Concave corners - vertexes do not stay on the grid

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Concave corners - vertexes do not stay on the grid

Postby Sathor on Fri Jan 27, 2012 2:05 pm

Hallo,

After I have returned to mapping after quite some time I have a rather strange issue, which I cannot remember to have occured a year or so ago:

I am trying to basically create a concave corner. I have tried two methods:

Method 1
Create a normal cylinder with 20 sides and a radius of 64 units. Then I created a 32x32 block and clipped it on the 1 unit grid to get my concave corner.

Method 2
Same auxiliary cylinder as above. I created one block each time and moved the vertexes accordingly.

Both times the 5 elements are made to one func_detail. And with both methods the following problem occurs: the vertexes do not stay on the grid! They scatter around the grid ...

Does anyone know a solution to this problem?
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Re: Concave corners - vertexes do not stay on the grid

Postby SotaPoika on Fri Jan 27, 2012 7:01 pm

Hammer/Source doesn't like concave stuff, only convex. This means, you need to split your concave brush so, that there's multiple (more than one, depends on your task) convex brushes.
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Re: Concave corners - vertexes do not stay on the grid

Postby Gary on Fri Jan 27, 2012 7:19 pm

Arch tool?
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Re: Concave corners - vertexes do not stay on the grid

Postby Sathor on Fri Jan 27, 2012 8:29 pm

There are 5 convex brushes, Source never liked concave stuff (can you even create a concave brush, I never did ...) ... basically they are convex brushes with a triangle top and bottom ... nothing else. Thats what I dont understand, I have done what I am trying for years and never had problems.

Arch tool. Never liked that one ;-)
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Re: Concave corners - vertexes do not stay on the grid

Postby Phott on Fri Jan 27, 2012 9:05 pm

Sathor wrote:Arch tool. Never liked that one ;-)

Well you better start liking it because it has so many uses. It's great if you know how to use it.
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Re: Concave corners - vertexes do not stay on the grid

Postby Sathor on Fri Jan 27, 2012 9:46 pm

Okay, just to be clear about what I am talking about, I have taken some screenshots:

1. The object I want to have
2. The issue with the vertexes
3. The resulting gap between the faces showing in Hammer (the thin yellow seam)

The five brushes were created manually via Vertex tool and then put into ONE func_detail. All vertexes were perfectly on the grid. The map was saved and loaded again.

http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/1278/problem1o.jpg
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/7499/problem2ae.jpg
http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/2981/problem3v.jpg

I don't know how I would achieve this kind of object with the arch tool?

Edit: I just tested with only 4 sides, but same result. The vertexes seem to scatter once I save and then load again. I don't know if that has any influence after compiling?

Thanks for your help, but further information would be very much appreciated.

Edit 2: I have now simply created a 32x32 arch with 5 sides (90 °) (and making it a func_detail) and after saving and loading again the vertexes where all the brushes meet scatter too ...
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Re: Concave corners - vertexes do not stay on the grid

Postby Phott on Fri Jan 27, 2012 9:56 pm

That's not how you do it, definitely not. Here's one simple solution, but there might a more optimized way to do it.
Image
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Re: Concave corners - vertexes do not stay on the grid

Postby zombie@computer on Fri Jan 27, 2012 9:58 pm

try making three points where vertices meet:
the first brush from the left should be resized to a triangular brush with a straight angle i.e. /|
In other words, move its utmost right vertex to the left so it sits straight below the top vertex of the brush.

the second brush from the left should have an extra vertex placed at the bottom edge, meeting with the vertex you moved before.

Repeat for brushes three and for (mirrorred ofcourse).
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Re: Concave corners - vertexes do not stay on the grid

Postby Sathor on Fri Jan 27, 2012 10:14 pm

Thank you, zombie and Phott.

It is simply strange that my solution has worked for years, and now does not. I always found it the visually cleanest way. But I will now use your method, Phott, or something similar. Triangles and quads.
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Re: Concave corners - vertexes do not stay on the grid

Postby Text_Fish on Sat Jan 28, 2012 7:11 pm

Sathor your original method is the best (reduces the amount of work for VVIS) and there's no reason it shouldn't work. I guess you've checked that 'Snap to Grid' is turned on and made sure you're really only moving one vertex at a time? Short of that I'd say its a bug and it would be worth refreshing or reinstalling the SDK.
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Re: Concave corners - vertexes do not stay on the grid

Postby Gambini on Sun Jan 29, 2012 12:12 am

I agree with Text_fish. no need to go backwards to a less efficient way. Your problem must be somewhere else. I´ve been building arches like you for years and never faced that problem.
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Re: Concave corners - vertexes do not stay on the grid

Postby Phott on Sun Jan 29, 2012 12:17 am

No no no, the brushes are weird shapes, especially the ones on the outer sides. They are very stretched out and thin, it just isn't efficient. You can do it in less stretched shapes, but the solution that was presented is in no way less efficient than what he had first.
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Re: Concave corners - vertexes do not stay on the grid

Postby Text_Fish on Sun Jan 29, 2012 12:28 am

There's nothing inherently wrong with thin triangles.

It uses one less brush than your method and will cause five fewer vis cuts because a bunch of the vertex' meet at the same point.
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Re: Concave corners - vertexes do not stay on the grid

Postby Phott on Sun Jan 29, 2012 12:42 am

Well my example was a quick mock up, as I said then there is probably a more efficient method. But there is obviously something wrong when your brushes won't align to the grid on the point they start at. Usually it means that the brush is too complex. It's not even arguable, that's what happened.
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Re: Concave corners - vertexes do not stay on the grid

Postby Gary on Sun Jan 29, 2012 2:18 am

I would listen to Z@C, from what I've read, he knows what he is talking about when it comes to VBSP and such.
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