good stairs

[professor]

im working on a map right now, and the default bases have 3 diff levels. since i cant really figure out how to make a ladder, i need to put stairs in there. what is a good way to make stairs?

[fleash eater]

a good way is like this

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      if you make a flat pice of the stair like that then make something like this
      Click space bar then slowly move it higher everytime you duplicate it.
      then make a backbone for the stairs, also try different designs for stair pieces other then the one i showed you


lemme do a tutorial anyways for future reference


After step 1 you press space bar and use themove tool to move each pannel up and back to your liking of how the stairacase should be.

when doing step 2 you can always select multiple stair panels and press spaccebar to save time!

now that you have your stairs to you liking, you can go ahead and make a small piece for the base of stairs(this is just for realism you can skip on some circumstances)

now you use the rotate tool to rotate it to mach the bottom of your stairs, then make morph it how ever you want.





 That should be you finalized stair product for you base, good luck professor!
-ƒlesh     

[Odin]

Those stairs should actually not be overlapping each other. They can be cut up and merged into two brushes for the entire stair step. Also, avoid using the rotate tool as much as you can unless you need to rotate random doodads like crates and barrels to make them more realistically placed. Lining up a tool-rotated brush is a very difficult task.

[your face]

To make a ladder use the "karith/ladder" shader (there are a few different default ones) like player clip around your "stair-like" thingymabbob.  I believe it was Taiyo who had some seriously leet ladders.

[Kaleo]

now you use the rotate tool to rotate it to mach the bottom of your stairs, then make morph it how ever you want.

I would actually use a clipped brush at this point because you can get a much more refined support beam. The rotate tool gives a little too much room for error.

EDIT: I dun these here screenshots for a guide on clipping.

Clipped stairs can sometimes be useful. If your stairs are weird shaped like these, they may require clipping:
No clipping.
Clipping.

[Zero Ame]

ok first off... dont make your stairs straight from a texture, use caulk and then texture the sides a player will be able to see.

ill make a set of stairs for ya..

so like i said before, start out with a caulk block about as big as you want each step to be or making the shape and size of your step. Im just going to do a basic step.


Next texture the faces which can and will be seen in-game.

(im using textures from trak2 and trak3 for this)

and now select and copy this 1 step and move it up and over.


repeat until number of steps wanted is reached.


Now for a wall, using caulk again, make your wall.


Now im going to use the cliping tool to chop it to a better fit.


Hitting enter will cut out the section i want or you can hit shift+enter to split the 1 brush into 2.


Now im going to use the clipping tool again and shift+enter to make this a little more detailed.


The after result, 2 brushes from 1


Time to texture it.


Now you want to copy the wall and do an x-axis flip and then 2 z-axis flips.


Now you have your stairs. You can mess around a lot more for a better feel. Some stairs in my current map in-game:





Hope this helps you out.

[professor]

all of that was very helpful thanks, and what r the advantages of using caulk? and how do u just texture the sides?

[fleash eater]

Caulk Deletes the brush when the game loads reducing lag ALOT so when you build anything always use caulk first to make it then Ctrl+shift+lmb and select the face and texture those. if you dont your map will have 10-20 fps when its done. also, no caulk should be visable to a player or elsse it makes the brush disappear.

[Odin]

It removes the brush faces, not the brushes themselves.

[Ingar]

If you have a closed stairs, you can optimize it like this:



The big brush is probably structural, the smaller parts should be detail.

[professor]

hm ok thats helpful ty

[Zero Ame]

If you have a closed stairs, you can optimize it like this:



The big brush is probably structural, the smaller parts should be detail.

thats actually kinda pointless since its the same amount of brushes either way...

[Ingar]

If you have a closed stairs, you can optimize it like this:



The big brush is probably structural, the smaller parts should be detail.

thats actually kinda pointless since its the same amount of brushes either way...

It's not about the number of brushes: the big structural brush provides a much tighter vis volume
and the small brushes will prevent you from texturing anyting you won't actually see.

[Archangel]

I'm a fairly poor mapper, and I honestly didn't know about the caulking on all sides until now. I made some pretty neat looking stairs but I have a lack of ideas. =/
But the stairs were exciting!

[professor]

ya haha i copied the stairs that flesh eater made haha they r bomb lol

[fleash eater]

well thats good to hear =) happy mapping