Clip a Patch Mesh ?

[KD]

Is it possible to clip a patch mesh to make an opening into the mountain shown below, or should I use multiple patch meshes and try to align the textures?

ps. Hope everyone is not getting annoyed with my questions.

[Hex]

use multiple patch meshes and try to align the textures

[seremtan]

and turn on anisotropic filtering while you're at it

[Hipshot]

As said, use more than a single, I think you need 8 here to make it look good and snap correct. Select all patches and align the texture correct.

[Plan B]

That's gonna be one hell of a job with patches.

Not only getting the textures aligned, but avoiding LOD-cracks, also.

(LOD = Level Of Detail: the way patches are drawn in-game depends on what location you see them from (further away means less polygons).
Patches must join other geometry in a certain way for no cracks to appear.)

I'd just try using brushwork instead of the patches. Gonna be blocky, but solid.

[Shallow]

I'd just try using brushwork instead of the patches. Gonna be blocky, but solid.

Absolutely! TBH patch terrain usually looks like crap anyway, it seems unnaturally even and lifeless. Brushes or a model is the way to go.

[obsidian]

In the long run, brushes are going to be easier. Or if you're a lazy nut, convert the patches to a model and cut out the holes in a modeling program. Tweak as necessary.

[Amorak2]

Terrain made from brushes is best but if you really need to use patches then I would suggest you create a simple 3x3 patch and drag the middle into the corners. making it a 2x2 patch. make a buch of these, this way LOD has no effect and it may be easier to make whatever shape you need without having to 3 point clip or using a terraing generator. Corsair is the first person ive seen do this, came out nice.

[unitool]

isn't there a way to select patches and set them to never LOD? I remember something like this (from q3map2 maybe), and I was sort of counting on this feature still working.

[Shallow]

You can compile a bsp containing just the patches you want, baked with the desired -patchmeta level, then convert that to an .ase that you can use as a mapmodel (after tidying it up a bit in a modeling app) to prevent LODing.

[Black_Dog]

That's not necessary. -patchmeta alone will "bake" patch geometry into the bsp, and it won't be affected by lod.

[Shallow]

Technically yes, however that will bake ALL the meshes, and I assume from unitool's post that he only wants to fix the ones with troublesome LOD behaviour. Baking the whole BSP is a nice lazy fix if you don't care about letting any curves LOD though.