Tunnel Slope Problem

[RavenStryker]

Alright, I have this wonderful idea(again) but I can't seem to get what I want done to happen in hammer.
I have this pipe/tunnel I have madeclick on the image for a bigger size)

- -





As of right now it is horizontal in all ways shapes and forms.
This is what I want it to do:







But! I still want to have the ends square, like this:






I've tried to use vertex manipulation and all I keep getting this error every time I move a vertex even the slightest bit:






If the 2 ends aren't squared up they will not fit in the doorways I have made for them. The only way they will line up is if the ends are as they were before I put the slope in. Basically is there a way just to slope the middle of the pipe/tunnel and not the whole thing? Or ANY way possible to accomplish what I am trying. I'm hoping I made this problem descriptive enough. I added quite a few pictures cause those are worth a thousand words. Lol. And without them this post would be (obviously) 6,000 words long without them. Thanks to all that can help me with this problem of mine.

 

[III_Demon]

the real simple answer: you need to make the corners square instead of diagonal. in your top-down view, the corners are 45 degrees. if you make the corners square instead, then you can leave the ends of the tunnel straight, and ramp the middle.

you cant have too many angles at once on one brush. brushes need to be convex solids, which generally means they have to have planar faces. if a 4-point polygon has verts at funny angles, its not a flat plane anymore, and it'll screw up your solid shape.

re-make the tunnel so the ends are straight like you want them, they go in, and then open on the sides toward the sloped section. if the sloped section is square from the top down, then you're only angling it on one axis, and your shapes will be fine.

of course this requires some re-thinking of the displacements.

 

[RavenStryker]

okay so if i got this right, I'm going to want to make 3 separate displacement maps.

(1) Make the end pieces first and leave enough to crop off.
(2) Make a middle connector displacement tunnel with enough to crop off at the ends.
(3) Crop off the corners at a 45 degree angle to be able to connect the center piece.
(4) Put the end pieces where they have to go.
(5) Put the connector tunnel in place and slope it as needed.
(6) Crop the ends of it to match up with the end pieces.

Is that basically what I would need to do in a step-by-step basis?

 

[Apom]

Why don't you just add four brushes around each tunnel exit, to fill the red squares?

 

[grazr]

Your displacement faces should look like this:

For best results.

 

[TheDarkerSideofYourShadow]

You should lay out your brushes, prior to displacements, like the right side of my picture, rather than the left side (which you have now). Then you can take the center section and ramp it (I would do that prior to making all of the brushes displacements).

 

[RavenStryker]

@grazr - Great drawing and everything, but it definitely didn't work out at all. Things didn't match up and edges stayed squared. Wasn't pretty at all. I'm not sure if I mentioned this but the tunnel is going to be seen from the outside and also from the inside to be walked in as well. I'm going to give TheDarkerSideofYourShadow's idea and see how that turns out. I know for a tunnel to be made properly the sides need to be connected with some vertex manipulation. So instead of being square to each other they join at an angle. I'll try to make a picture.

instead of like this:

it'll be like this:

 

[grazr]

Well then i'm not really quite sure what you are trying to achieve. TDSOYS's basically reitterated what i said, though only because i slipped my post in between him loading the page and replying (probably). Doing your egdes like that wont make a difference to your displacements, it just makes it look neater in your wireframe views.

This is what i got (and i actually liked how it turned out regardless of the fact that i hate the subdivide tool).

To achieve the same effect on the outside you will want to repeat this but inverted. Assuming you manage to allign all your faces you shouldn't get spikes or "squarey" appearences.

Here:

(try and ignore the position of the brushes in the 2d views untill the last stage, as i forgot to allign 2 faces on the bottom and top. and had to go back and fix it).

Having produced your inside you will need to create an outer shell. The process is the same, though more attention to allignment is critical. You will need to change the block sizes, basically increasing their size untill all their egdes meet. Special attention to the inner allignments such as inside corners is a good idea, as these 'blocks' on the ends will actually have to be reduced towards the "hole" ends.

Note in the 3d view how they overlap. Ignore the 2d views, the allignment is wrong.
see link.

Note the slight difference in angles on the slope due to the allignment changes, this shouldn't pose a problem however, but to be sure, give yourself some space. The space here is merely the width of the blocks i have used, from the inside - to the outside, as the original brushes possess the same space as these new ones.

Assuming nothing went wrong your outter displacement should look like this. If you find you have spikes, or square corners, 'destroy' the displacements and check for mis-allignments. Then re-subdivide.

Your final product. (i had the inner tunnel hid in a manual visgroup so that i could see what i was doing, and turned it on at the end).

 

[RavenStryker]

okay, i got the tunnel made, thanks for showing me some pictures, one of the sides won't round off but that's not a biggie, I'll fix it sometime later when I get time. But now I want to mirror the tube so i can put it on the opposite side of the map doing the exact same thing. Is there a way to do that? Cause I can't find a mirror option in the ctrl+m options

 

[RavenStryker]

Sorry n00b moment, found it. Lol