Arches, Curves, Voussiors

(shazmax) #1

How I love arches, curves, beziers…but oh what a pain they are for me in gtkradiant. I’ve tried patches, brushes, I’m such a perfectionist that it drives me insane. Oh how I long to design some nice arches with a decent texture that won’t distort…or a row of stones that look more like a curve than a texture placement. I haven’t gone as far as imported them in from some 3dsmax file yet.

My arch textures distort or whatever while using patches for arches. Here’s some images…suggestions are welcomed.

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(MadJack) #2

You can try the patch texture alignment. Instead of using the S key as you would with brushes, use SHIFT-S. If you’re using a Cap use the appropriate button.

Also you might want to try the cap texture alignment shortcut. CTRL-SHFT-N press that two/three times and it should texture properly.

HTH

(shazmax) #3

Yea forgot to say that I used the surface inspector to no avail on a lot of these.

(MindLink) #4

You should prolly do your own texture for those caps that you can simply project as a cap. =)

(MadJack) #5

Frankly I’ve very rarely had any distortion with patches and the patches surface inspector. Too bad I can’t help more right now as I’m working on something that needs my full time and attention but if you still have problems later on, I’ll try to give more of a helping hand.

(CptnTriscuit) #6

Dont forget with the new radiant there is a seperate surface inspector for patches - to bring it up hit shift+s

(and if you make changes to the texture, and then hit ‘apply’, somtimes it will screw it up, so just close the window instead.)

Also remember this thread:
http://www.splashdamage.com/index.php?name=pnPHPbb2&file=viewtopic&p=77179&highlight=#77179

(MadJack) #7

@ Triscuit, New radiant? :smiley: I thought this feature had been there for ages :eek: No, seriously. It’s been there for ages. :slight_smile:

I’ll second the Apply button suggestion too. Well, what do you expect with GTK stuff… shrugs (I really hate the “old” GTK toolkit. The new one in 1.4.0 is much better but if it wasn’t for Radiant behaving really bad I’d switch right away)

(CptnTriscuit) #8

Heheh, if I just found out about it, its new to me :wink: In some recent version, the patch geometry stuff was given its own dialog window, or at least the normal surface inspector included options for patch geometry. Or was there always a seperate surface inspector for patches and I just never noticed? I guess “new radiant” is a bit non-specific.

(shazmax) #9

Yea I know about the shift + s thing…its just that curves are driving me nuts. I’m just too much of a perfectionist I would imagine. I’m still new to all of this stuff and perhaps the textures I’m using aren’t working properly because of their size or whatever. I just know what I want to get out of the design…but the output isn’t what I want.

(CptnTriscuit) #10

What are the sizes of the textures you are using? If its a 256x256 or anything big and square, trying building a thin and tall variation. It might “fit” better.

Also, consider the textures that id made for all the curvey stuff in quake3. They took screenshots of the 2d window in radiant with a side side view of the curve they were texturing, and then could make a texture to fit around that specific geometry.

For arches done with brushwork, just offset/scale/stretch until everything is the way you want it.

Good Luck :drink:

(shazmax) #11

Well I suppose the arches that I’m trying to make I’ve made using the endcap method and modifying it to what I want, I’ve also used the bevel, and the square cylinder method. Unfortunately the textures with lines tend to stretch no matter if you cap it, ctrl + n (natural) it, or modify it directly in the shift + s (surface inspector). This is all with patches and they tend to stretch. I’m mostly trying to create the stone look…like this image:

If you look closely at the lines where the stones are separated…those lines stretch. I’m assuming its just a natural thing and the reason why I haven’t really seen too many people try to attempt the stones with lines in it on a curve with a patch. I can however try the method with Sock’s :

http://www.splashdamage.com/index.php?name=pnPHPbb2&file=viewtopic&p=77179&highlight=#77179

Method…but unfortunately its more difficult for me to to shape those brushes to what I need…then modify each texture at the given angle, export it as a .ase and then re-import it (cuz I’m using the noobie card). I’ve tried to apply sock’s tutorial to the arches for windows…but its a guessing game for me at this point and time. I’ve come up with some close matches in brushes but then again they start to look pretty blocky by the time I’m done. Wish there were more tutorials on this for various techniques with brushes, shaping, and such so I can get a good handle on the whole idea of it. Ah well…gonna go through and .bsp to .map some of these levels and check out their curves (via brushwork) and see if I can simulate theirs.

(blushing_bride) #12

an easy way to make arches and stuff out of brush work is to create the arch using a patch/endcap/bevel etc first and use that as a template. creat a square brush covering your arch. set the grid to 1 and clip the square brush into thin strips. You should make the clip at roughly the same point as each vertex (dunno if thats the correct term im currently full of gin). Once you have your strips select each one at a time and clip them following the line of the arch. This will give you brush work that is more or less indistinguishable from patch thingys (then you can delete the arch). Its only worth doing this if you really need to get a certain look with textures and its quite time consuming as well. its hard to explain but here’s a picture of some stuff i made mostly from brushes. in the top picture only the cieling is made from patches everything else was made from brushes. in the second picture only the inner part of tha large arches is made from patches. However i had to delete alot of this from my map eventually as it caused some compiling errors (max_edgelines i think). You’re never gonna get anything perfect in radiant as its too clumsy but with the right tectures+decent lighting and correct proportions you can easily create the feel of what you want.