First Room: Tell me what I did wrong.

TeamRemix

L1: Registered
Mar 13, 2011
6
0
5528058742_2768a34e5d_b.jpg


Alright here is my first room. If anyone would like to tell me if my approaching to making rooms is correct or not I would really appreciate it.

What my biggest concern is, the only way I could get the 128x128 textures to look right was to make four walls then to separately make the corners (I tiled them the darker tile).

I'm just trying to avoid picking up a bad early habit that will come back and haunt me when I got to texture this thing.

Again this is just me learning, nothing more atm. Advance thanks to anyone who replies. :)
 

tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
5,102
4,621
Use the texture alignment tool.

Also think about increasing the brightness of your lights rather than adding in a lot.
 

TeamRemix

L1: Registered
Mar 13, 2011
6
0
Ok, but making rooms that way is perfectly valid right (geometry wise)? That's my biggest concern.
 

Seba

DR. BIG FUCKER, PHD
aa
Jun 9, 2009
2,364
2,728
Creating maps by making rooms is bad; rather, try to have your map flow naturally. What I mean is start with one building or something, and then form varied areas, like outdoor places, some tunnels maybe, etc. Add variety, never make maps out of giant rooms.
 

Exist

L6: Sharp Member
Oct 31, 2009
306
136
Gonna wanna get the essentials*

http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=11365
http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=7011
http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=4872

Then on to the topic of buildings. There isn't one set way to make houses in TF2, but to get you started

http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=10427

More on roofs, which is always a debated topic amongst mappers and the way to create them

http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=11365

Actually, our tutorial section should answer most of the questions anyone has about TF2modding.

http://forums.tf2maps.net/forumdisplay.php?f=57

Anything that isn't answered there, feel free to post a new thread or reply to an existing topic relating to your query.
 

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
aa
Mar 4, 2008
5,441
3,814
There's no right or wrong way to make rooms, and many rooms are so sophisticated (in how they connect) that there's no way to tell if any system was strictly followed in it's design; besides the fact that Valve level designers have admitted to adhering to a 64 X/Y grid system to prevent things from getting too complicated.

What i would suggest is that rooms should be no shorter than 192 units in height and to check out the provided sdk .vmf's to take a look at scales and room construction techniques first hand. Using 2fort and goldrush as an idea on the smallest acceptable rooms in TF2 and badwater and gorge as an idea on the largest acceptable scaled rooms.
 

YM

LVL100 YM
aa
Dec 5, 2007
7,135
6,056
The problem with making a wall you can get on both sides of is "Do I make the inside 'nice' and 256 units wide or do I make the outside the 'nice' 256 units" then the other is either slightly smaller, or slightly larger.

But this is pretty insignificant since most walls are either wood/thin metal and 8-16 units thick or concrete which can be a justifiable 32, making the dilemma practically disappear.

Don't worry about getting the Xunit wide texture fit perfectly, one thing that stops textures looking repetitive is unevenly sized brushes.

If you can see both sides of a wall corner, you shouldn't use a butt joint but a miter joint instead. This reduces the number of faces rendered as well as reducing the number of faces you need to texture (no to mention it removes the slight overlap where there is texture which could in more complex situations cause lightmap oddities)

It is important as a designer to understand a little more than the basics of building construction techniques and architecture since most of the time we're building buildings. (dohoh)

It looks to me like your stairs have a ramp under them even though the steps aren't triangular prisms themselves, here you have overlapping brushes, and more importantly overlapping faces on the edge of the stairs. Overlapping brushes aren't too bad but should be avoided as good practice but overlapping faces should be avoided at all costs because 3D engines don't know which to render first which leads to z-fighting So clip off the bottom of the steps so they're flush with the ramp below.
 

TeamRemix

L1: Registered
Mar 13, 2011
6
0
Thanks guys. Made some good progress with making the building in this tutorial:

http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=10427

I think it looks ok, but whenever I try to test it in game, for some reason I am spawning under my level and I'm stuck.

What I did was just made another platform to build the building on then deleted where my original player start entity was then added it again near my building. Ever since I did that I've been spawning in the ground. :blushing:

Course there was an instance where I had two play start entities on the map, but I never ran it when this was the case. I was just using one for ref, then deleted it, then deleted the original player start then added a new one near my new building.

I have a feeling I may have messed something up. :confused:
 

YM

LVL100 YM
aa
Dec 5, 2007
7,135
6,056
info_player_teamspawn's need to be at least 16 units above the ground otherwise they wont be 'clear' and you won't spawn from them. Silly TF2 quirk
 

tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
5,102
4,621
I've had them work on the ground before but I always put them 32 units above ground when I realize
 

ardysqrrl

L4: Comfortable Member
Oct 26, 2009
173
159
If you can see both sides of a wall corner, you shouldn't use a butt joint but a miter joint instead.
Why is this? VBSP will join faces with identical face settings, assuming they completely share an edge and are coplanar, at least this is the impression I was under!
 
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Sgt Frag

L14: Epic Member
May 20, 2008
1,443
710
http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/4392/tt9p.jpg

That picture shows one issue of not mitering corners like YM was talking about above. On the left corner you can see the wood doesn't align. It's easy to fix, but when you have a large map and a lot of those it's easy to miss them.


I actually just found a new trick with miters and hints that actually lets you cut down visleafs a lot. I'm going to try and do a tut on that soon.

No reason to add corners to your buildings really. Textures tile sideways pretty nice. It's usually up/down that they don't due to grime layers. But in tex tool you can hit 'fit' and it'll rescale the tex to fit height-wise too. But then usually you need to rematch the horizontal scale to match the vertical so it's not stretched weird.
 

Sgt Frag

L14: Epic Member
May 20, 2008
1,443
710
Why is this? VBSP will join faces with identical face settings, assuming they completely share an edge and are coplanar, at least this is the impression I was under!

It will IF the textures are aligned. And butting them makes them harder to align, or easier to miss a mis-alignment.

But in some cases mitering is harder (is the brush has angle for roof...), that can be worked around too though with func_details and whatnot.
 

ardysqrrl

L4: Comfortable Member
Oct 26, 2009
173
159
lets assume I have texture lock off and scaling texture lock off (pro) so I don't think there's any reason to use mitered joins in that case right?
 

Sgt Frag

L14: Epic Member
May 20, 2008
1,443
710
Well, if they were never on and you never adjusted any brushes. Then technically there wouldn't be any alignment issues as they'd all align to world grid. But that also means all your brushes with dirt along the bottom, etc.. would need to be at 0,0 so the tex would look right.

Either way I recently found a way to minimize vis leafs quite a bit, and it requires miters and hints. (hints alone won't do it). I'm might try and whip out that tut tonight as I've been meaning to anyway.