So, I'm sort of new to mapping, and to the forums, and I have some questions. The first question I have is if it's good texturing with wall textures on the floor and vice versa. Is it? Because I've heard that hammer doesn't really like it. I know that texturing with prop textures is bad. Another question I have is: Is carving any good at all, cause some say it's just bad, and that you should only use the clipping/vertex tool for things like that. Or just plainly piece it together with brushes. Personally I haven't noticed anything going wrong when I use carve. And the last question I have is about cylinders, arches, and spheres. Do they work, cause again I've heard that they can be bad. Those are the qestions I have for now
If you texture with a prop you will get very weird ingame texture errors. You can texture floors to ceiling, it doesn't matter. Just stay away from prop texture... and HL2 texture =) Do not ever use carve, ever, ever. Its a horrible tool for lazy mapper and can cause tons of problems, and TONS of extra brushes. NEVER use carve =) Yep they all work, although i would suggest NOT using Arch tool, as it does not match up to grid, rather use vertex and make your own arch.
For carving, it isn't that bad, sometimes you need to carve something in a circle, yes you get 200 brushes, but on top i make another circle of my own brushes, i just use carve to get a feeling for about how i need to do something, i always deleted my carved brush EVERY TIME YOU CARVE GOD KILLS A KITTEN! And for the arch tool, i use it, than i use the vertex tool to snap it all to the grid.
Thanks, now I can stay out of trouble. But no hl2 textures? Argh, now I have to retexture my hole map just kidding
There is a texture replace. I haven't used it yet but you should be able to choose a tex, hit tex replace, pick a TF2 tex and all instances will be replaced. That is how t seems like it should work anyway
Remember that if you make complex geometry like a cylinder or arch, you should convert it into a func_detail to save you compiling time. And I'll back up the Carve sentiment. When I got the refining process of my map, I had to rebuild a lot of stuff I made with the carve tool. It was a pain in the butt. I find myself just making what I need out of multiple brushes and the vertex tool.