Curves with Cylinders

[Deadeye2007]

XSI is beyond me. I've given it two weeks to sink in, but I simply cannot use that program without proper training - let alone get a successful compile for TF2.

I'm left with no choice but to use brushes for the curved railing I need in my map. I know its possible - the screenshot below shows it is.

I've tried vertex manipulation, cutting and rotating etc. I'm having issue with the grid mostly - the sections that are cut do not necessarily line up with the grid making it tough for me to place the next piece without destroying the proper angle of the previous piece. There MUST be a way to do this.

Does anyone have any ideas how I can accomplish a curve with a cylinder?

Here the screenshot - he hasn't posted how he did it yet though.

 

[YM]

The torus tool. (its in with cylinder, arch, block...)
Try it out, its sexy

 

[Deadeye2007]

I've tried to do it with Toruses. The geometry gets too small - the rails need to be about 4 units each. The map will not compile, and a load after a save will show a ton of errors because of the geometry breaking.

 

[YM]

They aren't displacements are they?

 

[Deadeye2007]

Nope, not displacements.

Because the Torus is made up of basically stacked brushes, vertically, when you size it to 4, and the torus consists of more than 4 brushes, you get brushes that are smaller than 1 unit each. I would have to size the railing to 8 which would make it too big for my purposes.

Alternatively, I could reduce the torus contents to 4 brushes, but then I'm back at square one because it would be a square and not a cylinder shape lol.

I can do it with cylinders that are cut and the vertexes repositioned. However, the angle of the curve does get thrown off in places because hammer, in all its glory, places a rotated brush vertex in between the grid lines, thereby forcing me to move the brush to connect it to the next piece (closing the gaps). I have had some better success working on a very large scale and then reducing the size to my liking.

For interests sake, the creator of the shot I posted responded to my inquiry on the steam boards:

"as another note build MUCH larger than you need. The primitve shapes ALWAYS snap their vertecies to a 1x1 grid, this WILL cause invalid shapes if you build the primitive shape too small in the first place. build it big and scale down, then turn it into a func_detail.

Thoose shot were built with arches, cylinders, the vertex edit tool and the clipping tool. Nothing else."

I'm going to give that a shot and see what I can get. If I build very large to begin with moving a point a grid line or two away from its proper placement will not make much of a difference in the overall shape. I'll post up some screens if I get something that looks decent.

 

[Deadeye2007]

An update: I worked on the railing all weekend. If you remember the previous screenshot of the catwalk I posted, you would recall that it was not so much round as it was angled squares. I had a eureka moment and decided I did not in fact need a "round" railing so much as I needed an angular railing.

I copied the floor plan of the catwalk into a prefab, made a new map and scaled it to 5 times its size. I made the entire railing at 5 times scale and it looked perfect. I sized it down, fitted it back on my map, and voila, it was done.

As a side note, I found vertex manipulation without cutting to be the most exact method of making angular railing. Cutting often times was very innacurate for cylinders in that it would remove whole vertices (sides of the cylinder) if the angle was tough to achieve. Moving vertices to a central point worked much better and maintained the shape 100% accurate.

 

[Dox]

XSI is beyond me. I've given it two weeks to sink in, but I simply cannot use that program without proper training

http://www.iwannamap.com/viewtutorial.php?tut=28143

This guy makes it look stupidly simple, after watching these I was easily able to get a basic grasp on modeling with xsi.

 

[Deadeye2007]

Yep I watched and followed those tutorials. He does make it look easy . . . . I wouldn't agree that it is, though.

The modelling itself I get, and can do competently. It's the UV mapping, the phys box mapping, and the rendering and compiling process that has me stuck.