WIP in WIP, post your level screenshots!

[KungFuSquirrel]

The torus, arch, and cylinder tools snap all verts to the 1 grid, so as long as you use the exact same radius and diameter and the same number of subdivisions, it should fit.

[Sentura]

The torus, arch, and cylinder tools snap all verts to the 1 grid, so as long as you use the exact same radius and diameter and the same number of subdivisions, it should fit.

touching a torus' vertices usually results in invalid structures...

[JeanPaul]

i don't care about placing stuff inside the torus, i am more wondering how you get the torus itself aligned with regular base geometry... say if you have a quarter torus quarter pipe (a torus corner 90 degree corner, if you will), and you want to align it so that you can use a cylinder as the floor, and a cylinder to make it fit with the ceiling - how would you go about that?

it's covered with a glass material and will be visible on both sides.

Easy, you always make everything in the game (arch, torus, cylinder) at 360 degrees otherwise you get wrongly shaped brushes (this is a general rule)

The torus, arch, and cylinder tools snap all verts to the 1 grid, so as long as you use the exact same radius and diameter and the same number of subdivisions, it should fit.

Wrong, the torus does not snap on any grid size

[cdxx]

Unreal is really the best editor for building detailed curved geometry, no joke

I haven't used unreal ed so I wouldn't know, but i can say it's certainly counter intuitive in hammer.

I am intrusive I know, but I have a hard time explaining myself in words sometimes

So what if you were to send me that torus/surrounding area and I can show you what I mean by supports?

I would totally understand if you dont want to do that

nah, I don't give a shit. This stuff is just for hobby sake, it's not like this is for a mod or job.

http://levelup.us/bucket/cdxx_tunnel_180.rar

[Sentura]

never had any problems with arches or cylinders thanks to the trusty vertex tool

[JeanPaul]

If it doesnt align after making it then you are doing it wrong

Trust me on this, I am remaking lambda core

[KungFuSquirrel]

Wrong, the torus does not snap on any grid size

Er, my bad, it's only at the axial sides that it snaps. So you should still be able to approximate x/y radius/diameter with an arch or cylinder and get close, but you might have to do some vertex fiddling to fit the torus.

And JeanPaul's also right about the alignment; as long as you use powers of two for your subdivisions and decreasing halves of 90 degrees (90, 45, 22.5, 11.25, 5.625, 2.8125), your trim pieces will always cover the seams. (you could use other mathematically clean subdivisions too, if you want, but powers-of-two are happy numbers!)

[JeanPaul]

Unreal is really the best editor for building detailed curved geometry, no joke

I haven't used unreal ed so I wouldn't know, but i can say it's certainly counter intuitive in hammer.

I am intrusive I know, but I have a hard time explaining myself in words sometimes

So what if you were to send me that torus/surrounding area and I can show you what I mean by supports?

I would totally understand if you dont want to do that

nah, I don't give a shit. This stuff is just for hobby sake, it's not like this is for a mod or job.

http://levelup.us/bucket/cdxx_tunnel_180.rar

Oh man why is this 7 sided??

Always use numbers that dont create flat sides on the arch (8-12-16-32-64 etc)

And why is it 36 units thick? Thats an odd number, try to stay on powers of 8 or so if at all possible

Let me whip something up real quick

[cdxx]

but I'm subdividing; what does wall width have to do with it when all i'm going to use are the inside faces from the displacement? and it's 14 sided because I needed a flat piece for the upper most face (see attachement) so that's why it's 7..er 14 sided. I removed the bottom half as I didn;t need it. Make sense now?

[JeanPaul]

Well using displacements may increase performance, but file size and load time will be astronomical (displacements are very bloated)

Valve only gets away with it because all users are forced to download and play their maps

Anywhoo, this is what I came up with. The size is the same, and the number of top down sides is too. The only thing I changed was the number of sides in the arch from 7 to 8 as 7 should never be used it causes a lot of alignment problems. (unless you dont really care when using displacements, I see what you were doing)

This is with damn near perfect alignment and a perfect sealant of all the seams.

I DID NOT use the vertex tool once in these shots, its 100% standard arches, toruses, clip tool, and automated rotation at 5 degree increments (360/72 = 5)

My favorite part now is you know those pipe supports in your torus screenshots? Well you can place those on each of these supports and it looks great. Granted you would probably have to make these supports into a prop because of how many there are, its still a great concept.

http://jeanpaul.conception-design.net/M ... Tunnel.rar

[cdxx]

JeanPaul, that was really cool of you to put that all together; thank you. I now have to think about which way i want to go about this; do I stick with my original design method using the displacements, subdivided? Or do I change it, and go with the supports using strictly the torus and arch tools as you so demonstrated?

I think your supports given the right texture could really be appealing, but I think it will look a good bit more complex and busy than what I was originally going for, which is a clean, and streamlined look. Check out these ref photos.

either way, i've learned a good bit about how to do supports in torus tunnels. Thx, if I don't use that method in this map I certainly will at some point.

edit: I didn't mean for all this to turn into a thread jack so I created a dedicated thread for my map. subscribe if you're interested.

viewtopic.php?f=57&t=14244

[JeanPaul]

Try messing with a design that is exactly like mine only without the vertical arches?

[ultradr3mer]

this method is realy intresting. finaly somthing new to me. but i used paste special with rotate parameters.

this is the new elevator shaft in an old mine. So that explains the clean parts and the industrial parts.

at first i wanted to make a glass dome

but i didnt like it.

its both still wip.

[cdxx]

this method is realy intresting. finaly somthing new to me. but i used paste special with rotate parameters.

this is the new elevator shaft in an old mine. So that explains the clean parts and the industrial parts.

at first i wanted to make a glass dome

but i didnt like it.

its both still wip.

I love the lighting on that first shot along with that brushwork. Looking real nice. Those beams could almost pass for models

[ultradr3mer]

the beams in the elevator shaft are models.

they dont are to complex yea. but they are beams so what to ad...

thats how it looks now. i took grates, because i think the plates been to massiv