Vertex Tool Help

ROFLsnakes

L2: Junior Member
Apr 24, 2012
72
5
I've been looking around and have not yet found a decent vertex summary.It's the one tool I have yet to master, and would like some help if possible. I'm looking to make a curved ramp (like half a cylinder in terms of curve)?.What kind of object would I start with? Tried cube and cylinder without much luck.Is there a tutorial around that can enlighten me more than "here is a vertex drag it and does stuff"' which seems to be the case on all the YouTube videos/ tutorials I've found.

Also could anyone explain the alt+e scaling function? Valve doesn't make it clear on the developer part of their site.

Thanks for the help!
 

Seba

DR. BIG FUCKER, PHD
aa
Jun 9, 2009
2,364
2,728
For spiral staircases, use the arch tool and this. Vertexedit is literally just for dragging corners and splitting edges into two.

I forget what alt-e does, let me load up Hammer.
 

tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
5,102
4,621
Be aware that clipping a spiral staircase will be very, very annoying and involve some tricky math. I spent about four hours doing it on one staircase once.
 

ROFLsnakes

L2: Junior Member
Apr 24, 2012
72
5
Alright thanks, now that you mention it using an arch seems like common sense...

And it's more of a ramp than a staircase...

But you can do some math, or just cut a cylinder into separate even chunks(about 8 seems to work well, 2 diagonal, 1 horizontal, 1 vertical).and raise one by about 8 for each step,and then the same for the rest.Copy and paste to make it taller.Then stick a small cylinder down the middle,carve and you got a support for it. Yeah, carving is evil, but heck it makes it easy.
 

tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
5,102
4,621
When your map has so many microbrushes that it no longer compiles, don't wonder what happened.
 

tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
5,102
4,621
Now that I'm not on my phone, I am going to post this. Here's a staircase from my map, koth_anthem.

MWNBC.png


Using an arch to do this is easy. I made a brush something like 512 wide, 512 long, and I think 8 units high. I made arch width the width I wanted my stairs (128). Then I put 16 into the Add Height field. This gave me a set of circular steps. The only math involved is figuring out how many steps you want versus how high they should be, and it sometimes requires a bit of trial and error. My stairs here are actually a 32 piece arch but in only 90 degrees, met up with a regular, secondary arch I made later (the platform) so it's a lot more complex than most.

To clip it, I did basically the same thing but didn't put anything in the Add Height field. To make it line up with the steps smoothly, I had to cut each section of the arch into triangles. The way to do it is to start at the outside edge of the bottom and work inward. You will probably have to be on the 1u grid to do this correctly.

qZ665.png


When you've got it all cut into triangles, select all but the bottom two vertices as seen in the top down viewport, like this:

0abEa.png


Very, very carefully move all the points up the height of one step. You should be able to use the tops of the bottom-most pieces as horizontal guides. Be very careful not to slide things over because it's incredibly easy to make an invalid solid at this point.

Keep working at it and you end up with this:

85031.png


It's really just time consuming, not hard or tricky. Carving will cause you so many issues that there is no reason to not just take your time and do it correctly.

I used the same method for the trim as I did for the clipping. It was just more annoying.
 
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