Probably the noobiest question yet...

tyler

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Sep 11, 2013
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That glass stuff is through the door? Proper hinting should do it. Might need to be diagonal based on what's in the room. A door with a linked areaportal would do it too, yeah.
 

tyler

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Sep 11, 2013
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Then hinting should be able to do it as you've got it, but an areaportal door would definitely make it simpler. Normally I would say I hate doors, but it's a trade map right? So whatever.
 

tyler

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Sep 11, 2013
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That article is useful but was written when we had a lot of people making really bizarre maps and trying to get them into gameday. I'll probably rewrite it for the new forums and make it a little less dogmatic and a lot easier to read. What I'm saying is: don't feel bad about what you're doing. That wasn't my goal.
 

worMatty

Repacking Evangelist
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Jul 22, 2014
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Just following on from what ty said, if you put a hint face the width of the room, right below your sky light brushwork, an open areaportal on your entrance tunnel should be enough. If you associate one with a door, you have the benefit of it closing when the door does, but if someone else opens the door, then the brushwork might pop in to view anyway. If you find that an open area portal isn't enough to prevent it from being seen, perahsp increase height of the brushwork (note: As in move it upwards some, don't stretch it to make it taller).

You could of course just texture the outside of the sky light brushwork since it doesn't really make sense to look in to the sky and not see it.
 

Tumby

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May 12, 2013
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a layer of 2d skybox which also has the backs nodrawed

Try to make sure that all sides of a brush are toolsskybox(2d) or else there can be tiny problems with lighting. It's weird, it's rare, and probably nobody here knows what I'm talking about but it is real.
The thing is just that nodraw doesn't let light pass. So if you ever experience a problem with your outside lighting, that might be why.
 

worMatty

Repacking Evangelist
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Jul 22, 2014
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Congrats on all that stuff you showed in the screenshots. And grats on learning how to use the vertex editing tool (not clipping tool) to make the corners of brushes meet up like that, but you needn't bother if the exposed edges are in the void. They get culled when the map is compiled.

However that technique is useful for internal geometry sometimes because it can neaten up portals and fix lightmap issues.

Don't concern yourself with portal efficiency too much in such a simple area. If you start watching the numbers like that you might do silly things to get it down, and harm visibility optimisation in the process. Visleaves are your friend. The more you have (within reason) then the more the map can be segmented up and limited in the player's rendered view.

Just a thought for you to go on with: If you want to use area portals to divide the spaces between your rooms, say you put one in the tunnel, there, which is good practice, then you'll probably need to put one in your sky light brushwork (the glass stuff in that big room) to seal that room from your 'pond room'. Simplest way to do that would be to make a horizontal area portal just below your sky light brushwork. For an example of a use of a horizontal area portal in a Valve map, check the 'courtyard' area in either team's base in 2fort.

And following on from what Tumbolisu said about texturing all sides of a skybox brush with the skybox texture: When you build your map, you needn't bother nodrawing any faces that are in the void, because they will be culled during compile. If you build a room out of dev textured brushes, or concrete or wood or something, then the brush will have your choice of texture on all its faces. But you can safely ignore the faces that are in the void, or covered entirely by other world brush faces, because of the culling done by VBSP that will get rid of them. Try it out in Hammer by making a test world composed of fully-textured world brush faces. You can even go further by putting in internal world brush walls, and flying around your compiled map in TF2 using noclip, to see which faces have disappeared.
 

worMatty

Repacking Evangelist
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Jul 22, 2014
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No worries. Sorry if I sounded dictatorial at all, there.

In case of any misunderstanding between us, the clipping tool is the one you use to cut brushes along a line, like slicing them up. The vertex editing tool is, as I'm sure you understand, the one that lets you move the corners around. Looking at your screenshots, it seemed to me it was the latter you were using. I recommend learning the keyboard shortcuts for them, because it makes it much quicker and you feel pro B-) (why don't we have any sunglasses emoticons?). Oh I just realised I can do this :vertextool: and this :clippingtool: What fun!

Some folks prefer to make their brushes all in NODRAW first and then texture them later. It provides that peace of mind that if ever there was a hidden face, it wouldn't get rendered. The downsides to this are that it can be harder to make things out in the 3D viewport because the texture is a bit noisy compared with dev faces, and the author must take the time to texture the visible faces in the map during alpha stage before they can compile for play testing. Some map authors like to build their map in dev textures, and when it's fully detailed, do a find+replace to change any remaining dev faces to NODRAW. Others like to keep the dev faces in, so that there is less chance of players being able to see through brushes in-game, and by flying around the world you can spot problems with misaligned brushes or pockets of unplayable space, if you see a dev texture. If you understand how VBSP face culling works, you can build things with it in mind, to make the whole process more efficient.