Assisted Answer
http://shrinker.beyond-veils.de/shrinker/projects/Microbrush/
http://www.intercomm.com/shrinker/projects/Microbrush/
It is a little difficult at first, but once you got used to the keys, it greatly enhances mapping speed.
1
Re: Microbrush - Brush creation tool
Posted by Shrinker on Wed Dec 17th at 3:29pm 2008
http://www.intercomm.com/shrinker/projects/Microbrush/
It is a little difficult at first, but once you got used to the keys, it greatly enhances mapping speed.
Posted by Shrinker on Wed Dec 17th at 3:29pm 2008
http://www.intercomm.com/shrinker/projects/Microbrush/
It is a little difficult at first, but once you got used to the keys, it greatly enhances mapping speed.
Shrinker
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Re: Microbrush - Brush creation tool
Posted by G4MER on Thu Dec 18th at 6:47am 2008
Posted by G4MER on Thu Dec 18th at 6:47am 2008
Interesting.
First Link not working for me.
First Link not working for me.
Re: Microbrush - Brush creation tool
Posted by Shrinker on Thu Dec 18th at 8:30am 2008
Posted by Shrinker on Thu Dec 18th at 8:30am 2008
Stupid me, of course Shrinker is not present twice in the link. http://shrinker.beyond-veils.de/projects/Microbrush/. It is only a mirror.
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Re: Microbrush - Brush creation tool
Posted by haymaker on Thu Dec 18th at 2:50pm 2008
Posted by haymaker on Thu Dec 18th at 2:50pm 2008
yes looks interesting, I'll give it a go when I get some time...no Internet help pages?
Re: Microbrush - Brush creation tool
Posted by Shrinker on Fri Dec 19th at 5:52pm 2008
Posted by Shrinker on Fri Dec 19th at 5:52pm 2008
Hmm... not at this point. But it's really just about memorizing the controls
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Re: Microbrush - Brush creation tool
Posted by Flynn on Sat Dec 20th at 10:57am 2008
Posted by Flynn on Sat Dec 20th at 10:57am 2008
Does it work with H.L.2 as well?
Just Kidding
Just Kidding
Just Kidding
Re: Microbrush - Brush creation tool
Posted by fishy on Sat Dec 20th at 2:49pm 2008
Posted by fishy on Sat Dec 20th at 2:49pm 2008
The list of 'features' is pretty slim, and doesn't appear to have anything that hammer doesn't already have. To me it looks like you really only had to learn some hammer shortcut keys, not write a new editor.
Re: Microbrush - Brush creation tool
Posted by Shrinker on Sat Dec 20th at 6:03pm 2008
Yes, ctrl+S (make sure you configure vmf_path.txt right).
I can map with hammer pretty well and know the shortcuts to do things. Please note that this is not a replacement for Hammer, only a third-party tool to speed up the workflow by allowing quicker brush architecture creation (as you see, there is nothing related to texturing or making entities in it). And Hammer neither has the facedrag mode this tool has, nor brush merging. I guess this is more suited for people who are fond of using Radiant, too.
Posted by Shrinker on Sat Dec 20th at 6:03pm 2008
Quoting Flynn
Does it work with H.L.2 as well?
Yes, ctrl+S (make sure you configure vmf_path.txt right).
Quoting fishy
The list of 'features' is pretty slim, and doesn't appear to have anything that hammer doesn't already have. To me it looks like you really only had to learn some hammer shortcut keys, not write a new editor.
I can map with hammer pretty well and know the shortcuts to do things. Please note that this is not a replacement for Hammer, only a third-party tool to speed up the workflow by allowing quicker brush architecture creation (as you see, there is nothing related to texturing or making entities in it). And Hammer neither has the facedrag mode this tool has, nor brush merging. I guess this is more suited for people who are fond of using Radiant, too.
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Re: Microbrush - Brush creation tool
Posted by fishy on Sat Dec 20th at 6:31pm 2008
Posted by fishy on Sat Dec 20th at 6:31pm 2008
I'm not sure what you mean about facedrag. Any form of extrusion wouldn't be very useful, so I imagine it would be something like moving a face using it's vertices, which is a simple task in hammer.
Brush merging is only something I've seen done in a text editor, but almost any merged brush could have been made as a single brush to begin with. The only exception I can think of would be a sphere. I always had problems getting the last few faces on one of them when I tried to use a single brush. ( but that was hammer's fault, not mine
)
Like you say, this is probably suited to someone that's more familiar with radiant.
Brush merging is only something I've seen done in a text editor, but almost any merged brush could have been made as a single brush to begin with. The only exception I can think of would be a sphere. I always had problems getting the last few faces on one of them when I tried to use a single brush. ( but that was hammer's fault, not mine
)
Like you say, this is probably suited to someone that's more familiar with radiant.
Re: Microbrush - Brush creation tool
Posted by Shrinker on Sat Dec 20th at 7:22pm 2008
Posted by Shrinker on Sat Dec 20th at 7:22pm 2008
Let me try illustrate Radiant-style face drag.
To preserve precision in transformations, a face in Hammer is not represented by a normal vector + distance from origin, but by one triangle it is spanned along. If, for example, you move a brush around, a dependence on only the normal vector would quickly introduce numerical errors. The better method with more data enables us to simply offset the triangle of a face accurately.
In Radiant-style face drag, you start dragging (with brushes selected) at some point p0. And you move your mouse to p1. The triangles of every face that is facing towards p0 are offset, all others are not influenced.
If you drag x to the right with this selection of brushes ([] is a box, p# is your mouse):
You get this, essentially "moving" the hole (should work with brushes above and below too):
In hammer, you'd need to select all face vertices for that operation, and that is very time-consuming, even if it only takes you a click and a key press.
Also, if you have such a thing:
____
/____
You could preserve the slope angle at the sides but still adjust the height of this shape. (Yes, it looked better in the text editor without this big vertical spacing.)
If you have modeled some stairsteps, of stairs where every step ends at floor level, you could copypaste those steps to another position and then face drag either side (up or down), extending the stairsteps' height.
Hammer's way of "hiding" the brush-defined-by-planes paradigm is certainly easier for beginners, but I feel mapping is much more comfortable if that paradigm isn't hidden, but exploited. In brush math, an arbitrary clipping plane is very easy to realize too (hey, hammer doesn't have that either).
Regarding brush merge: Yes, it is useful for spheres, but it also speeds up creation of such simple shapes:
Here, I created one side of the brush, conducted three clips, then mirrored this part twice and merged the four resulting brushes. (One aiming with the mouse and a key press for centering the grid there, then two key presses for mirroring the selection twice, then one to merge it all.)
I occasionally run across a situation in mapping where I think "These two could be merged!", and in practice I really do that, when not using Hammer.
To preserve precision in transformations, a face in Hammer is not represented by a normal vector + distance from origin, but by one triangle it is spanned along. If, for example, you move a brush around, a dependence on only the normal vector would quickly introduce numerical errors. The better method with more data enables us to simply offset the triangle of a face accurately.
In Radiant-style face drag, you start dragging (with brushes selected) at some point p0. And you move your mouse to p1. The triangles of every face that is facing towards p0 are offset, all others are not influenced.
If you drag x to the right with this selection of brushes ([] is a box, p# is your mouse):
Code
[ ] p0 [ ]
You get this, essentially "moving" the hole (should work with brushes above and below too):
Code
[ ] p1 [ ]
In hammer, you'd need to select all face vertices for that operation, and that is very time-consuming, even if it only takes you a click and a key press.
Also, if you have such a thing:
Code
____
/____
You could preserve the slope angle at the sides but still adjust the height of this shape. (Yes, it looked better in the text editor without this big vertical spacing.)
If you have modeled some stairsteps, of stairs where every step ends at floor level, you could copypaste those steps to another position and then face drag either side (up or down), extending the stairsteps' height.
Hammer's way of "hiding" the brush-defined-by-planes paradigm is certainly easier for beginners, but I feel mapping is much more comfortable if that paradigm isn't hidden, but exploited. In brush math, an arbitrary clipping plane is very easy to realize too (hey, hammer doesn't have that either).
Regarding brush merge: Yes, it is useful for spheres, but it also speeds up creation of such simple shapes:
Here, I created one side of the brush, conducted three clips, then mirrored this part twice and merged the four resulting brushes.
(One aiming with the mouse and a key press for centering the grid there, then two key presses for mirroring the selection twice, then one to merge it all.)
I occasionally run across a situation in mapping where I think "These two could be merged!", and in practice I really do that, when not using Hammer.
Shrinker
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11 posts
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Shrinker @ Beyond-Veils, InterComm
Re: Microbrush - Brush creation tool
Posted by Le Chief on Wed Dec 24th at 7:45am 2008
Posted by Le Chief on Wed Dec 24th at 7:45am 2008
Interesting, I'll try this thing out.
Re: Microbrush - Brush creation tool
Posted by Shrinker on Fri Feb 13th at 8:01pm 2009
Posted by Shrinker on Fri Feb 13th at 8:01pm 2009
Shrinker
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Shrinker @ Beyond-Veils, InterComm
Re: Microbrush - Brush creation tool
Posted by Shrinker on Fri Feb 13th at 10:09pm 2009
Posted by Shrinker on Fri Feb 13th at 10:09pm 2009
Oh hey I just figured that my topic is HL2, not HL1 
Could someone please move this thread into the HL2 mapping section? Thank you!
Could someone please move this thread into the HL2 mapping section? Thank you!
Shrinker
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Shrinker @ Beyond-Veils, InterComm
Re: Microbrush - Brush creation tool
Posted by Riven on Sat Feb 14th at 12:01am 2009
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Posted by Riven on Sat Feb 14th at 12:01am 2009
Done! 
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