Damaged Roof

Well, I'am trying to create a realistic and preformance friendly hole in the roof on the following house for my map.



I started off making the hole by clipping out a rectangular portion of one side of the roof and then using vertex manipulation to add the broken look, but i soon ran in to all sorts of problems (Invalid brushs and the likes.. :sad: ) because the roof is slanted its hard to get everything to line up and look good while avoiding a dreaded invalid brush! !



As you can see its rather ugly and does no look all that real. If there is a better method of doing this or you just have some tips on the matter, help would be greatly apprciatted.

CLs

stuff like that i ususally build on the flat first, group, rotate in 15 degree increments, and then skew in to position .....and if i have to, i then try it as a detail brush, (saves vertex manipulation time, but not always....), and if that doesnt work, a combo of vertex manipulation covered with a displacement "skin" so to speak, to give me the lumpiness i want.....just one of the many methods

Doc B... :dodgy:

In HL2, such cracks are often modelled parts. It allows you to put in more detail than otherwise possible with level brushes.

Anyway, since the roof is broken, why would those parts have the same angle as the roofs surface? They don't have to be perfectly aligned, after all they're broken parts! Just make those small, oddly shaped parts func_details and rotate them freely and so... would be more natural after all, don't you think?

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

Dr Brasso said:
stuff like that i ususally build on the flat first, group, rotate in 15 degree increments, and then skew in to position .....and if i have to, i then try it as a detail brush, (saves vertex manipulation time, but not always....), and if that doesnt work, a combo of vertex manipulation covered with a displacement "skin" so to speak, to give me the lumpiness i want.....just one of the many methods

Doc B... :dodgy:

I agree. Build the equivalent of a 4x8 sheet of roof, clip out holes as needed and then rotate.
while you're at it, get some wood models and jam them in the brush sticking out the hole. Group them all together and then rotate it into place. If you want to get fancy, piece the cut out sections all together and let an explosion blast them out. May be a little expensive performance wise though.

Here are the rules as far as manipulation go.

You can do ANYTHING to a brush as long as it isn't concave. Simple to say yet hard to do in hammer's 3D world.

In your picture it shows a triangle brush that is giving you errors, you'd say "its a triangle, it cant even BE concave" well thats true, but dont forget that the other 3 sides (that is, everything but the top and bottom) still have 4 sides.

So if you manipulate the brush in a way that "bends" any of the 3 planes in a concave way then you will get an error.

Obtuse stuff to think about but if you try and keep it in mind while working you'll see what you can and cant do.

Thanks for the tips guys... I will try to implement them in building my Broken Roof.

Yeah, I was thinking of making a Prop Model for the hole but I've never modelled before...but hey gotta learn someday

CLs

Suggestion: Make a square that fits into the hole of the roof. Then
click on the brush 2 times to change the handles. I don't know what the
porcess is called but you can flatten the brush out. From there add in
your destruction detail. Then when you are done, select all the brushes
again, click on them 2 times and move them back up to fit into the
hole. (hope this makes sence)

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Posting And You

Alright, I finished creating the hole and as suggested decorated it with broken wood props and the likes, but in game, since these have to be Physics Props, the models jammed in the brushes fly out.

-Note- 200Kb Full Images

In Editor all is well...



But in game they can`t stay put...



As you can see i even tried to make some non-solid and adding a clip brush and still no luck

CLs

Clip brushes only act on the player, not props, to make an invisable
brush coolide with physics props, you use the brush ent:
func_vphysics_clip (cover it in the nodraw texture).

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Posting And You