Garrett2014 on 4/2/2014 at 01:13
Hey Guys,
I'm starting to encounter little issues with brush creation and texture placement. I think its lack of forethought to be honest , but i might just be making things complicated for myself. I do tend to do that :/ OK this is difficult to describe so bear with me !
Lets say I make 2 air brushes with the intention of making them into rooms ! I then connect them with another air brush which is more of a tall doorway rather than a corridor ! The rooms are close together you see. I decide to have 4 of these tall doorways in one wall making the wall more a series of columns ! Follow me so far ! OK so i texture all the walls with texture W for walls, all the floor brushes texture F for floor and the two ceiling faces with texture C for ceiling. Simple eh. OK all is good so far !
I look at this simple , well its not a house or a level, not even a hut , lets call it a ... construction because its still a WIP. So i look at this construction and decide it looks too simple and want it to be more architecturally correct. I decide i want to add in 2 ceiling support beams and individual lintels over the tall doorways. The walls are stone blocks so would need some support , right.
OK so this is where i start to encounter problems.
I initially made my beams 'float' underneath the ceiling in room A, textured with texture B for beam, placed like they were holding it up ! and i was going to just copy and move then too room B to give the impression they run the entire width of both rooms although in actual fact they would have a wall built up between them and nothing actually supporting them if they were 'real' OK so that's all fine as well !
When i went to tackle the 'Lintels' over the doorways though, I realised i had cut holes out of the solid to make doorways, so i thought id just cut holes out of the 'wall' to allow me to see what i was doing, and decide what was going where. Making room for the lintel if you like ! I realised that if i could make the passage of the beam through the wall visible then i could give it the impression it had important structural value. The beams were in line with the top of the 'columns like the columns were supporting the beams and the beams the ceiling. but nothing supporting the stonework between the columns above the doorway. So i wanted lintels, but the beams would interfere with the lintels. instead of a rectangular lintel i needed each end to have a step cut out to give clearance for the beam !
This is my first problem i guess. How can you alter brush shape? Apart from the Six standard SHAPES, how do you create more complex ' Brushes' ?
However another issue is the End of the beams which are touching the air brush for the lintels has the stone texture (W)! Remember this was once just a bit of wall and the air brush i inserted for the lintel is now empty space where its adjacent to air but takes on the texture of the wall on all other faces. Obviously the beam should look like the end of a log or at least have the Beam texture (B) but its stone, Texture (W) ! If i try to select that end face of the beam i get the air brush face ! If i select the beam and >button through the faces of the beam brush i think i can apply the right texture but the air brush is still showing the stone texture on that section of its face :/ Sorry if thats not very clear !
I would like to achieve a Look of an abandoned temple or an old derelict house where the structure has started to come undone ! Where a bean may have collapsed or a wall is coming apart and you can see through the cracks into the other room. maybe even have light come through these cracks or holes in the wall, but also to see how the 'building was constructed and how its starting to fall apart. To give the sense that it might collapse . My idea is instead of a brush for a wall i will need maybe a dozen or more brushes representing one wall , maybe out of alignment a little from each other, rotated a little perhaps and having gaps in places between them to see thorough these cracks into another room !
Achieving this may be another matter though as i want it too look 'right' and placing the textures correctly might not be within the scope of the editor or more likely myself.
So I'm here looking for suggestions , advice on good practice in brush creation and texture placement to help speed up my work flow while still achieving a believable architectural construction. :/
Thanks as always guys
Garrett2014
LarryG on 4/2/2014 at 01:41
1. You can't change a brush's Shape (cube, cylinder, pyramid) once it is created. You can only delete it and create a new brush.
1a. You can change a brush's dimensions, location and orientation though
2. Those are the only shapes that you have.
3. Boolean operations using multiple brushes is the only way to get complex geometry. You can change the order of the boolean operations by changing the Time value of the brushes. The mission map is really just a big set of boolean operations one after another in Time sequence.
4. You can put an airbrush inside another airbrush to change the surface texture on just a portion of a wall. Windows are often created this way in brick walls. When the small window air brush has Time > the Time of the larger airbrush, the texture on the one with the later Time overrides the texture on the one with the earlier Time for that section where they overlap.
5. Open up some missions and take a look to see how it is done. Look for missions with architecture similar to what you want to do, and look see how it was accomplished.
6. Truly complex looking architecture generally can only be done with objects. But that's much more advanced stuff.
LarryG on 4/2/2014 at 05:31
If you haven't already, it's a good idea to read the LGS docs in your DOC folder. Dromedtu especially.
* dromedtu.doc
* convict.doc
* mods.doc
* newsky.txt
* sunlight.doc
* weather.doc
Xorak on 4/2/2014 at 11:34
This might be simpler than what you're looking for, but it's a basic way to create interesting holes in walls using wedges (with a supporting beam inside or whatever). Or do the opposite and use solid wedges to create chunks of wall. There's nothing wrong with using multiple brushes for one wall.
Inline Image:
http://imageshack.com/a/img33/7265/hhgq.jpgBasic textures can be rotated to fit anyway you need them to, so that shouldn't really be an issue. And it isn't too difficult either, considering you can visually watch as you rotate them, so you just stop where you need them to stop. Sometimes perfectly lining-up numerous oddly rotated textures can be tricky, but it can always be done with enough patience.
Remember that every time you use
insert to create a new brush, it will have the exact same textures set to its faces as the brush you copied from. So if you intend to build a bunch of brushes all with the same dirty-wood texture, you could start with a brush that has the dirty-wood texture set the way you want it, and then copy that one over and over. Even any texture rotatation or scaling is carried over from one brush to the next.
In the picture above, see the 'reset' button on the bottom just left of the texture image? That will texture all the faces on the brush with the image currently visible, and set that image as the default. When texturing, it's probably the thing I use more than anything else.
But the way I basically texture everything, is I leave the texture palette (Alt-T) open, go into solo-view with the main 3d window, and just walk through my mission applying the textures. I click in the texture palette for the texture I need and then click on the appropriate face in the 3d window and apply the texture to it. I never muck about with the manual brush face settings (except for my friend the
reset button). Once I have the basic textures placed, then I go back and align, rotate or scale them so they look good. In fact, I build my entire mission out of one texture, and then when I'm basically done building, I walkthrough and apply all the textures, but that's obviously not the most visually pleasing way to do it as I'm staring at garbage for 95% of the mission building time.
Also, in NewDark, the best way to load texture families now is to open the texture palette, right click and select Load-->Family
