Making a bevelled cylinder - Developers

Hey, I'm having a little trouble with this cylinder I made. I have two cylinders of different diameters with a bevelled cylinder linking them together. I made the bevelled piece by just creating a cylinder and dragging the vertices inward. It works, but come's up as an invalid solid. Obviously a solid bevelled cylinder is problematic; so what is it I need to do to make a "valid" one? Cut it into equal slices like a... cake or something? Wait, just tried the cake thing; didn't work.

Try using alt-e instead of draggin individually

What does that do? I get a box for scale values and then when I click on the vertices, there's a circle. How the hell do I work it. On another note, I have three bevelled cylinders in the map, and two of them are invalid solids. I made all three of them the same way and I'm not sure why those two are invalid. Something about the geometry in hammer.

You can't have concave brushes in Hammer. You can cut them into seperate brushes with the clip tool however, just as long as each individual piece of 'cake' as you put it is not concave.

Ok, but I have a solid bevelled cylinder that is "valid". Why does it work while the other's don't? And by solid, I mean one piece. [img]http://i523.photobucket.com/albums/w357/914781/Bevelled1.jpg[/img]

try displacements?

[QUOTE=ilovehalo;18502462]try displacements?[/QUOTE] :frog: make the cylinder, then drag the higher vertices so that they are on the same grid points as the cylinder above it. if it asked you to "merge vertices" and you clicked yes, you have to remove the whole brush. merging vertices create invalid brushes.

[QUOTE=Diealready;18502733] if it asked you to "merge vertices" and you clicked yes, you have to remove the whole brush. merging vertices create invalid brushes.[/QUOTE] First off: Merging vertices does not create invalid brushes. I have plenty of proof of that. [img]http://i523.photobucket.com/albums/w357/914781/Bevelled2.jpg[/img] I suppose you'd say that these are invalid solids because they're angled, merged, and cut at odd angles to match up with the orange wall. Funny thing about these solids, I had Hammer fix them the way it wanted to and I end up with an ovular shape that doesn't have a single vertex on-grid. Strange. I think I'll just make the larger bevell's smaller so that they are exact copies of the center one. [QUOTE=Diealready;18502733]:frog: make the cylinder, then drag the higher vertices so that they are on the same grid points as the cylinder above it.[/QUOTE] That is exactly how I made the bevelled shapes. One came out fine, the other's, not so much.

Ugh I've had this problem too, I didn't know exactly what you were asking about at first. [quote]I think I'll just make the larger bevell's smaller so that they are exact copies of the center one.[/quote] That would be the best option since that one works for some reason.

Make them using clipped spikes instead.

I don't feel comfortable clipping the spike in half, but the spike idea worked great. The cone of the spike remains hidden behind the cylinder's.

No, don't clip the spikes, don't hide the spike inside other solids, do it right. Don't angle a square face unless you're 100% positive that it won't create an invalid surface, that is, all points must lie on the same plane. Instead use your current bad cylinders as guidelines and rebuild the form using multiple brushes, using triangles to form the faces that are to be tapered. That way you can safely pull down the edges of the triangles to form your bevel and you'll be sure that you won't form invalid faces. And you'll stay on the grid in the process.

[QUOTE=splitsticks;18521918]No, don't clip the spikes, don't hide the spike inside other solids, do it right. Don't angle a square face unless you're 100% positive that it won't create an invalid surface, that is, all points must lie on the same plane. Instead use your current bad cylinders as guidelines and rebuild the form using multiple brushes, using triangles to form the faces that are to be tapered. That way you can safely pull down the edges of the triangles to form your bevel and you'll be sure that you won't form invalid faces. And you'll stay on the grid in the process.[/QUOTE] The triangle method is a good way to solve concave faces, but it uses tons of brushes, and also trashes light maps. A better way would be to make the entire pillar a model or just the bevelled cylinder.

[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;18525472]The triangle method is a good way to solve concave faces, but it uses tons of brushes, and also trashes light maps. A better way would be to make the entire pillar a model or just the bevelled cylinder.[/QUOTE] You can do the triangle method using a single brush. You just need to split the square faces with the vertex edit tool. Also, it can be quite hard to tell which way the triangle split needs to go to make it convex.

I use bevelled cylinders quite a lot in my Atlantis map [url]http://www.facepunch.com/forumdisplay.php?f=38[/url] As mentioned by splitsticks: [QUOTE=splitsticks;18521918]all points must lie on the same plane[/QUOTE] an Invalid Solid from vertex editing is usually when at least one of the vertexes on a face is not in the same plane as the others. This can be "worked around" with triangular faces (instead of squares) since all their vertices are always in the same plane, but this increases the number of faces, creates odd lightmaps, is very inefficient for cylinders (a lot of faces) and runs a greater risk of accidentally creating concave shapes (invalid for another reason). Dragging vertices to create slopes is very dangerous as it is not easy to see whether the result is invalid or not without doing a "Check Map for Problems". The only way to do this reliably and efficiently is to Clip (NOT Carve) a cylinder/spike then leave the vertices untouched after that. Another useful point: All cylinders/spikes in your map should be func_detail (or a model, use propper) - angled world brush faces make a mess in vvis and a cylinder/spike has a lot of angled faces.

As i said. Alt-e What you do is go in vertex edit, select the top/bottom vertices that need to be adjusted, then enter a number. looks to me it will be stuff like .75 play around with that until it works

[QUOTE=laptopman;18539315]As i said. Alt-e What you do is go in vertex edit, select the top/bottom vertices that need to be adjusted, then enter a number. looks to me it will be stuff like .75 play around with that until it works[/QUOTE] Wow. that worked great. 0.87505 put a couple of the vertices right on the grid. It's no longer an invalid solid, but the part that I bevelled inward didn't quite match up with the corresponding cylinder. About half of the vertices did, some of them fell short, I'm going to assume that moving them will just make it invalid. It's fine though because you can't see the parts that don't match from the player's perspective. Damn Hammer's grid size. Snapping vertices to it causes the corner to be off by like 0.00002, making a perfectly feasable solid invalid.

What you can do is adjust the size of the other cylinders so that there is an obvious correspondence number. So like top=128 bottom=32 to adjust to bottom do .25

[QUOTE=laptopman;18563670]What you can do is adjust the size of the other cylinders so that there is an obvious correspondence number. So like top=128 bottom=32 to adjust to bottom do .25[/QUOTE] You'd think it would work, but it doesn't. WHENEVER I vertex edit a cylinder like this and then compile it (or even just save it and reopen the file), despite the vertices having been ON grid, and it having been scaled down by a power of 2, it still, for some stupid reason, moves the vertices OFF of the grid and fucks them up.

[QUOTE=sltungle;18597698]You'd think it would work, but it doesn't. WHENEVER I vertex edit a cylinder like this and then compile it (or even just save it and reopen the file), despite the vertices having been ON grid, and it having been scaled down by a power of 2, it still, for some stupid reason, moves the vertices OFF of the grid and fucks them up.[/QUOTE] It moves them off-grid because they don't have a planer surface when they are on-grid. Learn some simple Geometry & Trigonometry and also learn to triangulate the faces whilst keeping them convex.

Yeah, it's gonna be hard to make them planar, as if you've got 2 vertexes which are only on grid at size 1, you will not have that verts on grid when you size them down, unless you move them it, creating an invalid solid.

Gentlemen, this is why we use arches instead of cylinders. EDIT: If I'd seen this thread 5 days earlier I could have given this answer 5 days earlier. Sorry. My point is that cylinders tend to fail to compile correctly, where arches tend to succeed. They're also easier to work with, and more versatile than any other primitive I know of. I never even use the cone tool either. I just make an arch and then merge all the top vertexes. VBSP will merge all the faces in the end that are identical and touching (unless it's tied to an entity; in that case make all the faces you can't see nodraw) anyway.

How does using arches over cylinders help with making topless cones? Other than wasted brushes.

[QUOTE=Legend286;18602847]How does using arches over cylinders help with making topless cones? Other than wasted brushes.[/QUOTE] The main problem I'm seeing is that most of you guys are having compile errors and invalid brushes; and arches can't really become invalid unless you go really crazy with them. Otherwise, it's quite simple making the top face smaller than the bottom face. Just go to the smallest grid and manually move all the vertexes into place with the next arch. EDIT: And you will never reach the brush limit, I promise you. Wasted face rendering IS a problem, but I went over that.

Huh, a diagram may help, because whether you're using arches or not, you can still do it with a cylinder, if you keep to square numbers.

[QUOTE=Legend286;18602956]Huh, a diagram may help, because whether you're using arches or not, you can still do it with a cylinder, if you keep to square numbers.[/QUOTE] There's really no difference except if you fuck up with cylinders it's a serious problem because the entire thing is one brush and the vertex editing tool won't really help you after you've merged two vertexes to make an invalid brush, and if you fuck up with arches, you just delete and redo the offending, invalid segment. And, unrelated to this particular subject, arches are much more versatile than cylinders. EDIT: And you're ALWAYS supposed to stay on grid. There is never a situation when you don't, so that shouldn't even be a consideration.

Smashmasters right. Sorry i didnt think of that also, [quote=legend286]How does using arches over cylinders help with making [B]topless[/B] cones? Other than wasted brushes.[/quote][/immaturity]

I'm really against using alt-e to scale vertices because most of the time you'll get points off the grid. I made a test map to compare scaling against creating triangular brushes. All cylinders are 192 units in diameter. On the left is a cylinder created by scaling the top vertices by .5, and on the right is one that was created using triangular brushes. Note that in scaling the cylinder's top vertices, eight of the 16 vertices landed on the grid (points at 90 and 45 degrees), while the remaining 8 fell off the grid. In the middle is another test to see how an 8 sided cylinder would look (made with triangular brushes), but you can ignore that if you want because it didn't come out very nice. Also I used smoothing groups on the sloped sides of the cylinders and a lightmap scale of 4. [i]in-game[/i] [URL=http://img525.imageshack.us/i/bevelledcylindertest000.jpg/][IMG]http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/92/bevelledcylindertest000.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL] [URL=http://img22.imageshack.us/i/bevelledcylindertest000.jpg/][IMG]http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/92/bevelledcylindertest000.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL] [URL=http://img109.imageshack.us/i/bevelledcylindertest000.jpg/][IMG]http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/92/bevelledcylindertest000.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL] [URL=http://img22.imageshack.us/i/bevelledcylindertest000d.jpg/][IMG]http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/5668/bevelledcylindertest000d.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL] [i]hammer[/i] [URL=http://img412.imageshack.us/i/test352.png/][IMG]http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/1175/test352.th.png[/IMG][/URL] [URL=http://img137.imageshack.us/i/test48.png/][IMG]http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/7628/test48.th.png[/IMG][/URL] Now, this first test contained no func_details, and it compiled without error. However when I went back and func_detailed the three cylinders, the compile crashed every time. When I deleted the scaled cylinder, the compile went through without a hitch. The scaled brush with points off the grid was crashing the compile when tied to a func_detail. I also ran multiple compiles omitting different cylinders so I could see exactly how much map resources were taken up by each type of cylinder. I also elevated the cylinders so that they didn't split up the floor and contaminate the results. [img]http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/6214/test4738.png[/img] Using triangles is much more resource-heavy than scaling the brush, relatively. If these shapes are rare it will barely impact your map, but if they are common they would chew through your resources pretty quickly. If you want to use the scaling method and keep them as brushes (if func_detailing them crashes your compile as it did mine), be sure to use hint faces to prevent them from wrecking your visleafs. Lastly I used propper to turn the triangle-formed cylinder into a prop, which is very resource friendly but not always very lighting friendly. [URL=http://img692.imageshack.us/i/bevelledcylindertest000.jpg/][IMG]http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/92/bevelledcylindertest000.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL] In this case it actually turned out rather well. I kept hammer's smoothing groups for this one. While I used the cylinder made from triangles to make this prop, you might be able to use the scaled brush instead to give even smoother lighting, but this depends on whether or not propper can handle off-grid vertices. I was really hoping to have a definitive answer after all this, but I still can't say which method is best. It really depends on how you want to use it, whether you want shadows, how many there will be, how close they will be to the player, the lightmap scale, and so on. There's a time and a place for all of them, and it turns out scaling vertices isn't as bad as I thought it was.

I didnt read the entire page, so i might be late. But wouldn't simply clipping certain sized cones work?

[QUOTE=laptopman;18500550]Try using alt-e instead of draggin individually[/QUOTE] I had no idea hammer had this. What other secrets does this program have?!>?