Texture stripes on brush.

yeah your light enviroment is pointing straight down. you should have it at a more natural angle- use dust2s settings to start maybe?

You can always try to brush this roundines with horizontal way.

might also be the texture align. Little tid bit. select a face then ALT+RMB. it will auto align/wrap.

so for this shape,

Select face -> ALT+RMB next face, Select face -> ALT+RMB next face, Select face -> ALT+RMB next face until it wraps around.

I think Cashed is right

Nah. I did it for my brush and as you can see it's not working.

God damnit the Source engine is so archaic lol.

Do as Cashed said, use the ALT + Right Mouse Button to expand the texture from 1 side to the other.
Don't forget to use nodraw, for the bottom side for example (it might be problematic maybe, i don't know).

If needed, you can also try to reduce the size of the lightmap.

The thing is that when you look at your 3D View in 3D Lightmap Grid, you must see a grid as smooth as possible, for example :

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/A7ytCtW.png]

Here's what i get :

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/z995xxL.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/kWFu3iJ.jpg]

The fact that your shape isn't round but a bit random (the angle between each faces isn't constant or linear or anything like that) doesn't help Source to determine if it needs to smooth the lighting on theh faces or not.

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Smoothing_groups

Can you take a screenshot in-hammer in the 3D lightmap preview mode ?

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/O2kbuK5.png]

Ok, first of all I don't think you did the Alt + RightMouseButton align method right.

Take a look at this video at 10min58 :

You should then be able to get a grid better aligned, like this :

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/A7ytCtW.png]

(as i've shown you )

The size of the squares is probably higher with you, that's what we call the "lightmap scale". You can change the value here :

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/5MVdKOJ.png]

It's the size of each squares of your lightmap grid. When you compile your map, the lighting will be defined as 1 color and brightness for each square in the lightmap grid of all the faces in your map. The smaller, the more precise. To avoid trouble, use values that are :

• powers of 2 (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64...)
• Higher than 2

Do not over-use this, only when it's needed because it's very expensive in terms of compilation time and map file size.

In your case, it could help to put a lower value than 16 (which is the default value), so try 8 at first and if it's not perfect try 4.

Tell me if you need any help or if you don't understand something.

It's amazing how you guys managed to help him out. I don't think I would have had the nerves to go the whole mile for someone who didn't watch every single hammer tutorial, I love this forum, maybe I should increase my good samaritan skills from you <3.

I wouldn't say this kind of problematic is "very easy", you won't find a lot of people talking about these problems online, and only few tutorials go into these aspects of Source / Hammer (which are quite advanced, it's not something a beginner would learn).

So, you don't have to be ashamed for not knowing things. And if you don't understand/know something (like what a lightmap grid is for example), it's ok to say so, just make sure to do some quick researches first. It's a pleasure for me to see that it has been useful and it helped at least 1 people (and probably more that are going to read the topic someday).

If it makes any difference, I learn new shortcuts or features at odd times. The texture align I knew about back in gldsrc hammer.

I didn't even really know about the shift click...