Carving isn't that bad

Blue552

L3: Member
Sep 16, 2009
137
18
Everyone seems to have this massive misconception about the carve tool.

It is very useful and saves a lot of time, it is only dangerous in the hands of a newbie or an idiot.

For a lot of people carving seems to be this evil which will undoubtedly break your map, but there is only two simple things which cause the problem.

1. It automatically groups the divided brushes - which means any dimensional changes you make to this group will deform the brushes within it. Ctrl+U fixes this.

2. People are lazy, if you take care to properly align the brush which will be the 'carver' nothing will go wrong.

Carving will cut your shape into the optimum configuration. Sure for a cube you don't need it, but to create a 32 sided pipe, I'm going to carve.

EDIT:

Things I would probably carve:

KHJoR.png


Things I would not carve:

QbDm5.png



Yea I apologize for stating that carving will carve objects into its optimum configuration, I miss-interpreted the carving algorithm. I thought it would compare configurations to find which one had the least vertices and shortest carving lengths, apparently its much more simple.

I'll only carve things if I know they're not going to be messed around with much and are too important, func_details and such. It's okay to be lazy sometimes if it means you finish your map, unless you don't have a deadline.

If you look at valve maps more carefully you'll notice quite a lot of things where simply made or not done quite right, most people would never notice such things.
 
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J4CK8

L11: Posh Member
Mar 4, 2009
820
243
There is reason why carve is bad, and you are probably going to be told it a lot.

Yes it's OK to carve a square in something, but dont carve anything more than a 4-sided shape. Carve an octogan into a square, and you will be given several brushes in a triangular shape. Have a square with a square cut out in the middle, then add some triangular shapes to the corners to create an 8-sided hole, nice and neatly.
 
Feb 14, 2008
1,051
931
Use displacements to make the pipe, and seal it within a nodraw box. Kaboooom.
 

Stormcaller3801

L5: Dapper Member
Jul 5, 2009
249
28
I was going to go with 'make two 180º 16-sided arcs with a thickness equal to the length of the pipe' but that works too, Randdalf.

This thread will not end well.
 

Blue552

L3: Member
Sep 16, 2009
137
18
There is reason why carve is bad, and you are probably going to be told it a lot.

Yes it's OK to carve a square in something, but dont carve anything more than a 4-sided shape. Carve an octogan into a square, and you will be given several brushes in a triangular shape. Have a square with a square cut out in the middle, then add some triangular shapes to the corners to create an 8-sided hole, nice and neatly.


STd12.png


This isn't exactly what you mentioned, but it has more then 4 sides

CpxEY.png


Done properly there are no serious problems, and for me it was easier and quicker then clipping.
 

gamemaster1996

L13: Stunning Member
Sep 30, 2009
1,064
134
I think i just thought something that would fix all our problems-A clipping tool which doesn't clip the outside shape it can clip the whole thing.
 

Blue552

L3: Member
Sep 16, 2009
137
18
loll.png

As you can see, by not carving you get cleaner results that can also be edited more easily

It isn't difficult to carve a pipe which wont be completely screwed up. Just depends on your preferences, personally I don't like switching my prefab from block too much so I stick with carving.

Carving, like most things, needs to be used in moderation - You wouldn't make your entire map out of displacements, but it shouldn't be ignored completely because if used incorrectly it makes things messy.

EDIT:

Also if you rotated the shape by 360 degrees divided by the total number of faces it would have come out properly. It's just the cyclinder prefab has an edge and not a face laying on the x and y axis which causes this problem.
 
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J4CK8

L11: Posh Member
Mar 4, 2009
820
243
STd12.png


This isn't exactly what you mentioned, but it has more then 4 sides

CpxEY.png


Done properly there are no serious problems, and for me it was easier and quicker then clipping.

Ah, what I meant was you shouldn't carve a brush with an object with more than 4 sides.
 

Blue552

L3: Member
Sep 16, 2009
137
18
Oh right, I getcha now.

I will carve such things very rarely, only if I know its not that important, I wont be touching it again and I know it will work to some degree.
 

UKCS-Alias

Mann vs Machine... or... Mapper vs Meta?
aa
Sep 8, 2008
1,264
816
Carve isnt fine due to the way people use it. Ofcourse, carving a square out of a square does work. but making those by hand only takes about the same time... and you are guaranteed that the work by hand is better. However, for complex shapes carve often is faster... but there comes the problem. Carve doesnt work well for complex shapes. It uses a quite simple method in cutting the brush (similar to the vbsp tool with visleafs - which does mess up time to time also - hint brushes exist for a reason). that simple method will result in tiny brushes and a slight edit action often will couse into a broken/offgrid brush.

There of course are a few moments that carve is indeed faster and easier to use. but any mapper that knows when it wont mess it up will know how the other tools work anyway. Why do you need carve then? Yes, its faster. but an action that only saves you like 10 seconds isnt worth 1000 of maps that crash due to carve completely messing up the maps due to making microbrushes.
 

jpr

aa
Feb 1, 2009
1,094
1,085
It isn't difficult to carve a pipe which wont be completely screwed up. Just depends on your preferences, personally I don't like switching my prefab from block too much so I stick with carving.
You're not making much sense... You're too lazy to switch to arch and make a clean pipe, but not too lazy to switch to cylinder, make a cylinder, copy the cylinder, resize the copied cylinder and then carve with the copied cylinder to create a messy pipe?
 

A Boojum Snark

Toraipoddodezain Mazahabado
aa
Nov 2, 2007
4,775
7,669
Also if you rotated the shape by 360 degrees divided by the total number of faces it would have come out properly. It's just the cyclinder prefab has an edge and not a face laying on the x and y axis which causes this problem.
If you rotate an object to such an arbitrary angle you'll end up with floating verts and the issue will be compounded and you would end up with gaps between your brushes, or possibly invalid/infinite brushes.

Truthfully, this is a dead argument, you will never win or get anywhere. It's been discussed to death. Hammer is a very old program and the carve tool has always been an evil in it.

The vast majority of times carve is a very very bad tool. The few times it can be used "safely" (they are not guaranteed safe either, they may STILL cause problems on occasion) are so trivial that adept mappers are just as fast doing it another way, or perhaps don't even run into the need because they did something different in the construction process and there is no need to cut a hole.

Making things about "when you can carve" will only serve to encourage people who don't understand it to use it and end up doing things bad.
 

DJive

Cake or Death?
aa
Dec 20, 2007
1,465
741
STd12.png


This isn't exactly what you mentioned, but it has more then 4 sides

CpxEY.png


Done properly there are no serious problems, and for me it was easier and quicker then clipping.

in the "old days of mapping" What you did is bad practice because you have faces that are unseen and still textures.

It all adds up, piece and piece and piece till your FPS is !@# and people cant grasp why.

carve IS bad (period)

It looks bad, it draws extra vis, it causes grid problems etc etc.

Sure it saves time.. ALL bad techniques save time.
 

UKCS-Alias

Mann vs Machine... or... Mapper vs Meta?
aa
Sep 8, 2008
1,264
816
Stay on the Grid, keep it simple and Carvegod will leave you alone..
I did carve square once. The black border is the brush where i carved from, the yellow brushes are the ones i carved out. where the gray lines show the border of those brushes. Everything was aligned to the grid perfectly on a 16 unit scale.
cp_titan_rc1_01.jpg
I selected the 5 brushes and then carved.

That was at the moment that i was a noob at mapping, but i definitely knew it didnt end up as it should because i ended with 6000 brushes, most being microbrushes.

Note that a noob will use carve in such ways and when they dont find out it breaks their map its just too late to fix it. I used CTRL+Z to undo the carve and remade it by hand. I then learned to use the vertex tool already. I didnt even know about overlays or clipping but i was able to use the vertex tool.

If they keep mapping hard people will be forced to learn the tools to use them properly in such a way it doesnt break maps. Carve is one of the tools that makes them skip that step.
 

PL-7764

L6: Sharp Member
Aug 4, 2009
376
84
From my (limited) experience, carving is an extreme booster for time spent on the dreaded portal flow step when compiling. My few maps I've released here (none of which are carved in any way) are much larger and more complex than my earliest attempts, yet they can compile in a matter of minutes. My first attempts at mapping simply WILL NOT compile anymore - too much carving makes portal flow take too long. It can sit overnight and never finish that step (often because it's overworked itself and crashed without saying so :p).
 

lana

Currently On: ?????
aa
Sep 28, 2009
3,075
2,778
Show me something carve can do better than clip.