Sewer Probs

Sewers Probs----

When creating my sewers (out of 360 degree arches and 90 degree torus's) I ran into some troubles

The Arches and Torus are both same dimentions (256X256) but i can`t get them to align properly, like so...



There aligned on all the 2D grid viewports, same wall width, same number of sides, and have tried messing with the alignment a bit, to no avial...I just can get them to align!

--PS-- I read the post about cylinders and torus's for sewers, but i much prefer arches if its possible to align them with a torus.

CLs

I think maybe you should see how displacements work out for the sewers,
as you can use the command "sew" to help fix this problem

I think your problem is that its stretching shapes weirdly and its hard
to line anything up. Lining weird shapes like arches and toruses is
very difficult

instead of having joints like that as nice smooth connecting surfaces, you'll find it easier, and probably more realistic, if you use a brush or model to hide the seam. put a 360 arch around the join, and it'll look fine.

Looks like the arch is slightly rotated with respect to the torus.
Notice how each vertex on the arch corresponds to a mid-point of an
edge of the torus (and vice versa).

You need to rotate the arch around its axis slightly so that it's vertices line up with those of the torus.

thanx.....i`ll give that a try.....

CLs

I don`t think displacments are what I am looking for as the sewers need to appear man-made and need to connect to many square holes and flat walls, etc and for this arches are perferable...



As for covering up the seams there are many and they are present all around the torus/arch connection...a seamless connection would be ideal......

I tryed lining up all the vertices, but it just wouldn`t happen as the sides are all different sizes on the arch and torus, even know they have the same number of sides, etc...I`ll keep trying.....

CLs

Alright here is watcha gotta do. First off make sure that the torus and the cylinder have the same amounts of sides. Then get into a 2d view and line them up approximately. Now just get into a 2d view and rotate the cylinder until the edges line up good enough. If they don't line up perfectly, which they might not, then there are some things you can do.

You could put some sort of displacement to cover them and make it look like moss, and scatter it across the tunnel so it's not only on the seam.

Or you can have really dim lighting so that no one will really notice it.

If you have it dip down a bit from that huge hole in the wall then you could put some water in so that nobody will look down and see the seam.

Then again if it's good enough you might not need to do anything. If someone is running/crawling through a tunnel I doubt they are going to be stopping to make sure that the seams line up. Just make it to the best of your ability and that should be fine.

This is a very, very small thing, and probably not worth your while,
but you might consider making triangles out of the 4-sided polys that
make up your archway, by movnig the vertices along the edge to meet at
corners. This would give you triangles that would not be
subdivided on rendering.

Small thing, especially given your current concerns.

-LN

I wouldn't recommend rotating the cylinders to fit with the torus. You might get lucky and be able to vertex manipulate them together, but without lots of fine tuning with the torus I doubt it.

For a start, if you want your sewer to look that curved, you really have to use displacement surfaces- that many brushes is overkill and will hurt VIS/in-game. Yes the entrance will be a problem, but you can fudge that without people caring, e.g. by a less curved brush cylinder, or a simple square entrace. So, either heavily cut down the number of sides of your cylinder/torus (even just 8 sides looks decent!) or use displacement surfaces and fudge an entrace.

After much tweaking I finally got them to line up perfectly everytime (turns out the the cylinder was actully 31 sided and I could have sworn I made it 32 sided....

Anyways, thanks for all the help and I am going to take the suggestion of using displacments to liven up the sewers (moss,dirt,etc) as they are looking pretty bland right now

As for the 32 sides(follwing the Arch Tut), I think i might cut it down, but not turn the whole sewer into a displacment as I want to keep the entrances...

CLs

TBH I don't think that 32 sides is necessary. Using 16 would work fine and cut down on your brush count thus effectively raising performance with little aesthetic loss.

I find that 32 works better with lighting, and a sewer isn't really
something that will be seen from many areas of the map, so with good
VIS blocking you can go with it.

Though, 16 isn't bad at all.

I agree with previous comments, 32 sides is definatly overkill. 16 or less, my friend. 16 or less.

I agree with previous comments, 32 sides is definatly overkill. 16 or less, my friend. 16 or less.

for small stuff, but if I can aford it I go with 32. Thats for a
full circle, if I make an arch (180 degrees) I will use 16 sides (half
of 32) and for a corner I will use 8 sides (1/4 of 32). Its not
much more and it looks so much better.