Circles, cylinders, arches

Sep 7, 2012
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Hey all!

I was just wondering what your preference is for making rounded brushes. How many sides do you normally specify? Does it depend on the size of the brush? I'm just trying to get a feel for the way other people do things, because I've been having a bit of trouble myself. Thanks in advance!
 
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Mar 23, 2010
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i usually specify 12 sides but i might be weird. just practice at it and remember which direction arches and cylinders are formed. also dont forget to vertex edit to get back on grid afterwards.
 

tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
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If you specify powers of two (4, 8, 16, 32) the brushes will align themselves to the grid, although depending on the size of your cylinder or arch it might be on a very small grid setting.
 
Sep 7, 2012
638
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I've tried to stick to powers of 2 as much as possible. How many sides did you use on the buildings in anthem???
 

tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
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Those towers are 32 sided arches with a thickness of 8 and all the trims are thickness of 4 or 2, I don't remember. Needless to say they are aligned to the grid, but the 1u grid.

In my experience making 12 sided cylinders or whatever leads to things being off grid even at the 1u scale.
 
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WolfKit

L3: Member
Jun 26, 2012
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Are you talking about just the vertices? at 90 degrees being on the grid, or all vertices?
 

JeanPaul

L6: Sharp Member
Aug 5, 2010
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Arches are to be made in 360 degrees at all times, no matter what. This keeps them on-grid and all sizes will align with all sizes.

I try to keep the number of rotational sides to easy to work with numbers. Unlike what yyler said, most arches will snap to a grid regardless of the number of sides. But it really comes down to how you like to work. If you have a 32 sided arch, each angle will be 11.25 degrees whereas if you use 24, each one is 15 degrees. Working with 24 sided arches is pretty easy because the rotation tool in hammer defaults to 15 degree snaps.

Imbricatus A4 will actually have 32, 64 and 128 sided arches. I even used 512 sided arches to create curved stairs before the final point. The tool is actually pretty awesome if you know how to keep everything tidy because it can get out of hand really fast.

Also, you can set negative values for thicknesses but I wouldnt recommend it because it starts to fuck with things after a while.

EDIT: I take that back, if you make an arch with like 13 sides or something completely retarded like that, a few points will be off grid even at 1 unit. Youd have to be inbred to think 13 is a good number for anything though
 
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A Boojum Snark

Toraipoddodezain Mazahabado
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Nov 2, 2007
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It really depends on how smooth you want the curve to look, and whether or not the object will be seen on-end prominently. If you only see the faces then the smoothing VRAD does helps significantly in making a low-face curve appear faceless.
In general I keep to multiples of 4 just so that the NSEW verts are "full radius" and easier to match up with other brushes. Though any number of sides will work if you need something specific because it isn't hard to zoom in and manually snap verts to the grid if they happen to be off of it.

Also for things like curved walls, subdivided displacements can be used sometimes.
 

tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
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Since VRAD still inkblots displacements for no clear reason, I try not to subdivide corners.