Keeping roofs and details on grid?

seth

seth

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May 31, 2013
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There are some really nice, intricate roofing designs in TF2 that look great. I know that most are 2:3 or 1:2 ratio, but there are many others that are not and still seem to be on grid and regular in Hammer. I can't get my roofs to play nice for the life of me. Is there some special way of making them? I tend to create 2 separate brushes for the faces of a sloped roof; one for the base, which is rectangular, and then the top piece for the triangular part. Then I just resize the top piece to 2:3 or something and make a 4 unit thick brush above that and rotate it and clip into position. It just doesn't work out. The same goes for making trusses and rafters for the support structure. How the hell do you do that? In all the maps I've studied, the angled supports are the same thickness throughout and they have regular dimensions; no decimals. Mine always end up slightly skewed one way or the other, they're always like 1/3 of unit off from the wall or brace they're touching and they end up being like 42.7x68.3 or something stupid like that.

How do you guys do it?
 
killohurtz

killohurtz

Distinction in Applied Carving
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Feb 22, 2014
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I always try to build structures like that with the vertex tool or careful use of the clipping tool - never rotation - so that everything stays on the grid. In the event it still doesn't end up nice and neat, you can throw a skip brush around it and group them together to keep things aligned.

Hastily thrown together tutorial on how I do roofs: http://imgur.com/a/zPvx6
The same idea can be applied to support beams too.
 
puxorb

puxorb

L69: Emoticon
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Dec 15, 2013
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I created an album on how I usually make roofs:
Album

I'm not sure how helpful this will be, but as a general rule, create a thin box for the actual roof piece (4 or 8 HU thick) and then turn on the vertex tool, select the vertexes by dragging a box around them and pressing ENTER, then drag them down so that they stay on grid. You can see in my example that I used a 1:2 slope.
 
puxorb

puxorb

L69: Emoticon
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Dec 15, 2013
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At this point you are confusing me....I've never had the problems you are talking about. If you use the vertex tool, everything can be moved around perfectly and still keep its proportion. If you simply use the selection tool and drag things around then they will stretch and become skewed.
 
puxorb

puxorb

L69: Emoticon
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Dec 15, 2013
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Look in the lower right of hammer. It says "Snap off Grid". You want it to say "Snap on Grid". Change that by pressing Shift+W. Unless you like working off-grid but that typically makes things harder.

At least that's what I think your issue is since none of your brushwork in that screenshot is on the grid.
 
YM

YM

LVL100 YM
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Dec 5, 2007
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By keeping things at workable ratios. See how the highlighted beam is at 90 degrees to the roof? If the roof is 2:1, the beam is 1:2. If you wanted it shallower, 1:1 would still work or steeper 1:4 would also work. Place the top verts where you want them, then bring the lower verts to one of whatever ratio you want below (so 2 grid positions down and 1 along from wherever the corresponding top verts are) then select them and tap the arrow keys repeatedly in a in 2down 1across pattern until they cross the horizontal beam, then just bring the verts to where they meet. If you're not using stupid ratios they should end on grid points (or half points, so you'll need to decrease the grid size)

Edit: Also turn on your grid. No wonder you're having trouble. The dot grid is disgusting. (Also turn on grid snapping, what the heck?)
 
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Pocket

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
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Nov 14, 2009
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sevin said:
Like this.
Click to expand...
Are you... trying to make an entire wall that's at an odd angle? I really don't recommend that. Look at Double Cross and Foundry; they have diagonal building sections, but they're all at 45 degree angles. If you really want to do something more unusual than that, I highly recommend (A) keeping it to a minimum to start with and (B) building it in an instance at right angles and then rotating it once you drop it in. A good example would be the shed/barn next to BLU's base in Mountain Lab and Mann Manor, which can be instanced because it doesn't need to block visibility.
 
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