Snarkpit Articles

Complex cliff faces

... the easy way!
Here's a quick run down of how I make rocks. I was in a bit of a hurry so its not exactly how I do it but its near enough and gets the same visual effect. Im sure people can make it neater by putting some brushes into one single brush, and keeping as many faces perpendicular to the floor as possible (both of which I do normally but I was hurrying).

1. Make your ground and various blocks along the place you want your cliff. Select all of these blocks at once and go into vertex manipulation mode. Drag selection boxes over each front vertex [there are actually a few of them under each so if you just click on them you will have to move each twice] and move them about to make a basic outline as below.
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If you are struggling to keep r_speeds down then you can just stretch this basic shape up to the sky, which I did in most of my maps such as CM Arena. If your only using them sparsely though, continue on...

2. Clone the base and place it above, by holding down shift as you drag the shape up.
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3. Click on this twice to change to the third mode of the selection tool. I dont know what its called but it moves faces and ive found it to be very useful recently. On the side view use the top handle on the shape and move it. It will become obvious what it does once you give it a shot.
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4. If you've got the r's to spare then you can repeat this again to get more interesting cliffs.
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Thats a basic tutorial on how I do my cliff faces, hope it helps you out :smile: If you have questions then either email me, post on the forums, or leave a comment on this tutorial.

Discussion

Posted by omegaslayer on Thu Jul 16th 2009 at 4:14pm

Thread resurrection party!
Posted by Kampy on Thu Jul 16th 2009 at 10:04am

Reno you literally rock! :lol:
Posted by awkook on Thu Jul 16th 2009 at 3:17am

Hey guys! AWESOME TUTORIAL! I've used it many times! I dont know if this is allowed here but I made a video tutorial for this! im on youtube as vhetutor and you guys can go check it out if you want! Its uploading as of July 15th 2009. Will be up by later this night. Awesome tutorial!
Posted by tnkqwe on Thu Sep 27th 2007 at 8:27am

Nise and real
Posted by ReNo on Thu May 18th 2006 at 2:14am
[Author]

Indeed it isn't ideal for those circumstances. I'd suggest looking into triangle terrain methods for more involved areas of terrain. This is really just for short sections of cliffs or whatever.
Posted by G.Ballblue on Thu May 18th 2006 at 1:47am

I've been using this method of rocks for a while now. It's good for thin valleys and such, but not good for constant rocks in a large outdoor scene, since I'm currently facing and r_speed crisis in an incomplete area. The overall tutorial is very good though.

Lining up corners though, and continuing the rock segments if you have not completed the area can be quite a hassle, though. I find doing a corner where the rocks face inwards to be close to impossible, unless you use the same exact brush all around. It's a bit diffcult to explain.
Posted by Mitoh on Tue Jul 12th 2005 at 8:25am

Cool
Posted by Foxpup on Wed Dec 1st 2004 at 8:20am

It looks better than some cliffs that have even higher poly counts (!)
Posted by Jezpuh on Thu Sep 16th 2004 at 7:08pm

Very nice, I'm using this as of now :D
Posted by Dred_furst on Tue Jul 20th 2004 at 12:09pm

Yup, i used this method in fy_icewar i released yesterday. i knew i learnt it from somewhere!