Pitched Roofs
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thestrokes1251
- Lance Corporal
- Posts: 19
- Joined: Sun Jan 30, 2005 1:05 am
- Location: Long Island, New York
Go here to L shaped roofs
http://users.1st.net/kimberly/Tutorial/tut.htm
http://users.1st.net/kimberly/Tutorial/tut.htm
"all the governments in the world are corrupt and in the hands of the Illuminati"
one danger to be mentioned when using the rotation tool is, that the vertices and edges of the rotated brush might not be on the grid anymore!
Especially for those starting to map, this is more than bad. They should always stay on grid (with gridsize as high as possible).
Rotating a brush is easy and fun, but for me it's rather a hint for where I have to set the brush's edges afterwards.
Once u start building more complex buildings with roofs, chimneys, dormers or kinda circular towers, u'll understand what I mean: If u don't stay on the grid, u'll get little gaps. Having little gaps, u'll get bigger gaps and sooner or later, u'll trash the whole thing and start all over again...
And: For ur roof, try a slope that is easy to reproduce. Instead of 73 units high and 133 units wide, do 72 units high and 144 units wide (i.e. 1:2). This way u can easily do for example a chimney and perfectly align it's bottom face to the roof. In fact, I start building roofs with brushes of lets say 16x32 units in the side-view, drag the edges to make a slope of 1:2 or whatever and then scale it in top view to cover half the house. Copy, rotate by 180? et voil
Especially for those starting to map, this is more than bad. They should always stay on grid (with gridsize as high as possible).
Rotating a brush is easy and fun, but for me it's rather a hint for where I have to set the brush's edges afterwards.
Once u start building more complex buildings with roofs, chimneys, dormers or kinda circular towers, u'll understand what I mean: If u don't stay on the grid, u'll get little gaps. Having little gaps, u'll get bigger gaps and sooner or later, u'll trash the whole thing and start all over again...
And: For ur roof, try a slope that is easy to reproduce. Instead of 73 units high and 133 units wide, do 72 units high and 144 units wide (i.e. 1:2). This way u can easily do for example a chimney and perfectly align it's bottom face to the roof. In fact, I start building roofs with brushes of lets say 16x32 units in the side-view, drag the edges to make a slope of 1:2 or whatever and then scale it in top view to cover half the house. Copy, rotate by 180? et voil
I'm using sloped roofs in my new map. I agree it is an complete pain in th butt when most of your buildings are at 45-60 degree angles instead of 90. I would have changed the map, but I'm trying to replicate a real enviroment so I can't deviate from it too much.
Alignment has been a nightmare. I always snap my corners to the grid, but it can be a problem when using long brushes next to mutliple short ones.
For instance:
[_____________________________________________]
[___________________][_________________________]
This will look fine at 90/180 degrees. But if you rotate the brushes, The center of the long brush will not not necessarily fall on a grid point. If I snap the 2 smaller brushes to the grid where they meet, they will not be flush with the long one. Using sloped rooftops makes it even trickier.
I have also had some brushes compile with big seams in between them even though they ARE snapped together in radient. The only thing I've been able to do there is cover it up with another brush.
I also tried building an entire building on the grid, and rotating it 45 degrees when I was done. Only free rotation would work for me with that many brushes. But because of that, my entire building is off the grid. That's would not be a problem if it was free-standing. But it has to line up with another building that WAS built for the 90 degree grid.
Mitering the floors and cielings is also a lot more complicated when working at those angles. So I"ve settled for just mitering my walls on those buildings. It doesn't light as well, but I'll never finish this map otherwise.
Alignment has been a nightmare. I always snap my corners to the grid, but it can be a problem when using long brushes next to mutliple short ones.
For instance:
[_____________________________________________]
[___________________][_________________________]
This will look fine at 90/180 degrees. But if you rotate the brushes, The center of the long brush will not not necessarily fall on a grid point. If I snap the 2 smaller brushes to the grid where they meet, they will not be flush with the long one. Using sloped rooftops makes it even trickier.
I have also had some brushes compile with big seams in between them even though they ARE snapped together in radient. The only thing I've been able to do there is cover it up with another brush.
I also tried building an entire building on the grid, and rotating it 45 degrees when I was done. Only free rotation would work for me with that many brushes. But because of that, my entire building is off the grid. That's would not be a problem if it was free-standing. But it has to line up with another building that WAS built for the 90 degree grid.
Mitering the floors and cielings is also a lot more complicated when working at those angles. So I"ve settled for just mitering my walls on those buildings. It doesn't light as well, but I'll never finish this map otherwise.
Diego
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small_sumo
- Lieutenant General
- Posts: 953
- Joined: Mon Jul 01, 2002 4:17 pm
- Contact:
staying on the grid is not just putting the edges on grid knots, but also thinking about what might come next. Don't do a 45? building in 90? and rotate it, but build it in 45?. If you place ur brushes wisely, it would be easy to line up additional brushes. U might take a look at my circus map or that 2towers (over at the bin), As far as I can remember, I had no gaps at all and there's lot of 45?.diego wrote:[_____________________________________________]
[___________________][_________________________]
This will look fine at 90/180 degrees. But if you rotate the brushes, The center of the long brush will not not necessarily fall on a grid point. If I snap the 2 smaller brushes to the grid where they meet, they will not be flush with the long one. Using sloped rooftops makes it even trickier. .
The seams after compiling u can get even with 90? brushes, it's rather the buggy lighting than the brush placement.
u'll get the same problem in ur next mapdiego wrote:...but I'll never finish this map otherwise.
The sad thing is that I really did plan this one out quite a lot. But plans have a habbit of changing as the map takes shape. Unfortunately, I picked the wrong set of buildings to build on the 90? grid so all my most compilicated buildings have to be at 45.Wacko wrote: Don't do a 45? building in 90? and rotate it, but build it in 45?. If you place ur brushes wisely, it would be easy to line up additional brushes.
In my stupidity, I thought you could actually rotate the grid in radient to make it easier to construct buildings at angles. Wouldn't that be nice?
I only rotated one complete building. I wasn't happy with it the results since I had to merge it with another one. So I built all my other buildings at 45. But that still left me with the alignment problem. Some of my brushes have probably slipped to angles more or less than 45 on 1 side. But even when I am positive the angle is correct. The problem still shows up from time to time.
If I do another one.Wacko wrote:u'll get the same problem in ur next map
I was experimenting with a lot of different bulding ideas in this one. I'm not necessarily happy with any of the solutions, but it is what it is.
So far the light leakage seems to be minimal. So when I get the main layout finished, I'll probably go back and miter the worst spots. But the current method I'm using to make a 4 story building doesn't lend itself to mitered floors and cielings.
The biggest problem I had with the sloped roofs was caused by moving verts to snap it to the grid. Sometimes that would Triangulate the slope in radient. When that happend, the crack was very visible after the compile. But I was using a different method to make my rooftops. They are sloped on 4 sides instead of 2. So these I did build at 90, and rotate to 45.
Diego