[MAPPING] I have a predicament.

[Astral Serpent]

[therfiles]

Make the the square brush under the cylinder, and stretch it to desired length. Simple, a little sloppy, but may work...

[Astral Serpent]

@@therfiles

 

I'm not sure what you mean, here's a better view.

[therfiles]

Oh...disregard that idea then. It wouldn't work. Sorry...that's outside my understanding.

[MUG]

You need to cap it. You should be able to select various options under "cap selection" or something of that nature

[Astral Serpent]

I noticed that thickness pretty much does what I wanted.

 

 

[MUG]

Damn you dragging me out of bed to end this madness >.>

 

@@MoonDog - No. NO NO NO. You are bad and you should feel bad. Thats like 7,000 brushes.

 

What to actually do:

First off, because radiant doesnt know what it is doing with cylinders, take the lower right corner of your cylinder and make a bevel:

 

 

now cap it like so:

 

 

Delete the bevel and the top part of the endcap:

 

 

now move the bottom part up to the top and copy/paste/rotate it around:

 

 

Add brushes if you need it to be wider:

 

[RebelChum]

Why not bother with the caps? They're a lot more efficient.

[The One and Only]

In my experience any brushes whose vertices don't line up with the grid are likely to distort, become corrupted or just delete themselves completely. Use caps.

[Szico VII]

Honestly we have a tutorial section for a bloody reason....

 

http://jkhub.org/tutorials/article/91-creating-curved-corner-cylinders/page___st__2

[MUG]

Honestly we have a tutorial section for a bloody reason....

 

http://jkhub.org/tut...rs/page___st__2

Thats a similar but unrelated problem.

 

Also @@MoonDog, your solution is still about 4 billion brushes. and as @@The One and Only said, you really want to avoid off grid vertecies, not only do you get odd visual bugs ("cracks" in the map) with lots of crisscrossing diagonal brush joins, often, working on the smallest grids/completly off the grid (any thing less than the 1 grid is dangerous ground) will cause the verticies to distort and end up either being unworkable, or randomly moving on save/load/compile.

 

Really, really really, Use caps. If you are trying to join somethin gup with a patch, use another patch!. If its a curved thing, use a patch people, its what they are for.

 

 

edit: have added a version of my solution as a tutorial.

[mrwonko]

Thats a similar but unrelated problem.

It teaches you how to use patches and is thus totally relevant.

[MUG]

@@MoonDog I by no means think you are a "blundering novice". The little I have seen of your mapping is far more profesional than anything I have ever made. I just think its madness to use 30 painstakingly clipped brushes instead of 4 automatically created patches. And of course, it is fine to have multiple solutions to a problem, I was only trying to explain how in this case, I think my solution is better, so that anyone reading this can make an informed decision on how to aproach this problem. I was not trying to shout you down, nor do I think what you have to say is less valuable than anything I do, because you are plainly a far better mapper than me already. I'm sorry if my posts seemed offenseive to you, it was not at all my intention for them to be so.

[Szico VII]

Patches are often better because they LOD, have nicer enviro effects, light better and look smoother.

 

That being said, brush curves have their uses - but be careful, designs like the one that MoonDog posted do add a lot more verts/edges to the compile, particularly if not caulked or vis detailed properly. Those 4 edge squares for example should be mitred.

 

Better ways:

 

Bottom left - moondogs way

bottom right - moondogs way with mitered corners (better, but can be improved)

top right - best way

top left - also acceptable, depending on surrounding brushwork.

 

And of course, the more 'detailed' the brush (i.e the smoother you want the curve to appear) the greater the relative difference in verts between designs.

 

[The One and Only]

Patches, bevels, caps etc. are designed specifically for curved surfaces though, and they have a number of advantages over brushwork for this purpose. They aren't standard "solid" geometry, they're mathematically defined surfaces intended to make smooth curves. Trying to line brush work up with a bevel curve just doesn't work, and even if you get it close it'll be wrong again when the LOD changes. It's also much easier to smoothly and continuously texture a curved surface made with a bevel, since they have different texture projection options.

[Szico VII]

I think you're missing the point. The detail of the curve isn't relevant, you can increase the complexity with more 'sides' as much as you want on all 4 designs and they produce the same curve shape - but the best design is the one that produces the least verts and T-juncs at all scales (usually) You can upscale or downscale any of them. If you're gonna make a curve with brushes, do it efficiently using the top-right method (or right in your 2nd diagram)

 

 

 

 

You can make brushes and curved patches line up, but not perfectly. When the patch LOD's, there will be a gap, dependent on user settings. and r_subdivisions.

But yes, for some constructions brushes work better. But for the design it looks like he wants here, go with patches.

[Szico VII]

You've still missed the point!

 

The same curve shape can be produced by simply upping the number of brushes. As I already said - ALL THE DESIGNS can produce exactly the same shape. Mine just used less because i was doing it quickly for technical demonstration. However the design you demonstrated produces more verts and t-junctions and more brushes. Your earlier example simply looks smoother because you used more subdivisions.... and as said before, if i were to up the subdivisions on the earlier example, the difference in vert count becomes even more important:

 

Note - moving the vert joining to the corners would save even more verts on top of what is already there for the image on the left. (see 2nd image)

 

 

 

 

 

 

and just for further proof - here's a differently styled shape (just like the patch mesh cylinder actually)

 

 

 

So we've reduced 76 verts to 28 and kept an identical looking shape.

[Szico VII]

The idea is to teach people the 'best' way of doing it. By all means build how you want, its personal choice, but I'll still continue to use the best method I know when explaining techniques to new people. Good habits and all.

 

You keep mentioning the shape....why? The method you posted doesn't make the shape any different and that shape can be achieved easily with the design I advised on. So you should use the less-verts method too

[Szico VII]

I'm not sure what you're showcasing? Explain to my slow mind again please

 

EDIT: Nvm, I think I see what you're showing - that's not what he wanted though is it?

[MUG]

One of us should show the poor boy how to do this. When I say one of us, I mean you.

I think he went with my end cap solution long ago =P