prop_static alignment problem :/

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Garner

L4: Comfortable Member
Aug 16, 2009
154
38
Today i encountered a problem with hammer, prop_static (havent tried it with other entities yet) do not align up to brushes properly, even at grid size 1.

I have taken a screenshot to show you:

hammerprob.png


The blue line is the brush in the grid view, and you can see where the prop is. You also can notice how the prop is always about 1/6th or 1/8th out. Any way to fix this?

I have tried: Closing hammer and retrying, snapping the model to grid amongst other stuff and still no joy :/

Any ideas?
 

Eradicatus

L1: Registered
Oct 2, 2009
30
7
Models snaps to the grid with their origin, not with the edges/corners of their bounding box.
Try doing what I described at the bottom of this post before you tear out your hair and recompile your model.
Or if you are aligning Valve models, with no possibilities of changing the origin.

Unless you properly align the model in the 3d package before export, It will be impossible to line up the model in Hammer.
Assuming of course, you want to have a perfect alignment between models and BSP brushes.

The easiest way to ensure models fits the world in Hammer and in-game, is to make a skeleton/basic version of the object you wish to model,
export it as a DXF, import it into the 3d package and model around it.
Hammer will export both regular BSP brushes and displacment patches.
It will not export anything else, like models or entities.
So if you need pointers to where a model is located, I suggest putting down a couple of guideline brushes designating where the model is supposed to be.

Also, selecting the surrounding brushes/patches will also help in having a guideline.
Designing the model to fit the imported brushes in the 3d package, makes it fit in Hammer too. But, even when this is done,
there might still be some difficulty aligning it correctly, and it looks like it goes "off grid".


Try to use the white squares around the bounding box of the selected model to manipulate it a bit off the grid.
Usually it will fall into place after one or two nudges in the right direction.
Remember, it's the edges of the model itself that is important to get to line up.
The bounding box is generally slightly larger than the model, so this one will always be off grid no matter what,
when the model itself sits perfectly at the grid lines.
 
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J4CK8

L11: Posh Member
Mar 4, 2009
820
243
Or, if you can't do that ^ you can use ctrl+m and move the prop in x/y axis by the appropriate distance. You can also drag the prop from the corner (When in resize mode) and drag it to the end of the grid line, then it will revert back a bit. You can repeat that process until the prop is as close to the grid as you want.
 

MoonQuake

L3: Member
Jul 18, 2009
111
21
You can also zoom-in to the max and then hold ALT and click drag the object for per-pixel precision translations.
 

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
aa
Mar 4, 2008
5,441
3,814
You can also zoom-in to the max and then hold ALT and click drag the object for per-pixel precision translations.

I was going to suggest using the transform function to move the prop per decimal amounts of Hammer units in the desired direction but i guess that works too.
 

Garner

L4: Comfortable Member
Aug 16, 2009
154
38
Thank you everyone :)
I fixed the problem using a combination of everyones suggestions (well, they all worked so :D:D:D)

<3
 

Tapp

L10: Glamorous Member
Jan 26, 2009
776
215
For future ease of use, simply create a skip brush which exactly contains the model. Then group them together. The brush can snap to any side, that is the one that the mouse is closest to.