Quake3World

Hey, I'm in the process of making a map using GTKRadiant and I'm trying to create a cylindrical platform with a hollowed out center as I have illustrated here using PhotoShop:







However I can't seem to find any shapes or settings or tools that would allow that. Anyone know where to find what I'm looking for?

Use a cylinder and then use the "Thicken" button

Sorry... I know I may seem dumb but I can't find the "Thicken" button.... >.>

You wouldn't want to use that method anyway, quake's 'cylinders' are far from a circle.

I've been experimenting on something and came up with a way to make a better circle.

First off, create a triangular brush (I used a 256:224 ratio for the base and its height)
Use this brush to create a hexagon shape, shown below (1)
Then make patch caps, and place them like shown at (2)
Copy and scale the bunch (3)
Flip surface and move verticle of the patches, and create new brushwork to fit (4)



That should give you the shape you wanted, gl

Thicken:
* Create square brush
* With brush selected, Curve > Cylinder
* With cylinder patch selected, Curve > Thicken
* Type in thicken value, OK

Here's a screenshot. The one on the left is the basic result, but it's not a perfect circle. So if you're not picky this should do.

If you want better results, try manipulating 12 square patch meshes manually into the configuration shown on the right (make a quarter of the circle and clone & rotate). You can see how the vertexes are arranged in the selected bits.

^^^Damn you!!! Beaten by seconds!!!

corsair wrote:You wouldn't want to use that method anyway, quake's 'cylinders' are far from a circle.

True, but they're generally close enough, if someone's not striving for geometric perfection.

Dyne, if you don't care about it being perfectly circular, you should be able to get something very close to what you want pretty easily by simply making two (very short) cylinders, one nested inside the other, and then making the flat parts of the disc with simple patch meshes that have been vertex manipulated. I made the following in about a minute (exploded version on the bottom/left).



If you want it to look closer to a circle, you might move the corner verts in just a touch...

@corsair: not sure, but it looks like you have to create an additional split down the middle of each triangle brush to prevent t-junctions with those patches. If you want to be picky...


@pjw: my... isn't everyone being so helpful today! We need more young Padawans to train. I need someone to carry me on their back though the jungle canopies of Dagobah while I play with flashlights and eat all your candy bars.

The triangle ratio makes the circle not 100% perfect, but it actualy prevents any of such nasty errors - at least I didn't encounter problems with it so far

Curve>Thicken?








I tried Corsairs way but I was having problems getting the octagon shape.....

I guess they removed it in 1.5.0.

Try creating it manually from patch meshes as shown by myself and pjw.

I pretty much have the shape I'm looking for with this




(I'm not experienced enough to figure out how to do it like pjw and obsidian) If possible I want to just be able to cut a hole in the middle now.

Not possible. The method described above (manually creating the shape from several patch meshes) is the reliable method of creating the shape you want.

Work with a basic tutorial on patch mesh editing and you'll quickly get the hang of crafting complex meshes by manually altering a patches control points.

Once that clicks, you'll realise why there's no good shortcut method for doing the same thing... because manually editing is very intuitive once you get your head round it.

Where could I find one of these tutorials? The GTKRadiant Manual doesn't help, and I don't see a tutorials section on the forums. Just wondering before I have to go randomly googling.

It's really not too hard; I'm pretty sure you could get it with just a little screwing around.

1. Make your two cylinders (for the inner and outer ring). You can make them bigger/smaller by dragging outside the edge.

2. Make a brush, then (with it selected) go to your patch menu and choose "simple patch mesh". This will make a flat, square, patch mesh.

3. Hit "V" to turn on vertex mode, and then move the vertexes to be similar to the ones shown in obsidian's post to get a quarter-circle that fits inside the two cylinders you made. Dupe this and rotate as necessary to make the rest of the "O" shape (both sides). Use Curve-->Invert Matrix as necessary to "flip" the textured side of the patches.

make it in gmax/blender then import it in as md3 with spawnflags 6 for solidity and lightmapping, unless it's bigger than 1024^3

or make it in hammer then open the map file in notepad and chop some of the values off the ends of the lines and import it as a prefab

or build it out of brushes and apply a phong shader to the 'curved' surfaces

seremtan wrote:stuff

If he could do any of that, he probably wouldn't be currently consulting the radiant manual.

Why do people suggest relatively complex/arcane stuff when someone posts a newbie question? It is a mystery.

just making sure all the bases are covered :icon31:

Awesome, thanks for all your help.