Texturing/projection problem with 90 degree road turn patch

(PSIonic) #1

Hi all.

I’ve been trying to learn how to make a curved road like the one seen in fueldump through the outside snow area. I’ve read Socks posts regarding that and I believe I have worked out how to do it. However, when I try to use a patch mesh to create a 90 degree corner, it looks all wrong. Especially in-game.

Here is what’s my corner looks like in GTKRadiant:

As you can see, I’ve circled a couple of areas where the texture is getting very squashed together. It seems to alternate between squashed and stretched out. This causes a bad projection warning to appear when compiling the map and in-game I get a sort of stepping effect along the bend.

I made the corner patch manually instead of using the patch bending tool. It’s simply a 3x3 simple patch mesh which has been vertex manipulated into this form:

I tried using the patch bend tool, but I found it impossible to make a 90 degree bend using it. After all I want to join multiple road segments together!

(TWIXMIX) #2

Try using the patch/curve inspector.

Click on ur brush/curve and press shift + s

Screw around with the stuff and see if that works

(MindLink) #3

If you have a close look at fuel dump you’ll notice the same artefacts in the tracks.
Afaik there’s no way around other then maybe make less sharp curves.

(PSIonic) #4

I’ve used the patch inspector and messed with the texture mapping modes etc. but it’s always distorted no matter what I do.

I didn’t realise fueldump also had this problem. I’ll try making the road blunter like you suggested.

Do you know if getting bad projection warnings when you compile the map is normal as well?

(PSIonic) #5

I’ve had another look at fueldump…

The problem with fueldump isn’t as quite the same as mine. In fact it looks exactly like my map looks in GTKRadiant. However, this is what my map looks like in-game:

So how it completely breaks up the curvature?

I’ve also been experimenting a bit more with the patch bend tool. I didn’t realise before that you could specify an arbitrary point of rotation before. Does anyone know where to put the rotation point to do a perfect 90 degrees of curvature? It looks like when using the patch bend tool I don’t get the texture problems so if I could use it properly, then that would be swell.
:banana::banana:

(=DaRk=CrAzY-NuTTeR) #6

try having 2 45 degree angles

(sock) #7

The patch bend tool is evil and should not be touched with a barge pole!

You can fix the problem is several ways …

  • Break the corner down into multiple parts
  • Create a gradual corner bend
  • go into vertex mode, highlight one of the points closest to the stretching and use the texture controls on the shift-s dialog box to push the texture around.
  • Add more colums to the patch so you have more control points around the corner.
  • Create the patch in a straight line first, ctrl-n (natural alignment the texture) and then bend it into position. (The road in fueldump was created from straight sections of textured road first)

Sock
:moo:

(sock) #8

Often the main cause of texture squashing and stretching in patches is lack of additional control points. You can force the engine/editor to fix this problem but it will costs extra polys to do it. Its always a good idea to spend extra polys at player level because these sections of the map will be seen/used the most.

In the 2d view move the central point off center as follows:

It should then fix the 3d view as follows:

Sock
:moo:

(PSIonic) #9

What Sock suggested seems to improve the curve a little. More so at one end than the other, but it’s a clear improvement.
Thanks guys. I found all your comments useful