Displacement dish

Tupperwits

L2: Junior Member
Sep 24, 2012
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I'm trying to make a map where the point is a satellite dish so the obvious thing to do would be to use the one from hydro. Problem is that it's a displacement and I need to make a bottom for it.

I know the basics of displacements but I'm still at a loss with things that require a bit of sculpting. I'm using this tutorial atm http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=10287
Is there a way to sew two things without disturbing one of them?
Is there already a full dish out there? Any other tutorials or ideas?

Thanks
 

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
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Mar 4, 2008
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The dish wasn't sculpted using the sculpt tool, it was hand crafted point by point for accuracy.

You can create a framework of the back of the dish by making a checkered board pattern with brushes, white being brushes, black being gaps and simply align the vertices of a displacement to the corners of the brushes after vertex manipulating them into place, keeping the (height consistent).

EDIT: For pedantic technicalities sake, it's a radio dish, not a satellite dish. Satellites orbit in space.

EDIT 2: You can make your life easier by changing the movement distance in the displacement tool menu to factors of 2, IE 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 as these are the scales the editor conforms to and will generally be the sizes of most brush work. For alignments sake. Keeping everything aligned makes it easier to edit if necassery further down the line.
 
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YM

LVL100 YM
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Dec 5, 2007
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EDIT: For pedantic technicalities sake, it's a radio dish, not a satellite dish. Satellites orbit in space.

If you're going to be pedantic, at least be correct. A satellite dish is any parabolic dish designed to recieve microwaves from a satellite. Hydro's is a radio telescope.
 

UKCS-Alias

Mann vs Machine... or... Mapper vs Meta?
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Sep 8, 2008
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Here is a quick way to show how to set up the brushwork in a vmf:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2070422/dish.zip
dish.jpg


The right one is undisplaced to show the brushes better, the left one is displaced and subdevided (note, its not an accurate sphere but should help in the process of creating one - if desired).

Best is ofcourse to have multiple rings of sloped areas (instead of just 1 as i have in the example) as that allows you to make it a better sphere.
 

YM

LVL100 YM
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Dec 5, 2007
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The top of the slope will always have squarish edges, so make one part higher than you intend then delete the top one to leave a nicely circular edge.
 

YM

LVL100 YM
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Dec 5, 2007
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If you're looking for the same kind of dish as hydro has, you're looking for the arecebio radio telescope

Because it can't move, it has to be circular rather than parabolic so that it can be aimed at different points in the sky by moving the reciever hanging above it. This isn't an ideal solution which is why most radio telescopes aren't built into the ground.