Editing Tip of the Day

[Obsttorte]

Nice tutorial, thx

You're welcome.

[SeriousToni]

Didn't someone find the Shortcut for making a brush to func_static or was I only dreaming about this one?

I mean there's a Revert To Worldspawn shortcut (Shift+G) but non for the opposit

[RJFerret]

I didn't re-review the thread but don't remember this idea, ever want to put a decal on an entity (not converted from brushes), but can't since "no faces selected"?

 

Select the entity, right click and choose "Surround with monsterclip" from the pop-up context menu. Control-shift-click the appropriate face and create the decal patch. (Which I created the keyboard shortcut ctrl-shift-p for since I already have ctrl-shift pressed for the face selection.) Now just delete the temporary monsterclip brush and move your vertices to the best position.

 

Alternatively, you may create a patch from the brush if you need more verts and don't have it keep the original brush.

[RJFerret]

And one I probably learned in an obscure source... Anyone designing a city has probably run into having geometry cut off by Portalsky, and raised it to accommodate their tall buildings/towers. Instead, you may use Caulk to show sky, which will reveal func_statics from other areas behind/through.

 

In other words, if you make a tower in the distance and use Portalsky to seal your local area, the tower top will be cut off, showing the sky in the foreground where the Portalsky polygon is. However you can do the same thing with Caulk and it will show the tower (only if the tower is func_static, not if it's worldspawn brush).

 

Similarly you may have trees or the like poke up through caulk and not appear cut off (wish I knew this back on my first FM).

 

PS: Note currently fog may affect caulk adversely, while it won't affect portalsky.

[Springheel]

This is a very useful trick once you get the hang of it, allowing you to visportal properly but still have very uneven geography. I'm pretty sure that part of the func_static has to be inside the leaf you're currently in. So you can cut a func_static building in half with caulk, and the whole thing will be visible even though the visportal between areas is sealed. However, if you want to see a tall tower several leafs away, you need to make sure part of the tower func_static is inside the player's current leaf.

 

A couple other neat tricks with this feature:

 

You can make the illusion of deep sewer pits under grating by putting caulk on the brush immediately below the grate. The bottom of most skybox textures is pure black, so it will look like there is a pit that drops down into nothingness.

 

You can simulate open windows with caulk (of course, if the player can reach them the illusion will be broken). It's better for windows high up, because brush buildings will not be visible through the window. You could also use it in chimneys to give the illusion that you can see all the way up.

[SeriousToni]

And one I probably learned in an obscure source... Anyone designing a city has probably run into having geometry cut off by Portalsky, and raised it to accommodate their tall buildings/towers. Instead, you may use Caulk to show sky, which will reveal func_statics from other areas behind/through.

 

In other words, if you make a tower in the distance and use Portalsky to seal your local area, the tower top will be cut off, showing the sky in the foreground where the Portalsky polygon is. However you can do the same thing with Caulk and it will show the tower (only if the tower is func_static, not if it's worldspawn brush).

 

Do you mind making a simple draft of this scene just for the eye to see (and my mind to udnerstand)?

[Springheel]

In this scene, the black boxes are buildings, the blue lines are portalskybrushes, the pink are caulk brushes, and the orange is a visportal.

 

So you have a nice, sealed room that the player is in (X). From his vantage point, he can see the entirety of all the buildings, because they are func_statics. Without caulk, you'd either have to use portalsky brushes, and then those buildings would be cut in half and you wouldn't be able to see the other side of them, or you would be unable to seal the street at all.

 

The second image shows what you would see with portalsky brushes instead of caulk. Most of the other side of the buildings would disappear, and you'd only see the pieces that showed through the visportal--they'd appear to be floating in the sky.

[Bikerdude]

Do you mind making a simple draft of this scene just for the eye to see (and my mind to udnerstand)?

+1

In this scene, the black boxes are buildings, the blue lines are portalskybrushes, the pink are caulk brushes, and the orange is a visportal.

I used that trick in Rttc v2.0

[RJFerret]

 

Both walls' geometry rises to the exact same height. I reverted the wall on the right side to a worldspawn brush for purposes of the picture demonstration. The wall on the left is func_static, as is the steeple behind.

 

The "ceilling" is caulk at the height where the wall on the right is cut off.

 

You can see the top of the wall beyond the caulk ceiling on the left, as well as the steeple behind.

 

If I had used Portalsky instead of caulk, the wall on the left would be cut down to the height of the wall on the right, and the steeple would not be shown at all (nor would it show were it reverted to worldspawn).

 

In my regular map (not shown), both walls are func_static, so they display to the proper height above the ceiling.

 

Hope this demonstrates clearly!

[SteveL]

Caulk only reveals the whole of a func static if a bit of the FS is in your current visportal leaf. If you want to see a big FS from a non-adjacent area, you can create a little brush in area and merge it with your FS.

[Obsttorte]

The tris of the fs visible must be textured with a visible texture, so no nodraw or similar.

[SeriousToni]

Ah now I get it! That's indeed very useful (I had this problem once by myself and couldn't help to solve it)

 

Thank you both for two very demonstrative examples that make this a really powerful editing tip now! (as we all can see now what this was about)

[RJFerret]

And now for something completely different, filtering in DarkRadiant...

 

Instead of filtering out all clip objects, you can add a filter in DarkRadiant to only hide MonsterClip (or whatever else you desire).

 

Filter menu, at bottom, "Edit Filters...".

Click the +Add button.

Enter Name: MonsterClip (no space or "_", or it won't show up properly)

Click the +Add button to the right of Rules.

Now here's the tricky secret, click twice where it says "textures/" in the "Match" column. (Not the "texture" singular under "Type".)

The first click will highlight the entire line, but the second click will activate it for editing.

Add "common/monster_clip" after the "textures/" so it reads, "textures/common/monster_clip".

Click OK then OK again, and you now can filter Monster Clip exclusively!

(If you use AAS_Obstacle, do another +Add for "textures/editor/aasobstacle".)

 

PS: You can do the same for SEED objects. Just add two Rules, one with "textures/darkmod/sfx/seed" and another with "textures/darkmod/sfx/no_seed".

 

PPS: Find the rules matches in the Media browser for other textures and make your own. To do something like Speakers, use Lights as a template (entityclass instead of texture, "speakers" for "Match"), now their range spheres won't obscure your view.

[Lux]

I tend to do the above with the Layer manager. For each area I have created a separate layer. For instance, streets_main, streets_main_patchwork, streets_main_monsterclip, streets_main_lights, streets_main_detail, buildings_east, buildings_east_interiors, buildings_east_roofs, sealing_geometry, etc.

 

Yes it does lead to many layers but also the ability to manipulate things quickly when needed. Select all, hide, etc. When used along side the filter menu it is an excellent tool.

[demagogue]

Yeah layers is a pretty cool feature. When you're dealing with a bigger FM, layers makes it manageable.

[Obsttorte]

If you plan your mission properly, you can also create parts of it in seperate map files and merge them together in the end.

[Goldwell]

Here's a great tip (credit goes to Grayman for this one)

 

If you find that transitioning from one location to another causes the brightness of your level to go drastically higher then try the following to balance things out and make transitions much more seamless.

 

If you're passing through a visportal with an info_locationseparator on it, try putting this spawnarg on your info_location entities to turn off the dynamic light change:

 

"ambient_light_dynamic" "0 0 0"