help! Texture scale/alignment between patches and brushes

(PSIonic) #1

Hello everyone. I’m a new member of this forum. :clap:

I’ve only been mapping for Wolf ET, or any other game using the Quake 3 engine, for a few days now. Luckily it’s not too different from what I’m used to which is Half-Life/Counter-strike mapping. Patches are new to me though!

I’ve started a little experimentation map to get used to using them. What I’ve been trying to do is create a church window frame. Got the curvature all nice with a little help from some well written tutorials, but I’m having some problems aligning the texture on the curved patches to the brush walls next to/below/above the window. I’m also having some texture scale issues.

Here are some screens to show my problems:


This is my curved church window. Curves make up everything inside the red box. Everything on the outside is brush work (basic cuboid brushes).


Here (slightly to the right of the crosshair) you can see the texture alignment problem between the patch and brush


And here is the texture scale issue I’ve been having (too stretched)

Through experimentation I have sometimes been able to make the patch texture align with the brush, but it is more of a fluke than skill. The surface inspector doesn’t seem to work with patches I noticed.

For the scale problem I have also noticed a pattern for how it is behaving. It looks like it maps textures with normal scale parameters when I make the patch, but if I resize it, it seems to rescale the texture as well… making it too big like in screen number 3. It even keeps track of how many times the first applied texture tiles, so if I change it to another texture of a different dimension… it scales that texture to tile the same number of times! Is there some way to reset a patch’s texture alignment and scale while retainng the texture bending along the patch(which clicking NATURAL alignment on the surface inspector doesn’t seem to do).

As a final note. I’ve been wondering why curves aren’t properly curved in-game. Isn’t the game engine supposed to smooth out the curve using the control point info? I think my curve looks very blocky!

Thank you in advance for even lasting to the end of my post. Hopefully the length has given you the idea that I have actually spent time researching the problem on my own before asking here! :banana:

(Mlehliw) #2

Instead of the surface inspector (shortcut s) use patch properties (shortcut shift+s). Hopefully the use of that will solve your problems.

As for the in-game blockiness, what is your geometry detail set at in the system options? Should be something like low, medium, or high. Chances are you have it on low which means those curves that look nice in the editor will made into lower poly curves which aren’t so pretty. This is probably a good thing though in that you will be able to see what it is gonna look like for people who run et in craptastic mode (like me).

(Chis) #3

Also hit the arrow keys while holding down the shift to move around the textture on pixel at a time or use the arrow keys while holding the ctrl key down to scale the textures…

(PSIonic) #4

Thanks both! :drink:

I had no idea there even existed a patch inspector. I don’t think it’s in the menues or in any tutorials I have read to date. :banghead:

I’ve had a play around with the inspector, but it’s not exactly straight forward! hehe
Do you know of any tutorials/manuals covering the use of the patch inspector?

I need it to align my “inverted bevel” (top right and top left of the box shown in pic 1) patch with the texture of the brushes. (misalignment shown in pic 2).

I’ve noticed that it uses a single value labelled “S” to represent both the patch’s horizontal shift AND its scale (and rotation, which I’m not interested in). It does the same thing for vertical related manipulation with the value labelled “T”.

Does anyone know how to manipulate this value in a controlled manner to match the alignment of the brush textures?

On the curvature point I mentioned in my initial post…
It does actually look identical in-game as it does in the editor. The curve was made using the Curve -> Bevel menu command so it only has green control points at the start and end of the curve. I thought the engine was going to smooth out the curve more than it does in the editor. Looks at Quake 3 levels, the curves look much more pleasing! And I have got my graphic details levels set to high in the Wolf ET menu so that can’t be it unfortunately.

Looking at tutorials aimed at Quake 3 curve making (rather than Wolf ET) I find that their tutorial screens display curves with many more rectangular polygons along the curve. This doesn’t seem to be the default density in GTKRadiant for Wolf ET though.

(MuffinMan) #5

to align the patch texture to the sorrounding brush i would take the patch inspector and choose cap-align

if you want more control over your patches i suggest to not use bevel or end cap method but to do the curve by hand with a simple patch mesh, there you can set the number of rows and columns within the patch and so you have a more detailed patch that you can curve smoother, well at least it would be my approach to do it…

oh and not to forget - welcome to rtcw/et mapping and to this forum! :banana:

(sock) #6

I created an example archway as follows:

The textures on the walls around the archway were created with no texture alignment, I simply put the texture on to the brushes. If you look at the Surface inspector (S) all the X,Y values are 0. I created the inside part of the archway with a bevel (From the “curve” menu in GTK I selected “bevel”). I then Selected the Bevel mesh in the 3d window and added an endcap. (From the “curve” menu in GTK I selected Cap Selection) I selected the “Inverted Bevel” endcap.

As the above images show, sometimes the endcap does not align with the surrounding brushwork, so you can quickly align the endcap’s with a keyboard shortcut. Select the endcap as above and press (All at the same time) CTRL+SHIFT+N. This keyboard combination will cycle round the alignment of the endcap. Press the keyboard shortcut several times until you get the following:

The endcap is now aligned to the surrounding brushwork. I used a strippy texture so you can see the texture alignment easier.

Sock
:moo:

(PSIonic) #7

Thanks Sock/MuffinMan for your further comments! :cool:
Both methods seem to work.

I actually managed to smooth out the curve in-game by selecting High end system in the graphics options. I guess it hides the curve complexity option within that setting and doesn’t allow manual selecting of curve complexity.

All is well now :drink:

(MuffinMan) #8

if you want to do it the best way i guess socks version is better, the way he cuts the brushes into triangles prevents sparklies and probably gives a slightly better performance, i’m just too lazy to do it that way all the time :smiley: