Is it okay for Patch Meshes to overlap brushes?

(Apple) #1

Howdy all, Just started mapping this week and am trying to get a hang of it. In all the tutorials I’ve read it is said that in no circumstances should you overlap brushes, so I’ve always taken extra care in order to achieve that. I’ve made a few practice maps, each one focusing on a different part of map making (brushwork, texturing, scripting, lighting, etc), and today I was working with patch meshes to make a sloping bumpy dirt road:

I find it’d be impossible not to have the mesh for the road overlap the house and wall brushes to the sides of it if I want it to ‘fit’ without there being any gaps. So my question is, is this okay? And if not, does anyone have some tips on how to do the same thing I’m trying to do here but in a more correct fashion? Also if someone could give a reasoning behind why brushes aren’t to be overlapped I’d really appreciate that as well.

Thanks in advance.

(Lanz) #2

There’s nothing wrong with obverlapping brushes. The only reason I can think of why someone would say not to overlap them would be increased compile times but even that is highly unlikely. A good clean brushwork is always prefered thugh. Patches is a different story and needs to be lined up with brushes or you get what is called T-Junktion cracks, giving the effect of annoying “sparklies”.

To make any form of terrain you can use a technique called trisoping, where you lay out triangle shaped brushes beside each other and forming the terrain by the angle of the triangles. That’s how easygen works for example but for just a limited area I usually just do it manually.

Oh, nice work btw, you seem to have studied well to be able to produce something like that in that short time. :slight_smile: But please make the pictures a bit smaller so they fit the forum better.

(seven_dc) #3

Brush can be overlapper with litlle or no worries. The overlapping might create a visual problem called Z-fighting where brusher flicker in junktion point that is only when your brushes have same distance from viewer. But in your case the overlapping seems to work ok. No need to panic if there aren’t any visual flaws in your map.

Nice map by the way.

MARIJUANA

(Apple) #4

Hey thanks guys, it’s been a real pain clipping each and every brush in order for it to fit exactly with the brush next to it, especialy when working on areas with a lot of different overlapping angles. I’ve run into a few problems when having to clip a brush in a few places along different axis (duplicate plane). Thanks for the information on trisoping lanz, I tried EasyGen and noticed that’s how it worked but never thought about doing it manualy in radiant. I’ll whip up another test map later today to work on that technique.