cubemaps

I was looking at the sample maps included in the SDK and i noticed that the cubemaps don't have any value in the "brush faces" catergory. DO you need to select the brush faces for a cubemap or does it do it automatically. AS of now ive been giveng each cubemap brush faces assigned to it.

No, you don't have to select each face. The surface will use whichever cubemap is closest to it (and in its line of sight, I believe - may be wrong on that), unless you select that brush face in another cubemap. That's the point of the "Brush Face" property - to specify that you don't want a surface to use its closest cubemap, but the cubemap you're specifying it from. It can be useful for windows and such, just to be sure the surface uses the correct cubemap (like if you have a lot of cube maps in the same area).

If you have a large reflective area (say the floor of an L shaped hallway) that has multiple cubemaps hitting it normally you'll see the reflections change at the edge of the faces, even though the texture didn't change. It's better to have one cubemap in the middle that has all those brush faces assigned to it, as that way you get a continuous reflection for the whole area.

try looking at the source of dm_lockdown, they use the brush faces assignment for the cubemaps in that one. I havent double-checked why they do use it there. but if you find it, feel free to post your thoughts, hence affirming yes or no the suggested answers.

i have been manully assigning each cubemap with brush faces.

From reading the above suggested answers, it seems that for water, and reflective surfaces you should assign brush faces, but for lighting purposes you don't have to.

Not exactly. You don't have to assign the cubemaps to all reflective textures, especially as that's a ton of frivolous work for little payoff. You should place them normally without assigning them and just carefully look ingame if you can see little visual errors and popping and such as you run around. If you can't, then you're set. If you notice that you've got a reflective room where all but like two brushes use the same cubemap and they look noticeably different, well then you should look into assigning brush faces cubemaps.

I concur with Yak.

And mark something correct please.