[Trick] Alpine Stairs, any size!

[Nineaxis]

You don't need a model to get a set of alpine style stairs that fit perfectly into your map, all you need is a few brushes and some displacing skills...

Like magic, you can create your own alpine stairs of any size!

I just used a few vertex edited brushes, made the entire brushes displacements with a power of 2, and played with the axes a bit to get my set, which looks almost exactly like the prop except the texture. Now that I look at it, the two side brushes don't even need to be displacements, so this trick could just be used with individual boards if needed.

 

[Psy]

Pretty damn nice.

 

[The Political Gamer]

How did you huh?

EDIT: Hurrr I need to read.

 

[Nutomic]

Looks really good!

But how about the performance? I knnow displacements cost less than brushes, but with that high number of them, maybe even a power of 2, it might be quite a bit.

 

[tehn]

now I don't have to worry about model sizes.

 

[martijntje]

very useful (control-point mini-contest)

 

[MangyCarface]

Cool but don't go crazy! That adds up quick!

 

[Altaco]

Yeah, any more than a step or two and that's a hell of a lot of displacements.

 

[eerieone]

truth be told, i can´t stand the alpine stairs being used everywhere as a cheap excuse to build normal stairs. it´s one of these props that stick out like a sore thumb and shout "sawmill" :/

neat trick though, always perfect to break the strict geometry that hammer enforces

 

[Tapp]

looks great, but incredibly inefficient. Now if propper worked with displacements...

 

[TheDarkerSideofYourShadow]

truth be told, i can´t stand the alpine stairs being used everywhere as a cheap excuse to build normal stairs. it´s one of these props that stick out like a sore thumb and shout "sawmill" :/

neat trick though, always perfect to break the strict geometry that hammer enforces

Hmmm..../runs off to remove some of the many alpine stairs in his map :-/

 

[Psy]

Looks really good!

But how about the performance? I knnow displacements cost less than brushes, but with that high number of them, maybe even a power of 2, it might be quite a bit.

Displacements, whilst being incredibly cheap from a performance point-of-view, can increase your filesize greatly.

 

[DaBeatzProject]

That's how the pros do it

 

[Nutomic]

That's how the pros do it

The pros use models

 

[Garner]

Splendid work

 

[Sergis]

Using displacements is a bit of an overkill imo. If we take a look at the wireframe of a sawmill stair model, all steps consist of just 2 "blocks".

I'll describe a better (IMO) way to make stairs like these.

1. Make stairs with 12x8 units step size. Use 3 units high brushes for steps.

2. Clip the steps in half.

3. Drag the middle vertices of steps 3 units down.

4. Drag the middle vertices of a few steps 1 more unit down.

5. Drag the middle vertices of each step individually random distance left or right.

6. Clip off 1/3 of a few steps.

End result:

 

[tyler]

I do that sometimes!

 

[Sergis]

I do that sometimes!

desertions' stairs reminded me to post this. when i looked at them with mat_wireframe on, the steps werent even being drawn

 

[tyler]

I was probably drunk when I thought it was smart to make them into displacements.

 

[Sgt Frag]

Not all of the steps have to be warped either. So you can make 2 of them displacements, or cut/vert edited and it will still look good. Maybe even better then having them all warped.