of illegal brushes, and hammer doesn't warn you about illegal brushes the way some BSP editors do. to make an unusual shape out of brushes i'd suggest a nifty technique used to make Q3 terrain called tri-souping: construct your hull from triangular shaped brushes, with square sides (if you follow me..). adjust these tri-shaped brushes by skewing the square sides. DON'T USE VERTEX DRAGGING. this is what gives you illegal brushes if you're not ultra-careful

btw a vertex doesn't need to be snapped to the grid, as anyone who's ever made a cylinder or arch or rotated a brush structure off the grid will tell you

 

[CommiKazi]

Excellant, thanks a lot.

 

[M_Gargantua]

That could also be a cause, and was my second choice of answer.

And since the triangle method is very high poly you could just make sure none of your brushes are concave. which means that if you look in the 2d view and picture wrapping a rubber band around your brush you should have all sides touching the band, this goes for all the 2d views.

btw a vertex doesn't need to be snapped to the grid, as anyone who's ever made a cylinder or arch or rotated a brush structure off the grid will tell you

half-true. the compiler still snaps a vert to the nearest grid piece. which if you ever had a complex object with multiple brushes formed of verts not on the grid they may not all get snapped to the same place, and hence look "riped"

as any olde who has ever carved with a complex shape can tell you.