Slanted Cylinder Wall not Aligning

Swiftmind

L2: Junior Member
Dec 6, 2009
73
20
Slanted Cylinder Wall not Aligning (solved)

Issued Solved. Thanks!


======

Hello.

I have had this issue with my map so I been trying to fix this for the past two days with no luck. I have a silo ceiling pictured below. The inner and outer cylinders of the silo have been manually aligned with the grid using the vertex tool and has no issues. The red slanted ceiling is giving me a problem. I align it up using the vertex tool, but when ever I reopen the map/compile and play tons of vertexes are all off and I get tiny holes everywhere. Here is what I mean in game:

attachment.php

attachment.php


Here is the object in hammer:

attachment.php


As you can see the outer wall of the silo is the solid going all the way up. I can kind of get away with the holes since the outer wall is textured all the way up. But that is a lot of useless lightmap data. So I want to get rid of the textures in the back but when I do the player sees the glowing void/sky through the holes and makes the holes really noticeable.

attachment.php


The slanted ceiling is a bunch of small 6 side blocks in which their end points should be aligned to the outer and inner cylinders.

Here is a close up of the issue. All 4 vertexes have been manually aligned again and again, all end up like this after a close/open of the map.

Things I have tried:
Slanted wall is a displacement, no luck same holes appear. But the displacement was built out of these same blocks.
Instead of a block I used a triangle. Came out to a scalene triangle in which the longest side was the slanted part the player sees. Also no luck same hole issues develop.
Made the blocks taller/shorter which changed angle of slant, holes still develop.


To me this is not complicated geometry but I am starting to think Source/hammer can not handle it. Can anyone think of a better way to construct this object?
 
Last edited:

megawac

L4: Comfortable Member
Oct 2, 2009
180
29
index.php
Warning: If the vertices merged aren't along the same edge it will create an invalid solid structure.

After using the vertex editor its usually a good idea to alt+p before exiting the map.
 

Swiftmind

L2: Junior Member
Dec 6, 2009
73
20
I orginally had that Boylee but waterindices went up drastically. Before combining those two details, the map was at 99% max waterindices. So combining these two details reduced overall indices by 4%.

Regardless, it still has no effect. I had the holes before when they were seperate details.

Megawac, alt-p reports nothing. As far as I know all brushes are valid solids. If invalid I dont think the invalid solids would should up in game.

I just thought of changing the way the sides meet the two cylinders. I will make it a vertical instead of horizontal meet and try it on a few. *shrugs* maybe it will work.
 

Tehrasha

L3: Member
Nov 5, 2009
115
28
If I am looking at this right, the cylinder and angled bit in red are made from relatively thin slabs?

My first thought was the same as Boylee....
Is there any reason that the conical section cannot be made full thickness?
If not, then you can eliminate the interior lower vertices by merging them with the uppers, turning the conical section into a arch of 5 sided wedges instead of complex 6 sided slabs?
 

Swiftmind

L2: Junior Member
Dec 6, 2009
73
20
Stupid me, alt-p was not reporting anything since the save is automatically fixing the invalid solids...which causes the vertexes to move.

Clyinder is 20 blocks thick. Slanted wall is 16 blocks thick. No real reason why they are those thicknesses.

Maybe. I am now thinking of this which may be what you are saying:

attachment.php


If this can work this would be ideal, I can get rid of 60 blocks.

So far I gotten 6 to work. I got two invalids after making it but with some more fixing and manipulations it was no longer invalid. BUT haha after saving and reopening the map I get some tiny slits again...even though it was not reported as invalid before closing the map. :eek:hmy:
 

fubarFX

The "raw" in "nodraw"
aa
Jun 1, 2009
1,720
1,978
what happens is that the coordinate doesn't make sense in the vmf when you save. so hammer corrects it when you save.

solution, what boylee says and make angled part with square pyramids (using it so the only face you see/need is the square).
vertex edited square tend to fuck up a lot. the more you use triangles, the happier you'll be
 
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redcommunism

L2: Junior Member
Feb 13, 2010
57
12
Carving could cause you problems. Id make each part of the ceiling separately.
 

Boylee

pew pew pew
aa
Apr 29, 2008
1,068
709
I'm guessing this ceiling area is not a major gameplay area, right?

If so I'd suggest reducing the number of sides to the cylindrical structure too. Sure it looks pretty but do people really need that much geometry for something which won't be looked at 80% of the time?

And FubarFX is right, this:
Code:
 -----
|   |
|   |
|   |
 -----
|   /
|  /
| /
|/

Should give you less problems than this:
Code:
[code]
 -----
|   |
|   |
|   |
|   |
|   /
|  /
| /
|/
 
Last edited:
Feb 14, 2008
1,051
931
It would be easier just to roughly shape out that bit with square brushes and then make them into displacements to do the proper shaping. It also makes vvis your friend. He says hi.
 

Swiftmind

L2: Junior Member
Dec 6, 2009
73
20
If so I'd suggest reducing the number of sides to the cylindrical structure too. Sure it looks pretty but do people really need that much geometry for something which won't be looked at 80% of the time?

And FubarFX is right, this:
Code:
 -----
|   |
|   |
|   |
 -----
|   /
|  /
| /
|/

Should give you less problems than this:
Code:
[code]
 -----
|   |
|   |
|   |
|   |
|   /
|  /
| /
|/

Whaaaa?! Reduce the detail? NEVER! :p

Haha you know that never occurred to me. Reason is I wanted to keep the cylinders the same so then the slant part would be easy, I just line up the end points with the cylinders. But as we can all see this is not working.

I did try the situation you are describing in your example. With triangles but I got the same result. So that is when I tried all one object as you seen in the last picture.

It is obvious I need to simply this object even more by reducing the number of blocks that make the sides on the inner cylinder/slanted part.

FaTony said:
Fancy making a model?
Hmmm I could. I am not much of a modeler though. Would I still have to make the brush in hammer then transport it over to the modeler program?


As I said in my original post I had displacements and the same issue happened. But the displacements were built out of the already slanted blocks, which was most likely the problem.

So as Randdalf just said do the shaping as displacements is not a path I took. I can try this.

EArkham said:
Also, you might want to take a look at this utility if you decide to make it out of displacements: http://www.users.on.net/~imperialcar...userguide.html
That tool looks very interesting, thank you EArkham.


Current plan for today, this assumes no model route:
* Halve the number of objects that make the inner cylinder
* Stretch the inner cylinder out to the outer cylinder to close the gap between the two, no slant
* Inner cylinder becomes solid not detail and true wall/ceiling up top
* Use displacements or slanted triangles to create the slanted part between the two cylinders
 

Swiftmind

L2: Junior Member
Dec 6, 2009
73
20
I built the inner cylinder and already it is coming out to a much cleaner construction then before. I think this is the route I will keep going on.

attachment.php


This new cylinder is only 16 objects vs 30 of the old one. It will remain a solid and be the ceiling. No invalids and vis works with it perfectly.

Next step is the slanted part. I will try displacements using that tool mentioned above.
 

Swiftmind

L2: Junior Member
Dec 6, 2009
73
20
Closing out this thread.

Alright looks like the ceiling is all set. Thanks for all your ideas and input. I ended up going with triangles, but I still had the same issue with holes. All triangles were invalid when lined up properly. Once hammer fixed the invalids, I converted the triangles to displacements and pulled over the displacement edges to cover up the holes. Kind of tedious but it works. here is the final product.

attachment.php


attachment.php



I tried twister, great tool but I only needed say the first half of a cone. Unfortunately I can not cut off half of the displacement since it was based off of a small rectangle far above the cone.
 

Tapp

L10: Glamorous Member
Jan 26, 2009
776
215
Closing out this thread.

Alright looks like the ceiling is all set. Thanks for all your ideas and input. I ended up going with triangles, but I still had the same issue with holes. All triangles were invalid when lined up properly. Once hammer fixed the invalids, I converted the triangles to displacements and pulled over the displacement edges to cover up the holes. Kind of tedious but it works. here is the final product.

[Pics]


I tried twister, great tool but I only needed say the first half of a cone. Unfortunately I can not cut off half of the displacement since it was based off of a small rectangle far above the cone.

Lower the subdivisions on those displacements. If anybody shoots a pipe-bomb into that cylinder now it will crash the map.
 

Terr

Cranky Coder
aa
Jul 31, 2009
1,590
410
I'm still a little fuzzy on what the problem was with using normal quad brushes. I've got an 8-sided cylinder in a map that has a "wasp-waist" narrowing near the top of it, and I've never gotten the same issues.