First official guide!

[*GCC*Nigel]

This is a tutorial by Nigel for an alternate way to make an arch using brushes. I got the basic idea from Mansteins Lair, but since we don't have a really 'good' arch, I thought I'd offer a better way to make one. Thanks to imageshack.us for image hosting.

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Start off with an elongated room, like a hallway, where you want your arch to be. Make a Celing height wall through the middle of the room or where you want the archway to be. Thicker arches are better because they seem more realistic than a skinny arch that could barely hold up to weathering.




Add in walls next to it to complete the wall across the room.



Create a brush that is the same width as the center section of your wall. Go to brush > arbitiary sided and enter 16 sides for your brush all while it is highlighted. This will turn it into a flat wheel-like shape with 16 sides.



Select your wheel, then go to Selection > Arbitiary rotation and put in 90 for either the X or Y rotation. To figure out which one you do, does your archway run X or Y on your grid? If X then rotate 90 degrees in the X. If Y rotate 90 degrees in the Y. Don't click Apply, but click OK. Hitting apply will apply the rotation, then hitting OK will apply it again leaving you with what you started with.



Position your wheel, now parallel to your wall, on your wall (so it would do the shiny thing in game) and resize it so it is as thick as your wall as well.



Press the (Picture) button to cut the arch out of the wall. Then press backspace to delete your wheel. You should now have a hole in your wall.



You can now either delete all the lower brushes in your wall or put another block over them below your archway and cut them out as well, press delete to get rid of your block. Either way you should end up with something like this:

[Ophisâ„¢]

i dont understand, are you using subtract to do this? Also, some images are not working.

[PKM]

it looks exactly like nigel is using subtract to make the curve of the arch. when he turns the complete cirlce, the upper semi-circle makes the curve of the arch. it works.

[Mj]

Problem with this method is the same as always with the evil (but occasionally handy) GSC tool - it can bugger up vertice coordinates and batter them abit off the grid, leading to occasional annoying buggyness - meshes are more efficient for the job, although brush can be more aesthetically pleasing as it tends to texture nicely

[*GCC*Nigel]

As long as you cut the circle out on a decent grid (2, 4, 8, maybe 16) and keep the sides as close to the arch as possilble, you'll end up with a nice arch, even a diagonal one.

I was also having problems loading the pictures, despite uploading them about 5 minutes earlier. I've got Mozilla and they're appearing now.

[Splaetos]

I never saw the validity in the 'Avoid subtracting at all costs!' argument... Be aware it can be unpredictable and leave it at that =p Sometimes the tool can work well.

[lizardkid]

well it's only an issue if you use it exclusively, because too many brushes is obviously a slowdown. When possible, use patches or brushes, but don't avoid at all costs. stuff like this is fine, probably what it was meant for, but if you're making doorways out of it, it probably comes out badly, and you won't be able to bend the corners nicely.

I prefer patches, after seeing what Q4 did with them, i decided MJ was on the right track.

[Surgeon]

In a random and shocking mystery appearance i'd just like to add my tuppence:

Since the early days of quake, imyself, and other mappers found that the released tools were not created well enough for CSG to work correctly without fail. It could often cause the wierdest of errors such as creating invisible & infintely long brushes .... I've always advised everyone to avoid using CSG for this reason (hence the tutorials on the site).

If people feel comfortable using it (i've always seen it as a lazy option - not a quick and efficient one) then feel free too - but i've spent too many hours traking down rogue brushes to ever trust CSG

*fades out*

[lizardkid]

Here i was, thinking Surg was just going to continue paying for the site and forget about it.

[hogleg]

If your going use CSG subtract I've found that if you start a new map, build what you have in mind, make sure theres no problems with it then save it as a prefab you can avoid a lot of problems.
Its recked havoc on my maps before so user beware

oh I always use it on my skyboxes without problems