Curved Street

[Springheel]

What technique would mappers recommend here?

 

I have a street that is made up of three brushes. The outer two slant towards the middle slightly. I'd like the street to turn at something other than a 90 degree angle, but I'm not sure how best to go about lining everything up. When I try to use the clipper tool to cut the street at an angle and then rotate other brushes to match, it never seems to line up properly. I figure there is probably an easier option I'm not familiar with to make a street like this curve?

[killhour]

What technique would mappers recommend here?

 

I have a street that is made up of three brushes. The outer two slant towards the middle slightly. I'd like the street to turn at something other than a 90 degree angle, but I'm not sure how best to go about lining everything up. When I try to use the clipper tool to cut the street at an angle and then rotate other brushes to match, it never seems to line up properly. I figure there is probably an easier option I'm not familiar with to make a street like this curve?

 

When you use the clipper tool, you have to make the same clip on both pieces before you try to connect them. The cut side is going to be longer than the uncut side, and the cut should be half of what you want to turn it by. Remember to use the "snap selected entities to grid" option to make sure they line up properly.

 

 

[Baal]

Have you tried the vertex and edge manipulation modes? (keys V rsp. E whith brush selected)

[Springheel]

Have you tried the vertex and edge manipulation modes? (keys V rsp. E whith brush selected)

 

Nope, not at all. I'll have to look into them. In the meantime, I selected the street and saved it as an .obj file, then loaded it into LightWave. I'll be able to make some pretty sophisticated curves there, so I'll see how well I can merge that back into the map.

[Tels]

Nope, not at all. I'll have to look into them. In the meantime, I selected the street and saved it as an .obj file, then loaded it into LightWave. I'll be able to make some pretty sophisticated curves there, so I'll see how well I can merge that back into the map.

 

Have a look at my old mill map, the section with the canal has a curved upper section that also bends around the corner

[BEAR]

Have you considered patches? From the image I can't quite see what needs to happen, but anything that involves a curve I generally go strait to a patch. They are tricky in the beginning, but once you get the hang of it you can pull off some neat stuff.

[Springheel]

Yeah, I've only done very basic work with patches so far. But the model method I used actually worked pretty well--I got the shape I wanted very quickly and was able to match up the textures reasonably well--a couple decals to smooth the edges and I'm confident no one will notice the seams. It's a testament to DR that there are so many ways to solve a problem.

[BEAR]

This is true, but patches are incredibly useful so it would behoove you to learn them sooner rather than later if you are going to do much mapping (not to insinuate that you don't know this already).

 

They are really quite simple when you get used to them. The most important thing to remember is have fixed subdivisions, otherwise its a pain to get things to line up. There is a good tutorial on patches on the wiki and there are others that deal indirectly with them (like my tower tutorial which I just remembered I left unfinished).

 

If you have specific questions on patches feel free to send me a pm or something, I'm not expert but I've learned a lot about them in my own work and I'd be glad to help you out. They can be frustrating to do at first (especially until you realize how important fixed subdivisions are).