Dealing with twisted surfaces' behavior

ryo0ka

L1: Registered
Jun 21, 2015
4
2
Hello TF2MAPS, this may be a real stupid question but I have nobody nearby to ask such questions to. Please understand my pain to be a total noob to disturb people.

When a surface is "twisted", a diagonal line appears on it.
OBQKEl1.jpg


When reloaded, it reshapes itself so that it's not twisted, replacing its vertices.
qIQDWwW.jpg


That makes this happen.
IXGkjuV.jpg


One solution is to cut the surface on the diagonal line, but then the surface can't apply displacement.
Another is to try matching up all the vertices of surfaces only by rotating and resizing so that they won't twist, which sounds a lot of time and math calculation.

How are you dealing with this problem?
This is the map file I raised the above examples from: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/101732939/yama.vmf
 

Kube

Not the correct way to make lasagna
aa
Aug 31, 2014
1,342
1,849
Edit edit: YM gives the best answer below.


Edited Answer (Better-Worded): Hammer simply won't be able to recognize true curved surfaces, any way you try to dissect the brush. My recommendation would to simply be using displacements when you wish to make terrain such as the one shown in your last picture. To make such displacements, make brushes that A) are placed similarly to the displacement surface you want to create and B) align with each other on their sides. The hill in the final picture should only need maybe two or three sloped brushes acting as displacements to create, and you'll be able to vertex paint. See here for reference.

The reason brushes edited using the vertex tool revert when you save is because Hammer recognizes those brushes as invalid, and goes through its process in fixing them. You should be able to imagine a flat plane between lines that connect all of the corners of a face.


Original Answer (probably not what you're looking for): For ground surfaces, simply make a displacement out of brushes that A) are placed similarly to the surface you want to create and B) align with each other on their sides. It will make things a lot easier, and with some practice and time, you should be able to achieve the design you want. This link should guide you along in understanding the process and benefits of using displacements in these circumstances.

The reason brushes edited using the vertex tool revert when you save is because Hammer recognizes those brushes as invalid, and goes through its process in fixing them. You should be able to imagine a flat plane between lines that connect all of the corners of a face.

P.S. I see this is your first post on the site. If you're looking to become an active member here, I would highly suggest you start a thread introducing yourself in the, you guessed it, Introduce Yourself sub-forum.
 
Last edited:

YM

LVL100 YM
aa
Dec 5, 2007
7,135
6,056
brushes HAVE to be convex. The way hammer manipulates shapes is different to the way VMFs store them, so when you reload a map that's why it's different, hammer has rebuilt the solid in a different way the second time round.

Since brushes absolutely must be convex any twisted shape like the ones you're making must be made out of separate brushes. A foolproof way to do this is to cut them into triangular prisms. A triangle can't get twisted in the same way a quad can.

However, this will stop you from making them displacements later (it's ground, you'll want it to be a displacement at some point) The solution is to have flat sections at each joint. Keep the tops of the brushes quads, and keep their edges parallel to avoid the twisting. Then warp the displacements into the shape you actually wanted.
 

CriminalBunny

Lasers are just deadly rainbows
aa
Oct 11, 2013
273
413
Hello TF2MAPS, this may be a real stupid question but I have nobody nearby to ask such questions to. Please understand my pain to be a total noob to disturb people.

Don't feel bad if you have any doubts. It's better to ask no matter how silly is the question (I don't know anything about this thing you brought in here, so we're both learning :p )

And believe me, I've made even more noob-ish questions here
Sorry for bad english
 

ryo0ka

L1: Registered
Jun 21, 2015
4
2
Thank all of you guys so much for your information and advices. I got it fixed now.

KubeKing thanks for the detail and the link to the self-introduction forum. I'm making mine now.

YM thanks for your practical and brilliant idea. And I love your works.

TheDragonborn I'm glad my question seems to have brought something to your knowledge.