Author Topic: On Patches and Textures [HOWTO]  (Read 4766 times)

Ingar

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On Patches and Textures [HOWTO]
« on: April 30, 2007, 11:04:42 am »
I have seen some questions about texture alignment and patches in other threads. I have written down some information here, that could be useful to others too.

I assume you are capable of editing brushes and patches, and you have some knowledge about vertex (V) and edge (E) editing. You also have to know how to fit textures on a brush and, obviously, how to select brushes, surfaces and patches. I use radiant 1.5.

We start with two brushes of the same size and a patch in between. I've textured them with atcs/eq2_trimv_02. Make sure the texture fits the brushes: either resize the brush until the texture fits, or use the Surface Inspector (S) to make it fit. Do not touch the texture settings of the patch.



This doesn't really look as it should. Select the patch and open the Surface Inspector (S). Click the Set button and the Patch texture layout menu opens. Here you can specify how many times the texture has to fit on the patch. Enter an x-value of 2 and an y value of 1. If your patch is rotated you might have to swap the values.



This looks much better:



Now we'll create a curved wall. Activate the Texture Lock with Shift-T or the lock icon in the toolbar. This will keep the textures locked on brushes as we move them. Move the right brush up and deform the patch to create a curve:



Note the texture on the patch follows the curve nicely. This is because of the texture settings we made in the Patch texture layout.

(disable texture lock again)

Now we make the right brush higher and deform the patch accordingly:



The texture size on the brush hasn't changed so it is repeated as expected. The texture on the patch on the other hand, has a fixed size set and follows the curve of the patch.

There are two ways to fix this: either resize the texture on the right brush with the Surface Inspector, or change the texture settings on the patch. You can do this by selecting the patch and pressing the CAP button in the Surface Inspector. You have to click CAP multiple times to cycle through the available CAP styles.



Useful keys:
shift-arrows: shift texture
ctrl-arrows: scale texture
shift-pgup/pgdn: rotate texture
ctrl+c: copy texture
ctrl+v: paste texture

Try the Fit button in the  Surface Inspector, in many cases it will do what you want.

Survivor

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On Patches and Textures [HOWTO]
« Reply #1 on: April 30, 2007, 11:25:14 am »
Suggested expansions upon the tutorial.

- Creating patches, endcaps, bevels, cylinders and capping the aformentioned.
- Making bent pipes (because they always ask)
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Plague Bringer

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On Patches and Textures [HOWTO]
« Reply #2 on: April 30, 2007, 12:33:05 pm »
What about tubes, i.e., large cement tubes? Hollow ones. I know you can make a few square cylinders, curve 'em and mess around untill you get a full cylinder. I also know you can make two cylinders (one inside the other, matrixes reversed accordingly) and mess around with patches to fill in the ends, but is there an easier way? Is it possible to thicken a cylinder? I've heard about something like that before, but never found out if it was possible.
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TRaK

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On Patches and Textures [HOWTO]
« Reply #3 on: April 30, 2007, 03:21:23 pm »
Quote from: "Plague Bringer"
What about tubes, i.e., large cement tubes? Hollow ones. I know you can make a few square cylinders, curve 'em and mess around untill you get a full cylinder. I also know you can make two cylinders (one inside the other, matrixes reversed accordingly) and mess around with patches to fill in the ends, but is there an easier way? Is it possible to thicken a cylinder? I've heard about something like that before, but never found out if it was possible.


It is possible. Just use the thicken option is the patches menu. However, buildings will tend to fall through the patch.

DarkRogue

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On Patches and Textures [HOWTO]
« Reply #4 on: April 30, 2007, 04:29:29 pm »
Yeah, hopefully they fix the bugginess of structures built on patch meshes come 1.2. There's alot of interesting landscaping you can do with meshes which has to be ignored due to the tendancy for structures to fall through to the chaulk brushes below :(
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Plague Bringer

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On Patches and Textures [HOWTO]
« Reply #5 on: April 30, 2007, 08:23:20 pm »
Quote from: "TRaK"
Quote from: "Plague Bringer"
What about tubes, i.e., large cement tubes? Hollow ones. I know you can make a few square cylinders, curve 'em and mess around untill you get a full cylinder. I also know you can make two cylinders (one inside the other, matrixes reversed accordingly) and mess around with patches to fill in the ends, but is there an easier way? Is it possible to thicken a cylinder? I've heard about something like that before, but never found out if it was possible.


It is possible. Just use the thicken option is the patches menu.


Yeah, I'm not seeing it. I've got a Curve menu, and it's not there.
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Survivor

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On Patches and Textures [HOWTO]
« Reply #6 on: April 30, 2007, 08:25:20 pm »
select patch, ctrl+t. Specify gu, watch it grow.
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Plague Bringer

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On Patches and Textures [HOWTO]
« Reply #7 on: April 30, 2007, 08:28:21 pm »
ctrl+t isn't doing anything.

I'm Running GTKR 1.5, btw.
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Survivor

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On Patches and Textures [HOWTO]
« Reply #8 on: April 30, 2007, 08:31:37 pm »
I’m busy. I’ll ignore you later.

Plague Bringer

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On Patches and Textures [HOWTO]
« Reply #9 on: April 30, 2007, 08:34:51 pm »
Gah!

I'll just continue making two cylinders and capping them with patches.
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