Hydro's radar dish

[Harribo]

Remaking this thread as I thought there was interesting things brought up in this thread and it was lost in the forum rollback

Has anyone figured out how valve made it? Sorry if this has been asked before, but I searched everywhere but couldn't find any info on it other then this, but it doesn't explain much.

I understand how they made the brushes, then converted it into displacements, but I cant get the subdivide to look anything like it does in hydro. I never knew how complicated it was. My only guess is they may have used brushes to help shape the subdivided and then deleted them.

I just think finding out how would be a good learning experience for pretty much everyone.

Randdalf: how did you make the hydro dish?
iikka: hydro dish - with great skill and patience

I know that with Nucleus, iikka used guideline brushes and deleted those. That's probably your best option. I'm not even actually sure how I would go about subdividing to create that shape honestly.

its magic

Your problem is that you're subdividing. You don't subdivide to create something like this.

Also, as Yyler said, it's always good to place a couple reference/guide brushes during "construction" of complicated yet symmetrical displacements.

I've managed to something kinda like he did, here's how:

1) Create an arch. You can use whatever values you'd like, but I used 120 degrees (with 30 degree offset). Resize it however you'd like, and rotate it so it faces upwards. It should look kinda like this:

2) Make 3 copies of this arch and place them at 45 degree angles. I've found that it helps to surround the arch in a skip brush before copying it. To get a brush at a 45 degree angle, just eyeball it. Use the x at the center of the brush to help. The end result should look like this:

You can stop here, but you can go further to split it up nicely.

3) Rotate the whole thing 22.5 degrees. The intersection points of the arches should lie on the lines of the grid. Then, clip along the two grid lines that hit the center. An individual arch should look like this:

4) Cut again on the 45 degree lines. Each piece should look like this:

5) Ungroup each arch and trim the fat. It should look like this when you're finished:

Here's a .vmf of the result above.

Yeah. Or...

• Hold SHIFT while rotating to automatically snap to 15 degree increments
• Enable the preference to rotate by 15 degrees by default in the options menu (thus making holding shift to be a free rotate)
• Hit Ctrl+M and put 45 into the Z axis box

Why be imprecise? This means your 22.5 degree rotation comes out a lot nicer, too.

Also I find it is best not to resize cylinders and arches. Make them the size you need them or the brushes get lumpy and (with cylinders scaled down) possibly invalid.

Rotation by eye is only as imprecise as you make it (I think Hammer goes by .5 increments when you do it by hand), but it's good to know there's an alternative!

Now just replace blue by white and rename it to koth_umbrella_coorporation

(Reading this topic just after watching resident evil an hour ago)

I would easily rotate one 46 degrees and another 44.5 and get pissed off at it when it doesn't align to grid. :v

I rather do

using the arch tool and vertex tool. I turned it into displacements as well for no reason, but eh.
This way you can have a much rounder bowl without having to limit yourself to 45 degree angles and cutting.


edit: extra http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1281220/2012-06/Screenshot-2012-06-07_20.25.23.png

I think Idolon's method is better for a plain dish (fewer brushes), but Ravidge definitely wins for recreating the Hydro dish.

Well, I just picked 24 sided arch because it looks nicer. You're free to use my method with 8 sided arches too, it's not a problem.

Nope. I refuse.

When you are rotating an object the degrees are displayed in the status bar. There is absolutely zero guesstimating or eyeballing required.

Also I swear there was a thread about doing this displacement style...

Not a thread about it, but it was covered in a thread.

From http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=4755

That's what he linked in the first post. I meant something else, actually showing how to do it.

Whoops, my mistake. Two posts (one is yours) near the end of this thread might be what you're thinking of. The images for them are no longer up, unfortunately.

Yeah I'm pretty sure that's the thread Boojum was talking about Blade ND64. Shame the images are down

Wait, the subdivide was used on the dish afterall? Well i'll be damned.

Have you considered making a model?
Not sure if that would be easier.

Rexy would be the only one to thank that.

I actually thought of making it a model, but i figured the collision mesh would be such a pain to create.

Thanks Ravidge and Idolon. Those are both good methods, and i gotta try them out. I've been fooling around my own that does what I think vavle did (well, not really but sort of). So I'll post that once I get it working 100%.

Edit: I also have a question for Ravidage, How did you tilt the arch, did you just use the vertex tool and lower the top vertices? Or is there an simpler way I'm missing, because that seems really time consuming lol.

If I were to do it Rav's way, I would probably do a quarter of the full circle and then just copy it 4 times.

That's what I was doing, but it seems the arch tool always makes the arches verts off grid. So it's still a bit of a pain.

I just do the whole thing at once, selecting the vertecies outwards instead, because it's easier.

Here's a minitutorial

1) Create all the rings using arch tool
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1281220/2012-06/Screenshot-2012-06-08_12.41.39.png
64 units wide for the most outwards one, in this example the largest ring is 1024x1024.
All others are 128 units wide.
When you're done you have something like this https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1281220/2012-06/Screenshot-2012-06-08_12.58.29.png

2) select the vertex tool and select the innermost ring. And lower it 32 units.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1281220/2012-06/Screenshot-2012-06-08_12.45.32.png
Select the next ring together with the previous one https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1281220/2012-06/Screenshot-2012-06-08_13.02.36.png
and lower that 32 units as well.
3rd ring should be lowered 64 units (together with the other 2 again), 4th ring 32 units down (with the other rings as well).
You will end up with this: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1281220/2012-06/Screenshot-2012-06-08_13.04.59.png

3) select all the faces of the bowl AND the top outside rim.
And turn into power 2 displacements.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1281220/2012-06/Screenshot-2012-06-08_12.51.25.png
Hit subdivide
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1281220/2012-06/Screenshot-2012-06-08_12.52.22.png

4) texture it. Notice that everything is on grid, The smallest ring of verticies are on grid 1 though, but still on grid.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1281220/2012-06/Screenshot-2012-06-08_12.55.12.png

The whole thing takes just a couple of minutes.

It doesn't make them off the grid, but it does make them to the lowest grid setting if the arch is small enough to force it to do so.

That was boss Rav.

Strange, I was on the lowest grid (grid 1 correct?) and it was still of grid, I'll check again to be sure.

Edit: Almost forgot, Big thanks Ravidge!

I just want to make sure everyone knows the aricebo (or however it's spelt, the golden eye dish) is supposed to be spherical not hyperbolic in shape like a conventional dish. This is because it's stationary and can't move so the focusing head above it moves to change where you're looking at in the sky.

Just bear that in mind when making your arches.

boop

 

[tyler]

This was good, thanks for remembering it.