Busted Brushes

tltrude · Post by **tltrude** » Tue Aug 13, 2002 2:36 am

My Egyptian map (Suez) is cursed with broken brush textures. Does anyone know what causes them and, more importantly, how to fix them without constantly replacing the brushes?

McBa1n · Post by **McBa1n** » Tue Aug 13, 2002 6:34 am

I'm assuming thats a cylander...
The only real option you have is to either make the cylander LARGER (experiment, I've yet to find the 'money' size for cylander brushes)

or go to a different shaped polygon. A ghetto 8 sided one might fit what you need... Or make an interesting shape out of normal brushes and doing vertex manipulation. Figuring that out beyond an 8 sider (2 brushes can do it) make my brain hurt... Sorry;p

Cylanders are EXTREMELY buggy like that. They look awesome right up until the engine doesn't render a few of the sides. Out of curiosity, what is the diameter of those brushes? they APPEAR to be big enough to avoid 'the bug'
Thats odd

Looking at it again, the support brush going into (or alongside? i can't tell) the post also might play a role. I have no logical reason to say that, but troubleshooting these kinds of things normally get solved by the dumbest things

Oddball_Woof · Post by **Oddball_Woof** » Tue Aug 13, 2002 10:22 am

umm I have had few problems with cylinders of any size yet.
Suggestions:

Have you tried recaulking and retexturing the post, probably but I thought I'd mention it.

I have had all manner of weird disappearences most of which I have managed to resurrect eg 150mm gun that lost its textures for no apparent reason. Some times changing or adding shaders or user.paks can cause clashes with other shaders, noticed this particularly with skins. Crashes do strange things too, check that none of the paks have been renamed "wotever".pk.zip somehow this has happened to me a few time on its own.

Check the brush's properties, make sure that its not been accidently selected and given new ones. umm except of course its a patch really made from a brush so its only got one surface.
Perhaps its the texture have you tried going through the various fit/natural/ etc some work better than others.

I made a test map of all the water textures all together in exactly the same conditions wow what differences, some remained solid some had odd internal reflections of the surrounding walls, then after compile they behaved differently again from their apparence in radiant.

Alternatively try clipping a brush into the same shape, start larger and use the grids help line up the clipper also use a grid size that helps you get the cuts to line up, this way you get a single solid brush rather than a thin walled patch cylinder. Once you get the right shape you can reduce size...carefully

and then copy it as much as you need.

Probably not much help to you, especially as your map looks great and alot further on than mine were, restarting it again grrrrrrr

Moal · Post by **Moal** » Tue Aug 13, 2002 12:53 pm

I have had simular problems with cylinders
I ended up replaceing them completely with a new brush
a copied brush seemed to do same thing
but i deleted old one and then I made a whole new brush and it quit

tltrude · Post by **tltrude** » Tue Aug 13, 2002 7:43 pm

The dock posts are solid 12 sided brushes and not patch cylinders. They were all cloned from a single brush that was scaled down form the origial one. Out of the 12 posts that make up the dock, only 5 have broken faces and it is not the same face in every case. One face of the support board is also bad and they were cloned as well, but were not scaled.

Most of my broken face problems seem to come from scaling. Below you can see a missing face on a column base that was scaled down with the column (clones). The Sphinx is also a scaled down clone from a larger one above ground and is missing many faces.

Post by **Surgeon** » Tue Aug 13, 2002 8:20 pm

I actually think that its a problem with the clone process more than anything else - It seems to happen if you clone too many brushes from 1 original brush - thats the only connection that I can see

Balr14 · Post by **Balr14** » Wed Aug 14, 2002 2:15 am

Extend the face outward (or upward, as the case may be) and reclip it. The engine doesn't like the surface plane.

McBa1n · Post by **McBa1n** » Wed Aug 14, 2002 3:31 am

very interesting, I've never heard of this problem
perhaps it's the old 'points missing from grid' issue...
hmm, I think on this bug it's time to maybe send out for tech support with EA OR the creator of radiant.. faces disappear off of polygons often, but in this case, it seems illogigal compared to other instances that the 'missing face bug' occurs.

Dr ABAP · Post by **Dr ABAP** » Wed Aug 14, 2002 7:13 am

Hmmm, not sure why the bridge suppert looses a texture on compile??? Never had this problem... SHIT!!! Did you add the water 1st or last??? This can cause problems in RAD!! You should fill your WATERED area 1st then apply WATER... but to be honest i've done it both ways with no problems..

Your Columns:
I assuming you have used a cylinder for your columns? Did you Endcap them? If not do so and apply CAULK to the caps... you effectively have an HOLLOW tube... I read somewhere on RTcW somewhere about this sort of thing... I don't know the techy term for this..

tltrude · Post by **tltrude** » Wed Aug 14, 2002 9:10 pm

The map, although the bsp is over 3Mb now, compiles in less than 7 minutes and is set on fast light with nothing in the other two. The column in the second screenshot is also not a patch cylinder, but it is the column base brushes that had missing faces.

I repaired the sphinx by replacing the body and front legs with simple brushes that are on the grid. And, I have replaced the column base brushes.

Balr14 · Post by **Balr14** » Wed Aug 14, 2002 11:03 pm

I get brushes with missing textures on a face all the time. Been getting them with every version of Quake engine since Heretic 2. It's nothing new. Just expand the face and reclip it a little cleaner. It's not a big deal. I probably get at least 10 rendering errors per map, some a whole lot wierder.

tltrude · Post by **tltrude** » Thu Aug 15, 2002 3:43 am

I don't know what "reclip" means, but I have fixed the dock already. I made them 12 units wide instead of 11 and snaped the support boards to the grid.

Thanks everyone for the help.

McBa1n · Post by **McBa1n** » Thu Aug 15, 2002 5:27 am

woot, cool man!
stupid grid bugs
hey, question, i, too, want to know what the crap RECLIP means

Balr14 · Post by **Balr14** » Thu Aug 15, 2002 2:36 pm

"Reclip" was an unfortunate choice of words, not to be taken literally. I should have just said clip it. You can't very well reclip it if you didn't clip it in the first place. In any event, what you did to correct the problem accomplishes the same thing, it cleans up the surface plane.

Most of the things I saw suggested here are different way of attacking the same problem. The basic problem is the vertices at the ends of a face do not bisect a grid point, which results in very small errors in precision, which may cause a "warped' surface plane. This can occur when the gridpoints you used to clip a face lie outside of the face. If you tell the editor to create a multi-faced brush from the wrong size brush, or copy and rotate a brush, you may get the same results.

.Map :: MoHAA Mapping

Busted Brushes

Busted Brushes

Scale

compile

reclip?