Piles of debris

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Piles of debris

Postby Tutorial on Wed Jan 02, 2013 6:48 pm

category
General Half-Life 2/Effects

description
Creating piles of brick debris with func_detail.

keywords
debris, func_detail, bricks, func_physbox.

Hello, in this tutorial I will show you have to make piles of func_detail bricks, that are going to be placed using the source engines physics (I'm using bricks for this example). This is handy if you don't want to spend hours and hours placing individual bricks, rotating and positioning them on surfaces.

STEP 1

Load your map in Hammer

Image

STEP 2

Create a brush, any size you want

Image

Make this brush a 'Func_Physbox'. This will make the brush react to physics.


STEP 3

Make as many copies of the brush as you want (although don't go overkill) and position the brushes above where you want them to fall. Rotating the brushes will also provide more varied results. Make sure you group these brushes as it will save you a lot of time later on

Image

STEP 4

Save the map and compile it. DO NOT make any changes at all in hammer before running the map, otherwise the next step will not work.


STEP 5

In the engine, open console and type 'map_edit "MAP NAME"'
For example 'map_edit piles_of_stuff'
this will reload the map in 'edit mode'. Wait a few moments for all the bricks to stop moving.

STEP 6

Open console again and type 'Hammer_update_entity func_physbox'. A bunch of stuff will flash up in console. Quit the game.

Image

Step 7

In Hammer the bricks should now be all in the positions they settled in in-game. Select the bricks (this is where the grouping comes in handy) and tie them to a new entity called 'func_detail', this will stop them cutting vis leafs to shreds.

Image

Image

NOTE : Some bricks may appear as if the faces are flipped inside out, this is bad. Find any bricks that appear inside out and delete them as it will give you errors when trying to play the map. Unfortunately I don't know why this happens, neither do I know a way to fix it. If someone knows and could help out, that would be great.

Image

STEP 8

Re-compile the map and you should now have your bricks scattered everywhere.

Image

(Screenshot Taken with 'Mat_fullbright 2' on)

Other notes :

This can be done with any physical object 'Prop_physics' ect. If you have a mesh that can be used as prop_physics and static, or one for each, you can do exactly what I have done here, but change the prop_physics to Prop_static once hammer has updates the positions.

Lower the lightmap scale on the bricks to save light compile time and help keep the map optimised.

It is probably more efficient to use Meshes instead of brushes, if you can create and compile your own 3d models, make a physics version and a static one.

It can also be handy to export the bricks as .DXF, and bring them into something like 3ds max or maya, to convert them into a static prop.

Suggested By joe_rogers_11155 :

I would instead recommend turning them all into a single func_brush, then disabling collisions entirely. that way, there is no way they will interfere with player movement.


Thank you Interlopers, it was time to give something back :)

- Will_B
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Re: Piles of debris

Postby MacKenzie on Tue Jan 22, 2013 12:33 am

This is a great tutorial, I would suggest using propper though if you want to make them a static prop, as it is quick and effective.
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Re: Piles of debris

Postby Will_B on Tue Jan 22, 2013 2:00 am

Thank you :)

I haven't used propper but I can see it being really helpful here.
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Re: Piles of debris

Postby Oilcake on Thu Jan 24, 2013 12:23 am

Very nice! Thanks for posting this! I'd totally use propper for this... I had no idea about the "hammer_update_entity func_physbox" thing before, though!
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Re: Piles of debris

Postby TechieUK on Wed Apr 17, 2013 5:13 pm

How have I not seen this before? Excellent tutorial!
Also know as WILLAM; TechieUK is my old name. If you see WILLAM on Steam or ModDB, it's me.
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Re: Piles of debris

Postby geotavros on Fri Jan 03, 2014 5:07 pm

using func_brush is not so efficient afaik. it's better to make a player_clip brush around your bricks if player gets stuck in them
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Re: Piles of debris

Postby Smurftyours on Sat Jan 04, 2014 8:11 am

func_illusionary...
jangalomph wrote:Wise words from a wise man. ^
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Re: Piles of debris

Postby [KIRBY] on Sat Jan 04, 2014 9:28 am

or you can just turn off collisions from func_brush
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Re: Piles of debris

Postby SotaPoika on Sat Jan 04, 2014 11:23 am

Or, you can turn them to "func_lod" have them solid/non-solid and fade away from distance!
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