spheres or dome structures

**did a search for sphere/s and dome/s**

Im trying to make a building that has attached domes to it, they need to be hollow as so further rooms can be added and/or tunnels for navigation through said building structure.

first i make a sphere primitive. then make a block primitive and place it in the center of the sphere and make use the carve command to split the sphere into two dome structures. ungroup it, then delete the bottom half. now i have a solid dome structure. but then it needs to be hollow.

I have tried to use the 'make hollow' command, yes it does work, but messes the VIS lighting and also texturing issues occur. another thing is the geometry is fine and all, but once you run the build and, or just, save and then reopen the map in the editor I get an error message talking about geometry missing, and in fact it is missing.. like windows in the dome that need not be there.

i have tried the carve command, by copying the dome structure and scaling it a bit smaller than the original and then apply the curve. this seems to stop the geometry errors from a make hollow.

my questions are..

1. which is the best way to create such a dome structue? my given ways or a is there a better one.

2. when you want to make a tunnel connect to dome structures.. the only way I have found to do so (oh by the way, the tunnels are half cylinders too.. yup its somewhat complex for BSP i think to do) is by using the carve the command to remove the geometry not necessary for the the tunnel to connect to.. is this the best way??, cause I do agree that the carve tool does mess things up alot (sometimes).

would it be fesible to just make my own dome structure using box primitives instead of the sphere primitive.. i guess i will try when i get home from work.

There actually is a tutorial for how to make a dome for HL1.

oh really? cool!

i didnt see it on this site? would you happen to have a link please?

ok, so it's not EXACTLY a dome, but it's close enough: link.

hmm.. looks like it will suffice, though i will have to try it out to be sure later tonight.

thanks.

ahem ahem but if its for hl2 making spheres is a snap = D

http://www.snarkpit.com/editing.php?page=tutorials&game=HL2&id=123

the last pic = D "its not hl1 anymore but that sphere tech WAS awesome = P

No offense, but what does that have to do with anything?

a) if he wanted to make a sphere he could just go block tool, then select sphere

b) he's not trying to make a sphere. :razz:

he could cut the sphere in half . am i wrong?

Edit: the handy Clip tool :wink:

I think by dome he meant a hollowed-out semisphere, not just a semisphere...which you can't really do by that method.

He said the inside of the sphere needs to be hollow. In my
opinion, the best way to do that would be to make a sphere primitive of
the proper size, and then vertex edit blocks to match the outside of
the sphere.

EDIT: Hammer will actually crash if you try to clip or carve a
sphere in half. For me, this happens with spheres of about 12
faces and above.

Nanodeath's link to that hl tutorial would be a good way except the
vertex scaling tool in hammer 4 is broken and will crash you out.
Seems the only alternative would be to manually do every single vertex.

Play around with the torus tool, it should be capable or making domes
fairly easily. Set the cross section angle to 90 degrees and top down
angle to 360 - this will circle a 90 degree curve around a 360 degree
origin. In short, it will make a dome. Might take some tweaking to get
it giving a nice output but it seems the best, and cleanest, way to me.

It would be, its a great idea but the maximum radius you are allowed to set it for is half of what you need.

IE: in top down view you create a square 128x128. On Z this
is 64. If you were to use the torus tool with 90 degree arc cross
section, 64 unit radius cross section, and a circle in the top down it
would create exactly would you need. However it only allows you
to set a maximum of 32 for the cross section radius. If you put
in 64 manually it still just sets it to 32. so you can only ever
end up with sort of a dome with a flat top.

Ok thanks for the link Nano... worked perfectly, after messing around
with making a few with different amount of segements for the cylinder..

.. yes i am using them for like a bio-dome type building with also
cilos (sp?) and making it out of a cylinder with vertex editing is by
far superior in the long run, even though it took me a bit to get it
down perfect.. but hey that is what 'create prefab' is for right?

yes i could have stayed with using the sphere primitive and uses the
slice and/or carve tool to make it a semisphere.. (crashed sometimes,
not always) but in the long run it does a lot more damage to adding
things like connecting tunnels, platform, elevators, etc..

ah yes SaintGreg.. indeed, i did it all by hand, each vertex and it
took a long time considering what im used to in a 3d program. :wink:

Really unfortunate they couldn't keep the working features working, now isn't it? Glad it worked out for you. Oh, and (*silo) :wink:

I have done some of what you are talking about using the subdivide too.
Might be easier to just make a large cylinder, hollow it out, and
select all the inside surface and subdivide it. It will also
align your textures for you if you make them match before the
subdivide, which is really cool. But the top of the dome can't be shown this way.

lol have you tried it ice? did it work = ) cuz that would be an interesting alternative :wink:

It would be so much easier if valve programming were smart like id's and could add curved surface support.

It turns out that the vertex scaling tool is not completely broken
after all. Its still usable you just cannot move the center
thingy. If you do it will crash hammer. But if you dont
need to like for spheres than it will work well. I needed a
quarter sphere so I was going to just shift the center for the vertex
tool but since that doesn't work, I just used a half sphere and then
sliced it in 2 parts.

You could probably dismap a surface "inside-out" (using sew and various tools) and get a really good looking dome...