So how do I make a curved ramp and other things...

[Kory]

Hey everyone!

My first map is coming along very well. I am having some trouble however making curved ramps and hallway floors. I can easily make a curved wall, and invert it for thickness etc.. but, I cannot figure out how to make a curved ramp or floor in GTK. Is there a way to "extrude" a row of edges off of a curved patch? I made a simple patch and rotated the verts around, but this is crude, and does not map well. It also does not snap together. I could use a cone, and flatten it, but cannot figure out how to break it into a pie-slice and remove the inner set/s of faces..

Also, in the case of the above patch.. is there a way to planar map it, or use a camera view as a projector for a map. I am having trouble mapping the corners of arches as well.. The little corner filler piece... The textures become warped if manipulated after initial creation.

Is there a way to make repeatable instanced geometry using Maya? Like columns, arches, cargo containers, etc.. Can the UV's be layed out and textured in Maya, and then placed in the GTK editor as entities? This is how my workflow was at insomniac. We used Maya for all models, and a level editor just to place things. If so, please point me to a demo of where to put things, and how to get this working.

Thanks again!
-Kory

[Pat Howard]

I can't say I specifically understand all the questions you are asking, but it looks like you could use a patch mesh tutorial. Donkey has some really good ones on his website.

[Kaz]

There is not a way to extrude the edges of patches, you will need to use separate patches for the floor and walls. If the control points of different patches meet up in-editor, then in-game they will be welded together.

Working inside of a modeling program and importing meshes is entirely possible, typically you will want to export to .ASE files, which are easiest to work with. The biggest problem you are likely to run into is with getting the materials working correctly. An example would be:

-Make some geometry
-Create a new material with a simple bitmap using "C:/Program Files/Quake 3/baseq3/textures/myfolder/mytex.jpg"
-Assign texture to geometry, export as .ASE

After this step, you will need to make the paths to the texture file relative in the .ASE file, which can be done by simply using a text editor, and changing all instances of the path. The example above would become:

textures/myfolder/mytex

It is not necessary AFAIK to include the extension (.jpg or .tga), and it is sometimes desirable to leave it off in case you make a shader of the same name.

One of the pitfalls I often run into is assigning two different materials to the same object, which creates a multi/sub material setup in the .ASE, which Gtk/q3map2 do not seem to like. You can avoid this by just detaching the geometry before assigning.

You import models by using the misc_model entity. Use the entity inspector (hit 'n') to set clipping/lightmapping with the "spawnflags" key, with values of 2 and 4 respectively (or 6 for both). Those might be backwards...

I'm sure there are a ton of other threads you can find by searching this forum for .ASE models.

[obsidian]

I think you need to explain the bit about the curved ramp a bit more, I can't quite picture the exact shape you are trying to make and what part of the patch you are having problems with.

Texture coordinates for patches can be fixed using the patch properties inspector. Hit "s" for surface inspector for normal brushes and "shift+s" for patch properties. You can do normal planar mapping and other stuff. CTRL+SHIFT+N cycles between projection axes on a selected patch.

Models are placed as misc_model entities via the right-click menu. Here is an old archive of a topic about setting up materials in 3ds Max. Maya will be a little different. ASE models are the easiest to work with since they are just text files so you can modify the file paths in a text editor. GtkRadiant does support other formats like OBJ, LWO, 3DS.

http://web.archive.org/web/200504210408 ... 26044.html

[Kory]

Okay, so I finally figured out how to make one of the shapes.. it's a curved platform, which I now have the problem of snapping walls, and trim pieces to. I don't know that a curved ramp is an object that can be made in GTK. Think of a curved hallway, that has a sloped floor. I will just use steps instead.

-Kory

[obsidian]

You mean like this (and for bonus points, there is a quarter of a torus for you as well):

http://robotrenegade.com/temp/curvesforkory.png

[Kory]

That is exactly what I have been trying to make... especially the quartered torus. I use those two shapes for a lot of things.. It makes for a "chunkier" look, and smoother gameplay!

Thanks a whole lot!
-Kory

[Kory]

Is the quarter torus made with a cylinder that has been bent, and the top and bottom surfaces flattened down?

Man, you should write up a tutorial for those two shapes.. It would really help a lot of us that are new to mapping with GTK. I could build those things in my sleep with Maya, but this brush thing can be a complicated yet simple demon!

Anyway, thanks for helping me out here. This kind of help is getting me to approach construction with a different mindset!
-Kory

[Silicone_Milk]

Doesn't Maya have a "make torus" button?

You could always build the torus in Maya then export it to a .ase file to load as a model in your map. That's a bit more of a complicated process though than just building in Radiant (especially for somebody new to the editor).

Basically, a torus can be quartered in to 4 sections. Each section consists of a cylinder mesh bent 90 degrees.

[obsidian]

Yeah, it's just a normal cylinder that I bent. I didn't do any flattening down or whatever you mean by that, just bent.

It might help to think of patches as bezier curves or NURBS objects, that's actually exactly how they work, so if you use Maya it's pretty much the same concept.

I actually got about half-way on a really detailed patch tutorial, probably 8 years ago. I don't know where that went.

[dichtfux]

I could use that too. I once had a good one were a guy made a gothic-stlye map using all kinds of bent stuff but I lost the link it seems.