How to add mountains in the distance?

freetea

L1: Registered
Sep 23, 2018
2
1
Hi, I'm having trouble making a mountains in the distance, can anyone help me?
Also how to carve????
 

FloofCollie

I really suck!
aa
Nov 5, 2016
600
669
Welcome to TF2Maps!

Mountains are made either out of displacements or props, and often in the 3D skybox.
The simple, beginner-friendly method is to just use rock props and push them into each other to make it look like a mountain. (I generally use mining/rock001-005, or forest/rock001-005 for alpine/forest maps)

General advice is to never use the carve tool, it only creates more problems than it solves. But you use it by placing a brush inside another one, then activating it. It can break your map in various ways, though, so I wouldn't bother.
 
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FloofCollie

I really suck!
aa
Nov 5, 2016
600
669
Here's an example of how Valve did it. This is an editor shot of Badwater Basin (pl_badwater).
In the 3D skybox, this mountain was made out of many rock props. The 3D skybox blows it up to look 16 times larger ingame.
v9b4hot.png


This video explains it better:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSJdlTlWOIA
 

freetea

L1: Registered
Sep 23, 2018
2
1
cool; but how do I resize the prop? they seem to be unchangeable?

also i dont know actually how to carve *sigh* Crash's tutorial is a little "unspecified"
 

Erk

erk
aa
Aug 6, 2016
433
1,098
cool; but how do I resize the prop? they seem to be unchangeable?

also i dont know actually how to carve *sigh* Crash's tutorial is a little "unspecified"

Props arent scale-able in tf2's hammer unless their dynamic props, and making them that way messes up with how their shadows look.

If you wanted one of the rock props as a different size you'd have the skybox versions and the regular version, with the regular version being significantly bigger than the skybox version. Other than those, you'd have to make a custom prop for other sizes

Honestly, I wouldn't really worry about carving? It's not really that useful, and it's pretty easy to work around not knowing how to use it.
 

FloofCollie

I really suck!
aa
Nov 5, 2016
600
669
cool; but how do I resize the prop? they seem to be unchangeable?
As Erk said, you can't scale static props. This is why putting the props in the 3D skybox is important - it will make them appear 16 times larger.
also i dont know actually how to carve *sigh* Crash's tutorial is a little "unspecified"
Crash's Carve tutorial is a joke because the Carve function is a bad tool to rely on. Any effort it saves initially will only create more problems down the line, so don't worry about using it. Just focus on learning to piece together structures with multiple brushes.

By the way, you can find tutorials on most things in Source, including the Carve tool, on the Valve Developer Wiki.

The Carve tutorial - even this official description warns against using it.
 

Empyre

L6: Sharp Member
Feb 8, 2011
309
187
I did once find a non-destructive use for the Carve tool: to cut the end off of a brush at an odd angle that coun't be achieved otherwise.
 

RevolutionTeam

L4: Comfortable Member
May 19, 2019
173
45
I've used carve as a shortcut for making rooms.

Granted, they're always cramped, small rooms, but rooms nonetheless.
 

Empyre

L6: Sharp Member
Feb 8, 2011
309
187
I've used carve as a shortcut for making rooms.

Granted, they're always cramped, small rooms, but rooms nonetheless.
That is exactly the type of thing you should never use Carve for. The walls, floor, and ceiling will be made of weird wonky brushes that are far from optimal for the compiler and game engine.

There is nothing carve can do that clipping tool can't do better.
What if you have a ramp that is diagonal in two of the three viewscreens, and you want to make a railing out of brushes coming up from that ramp because no rail model will fit that ramp, and you don't want any of the brushes for the railing to be embedded in that ramp? The plane of the ramp is not orthogonal to any of the view screens, so the Clipping tool can't do the job, so using the ramp itself to carve the bottoms off of the rail support pole brushes is the only option. This exactly the situation in which I found myself years ago. Since the surface of the ramp is making a clean cut on the ends of the pole brushes, it shouldn't result in the usual problems associated with the Carve tool.

This does result in some off-grid vertices (but Clip can do this, too), so you don't dare move either ramp or rail after doing this, so if you must move them, you would need to re-do the carving.

The situation where carving has to be used because clipping is impossible is rare, but it can happen.