I have a few issues with some things said in this thread, but nothing too major. I'll summarize what you should know about what you saked:
truije15 wrote: ↑Thu May 14, 2020 5:20 pm
Some of the questions I have right now are:
1. What does transform permanently do?
2. What is the benefit?
3. When does transform permanently need to be done?
In short, whenever you use these tools:
, instead of modifying the brush you are working on, the editor stores the original brush you used and makes a modifier. So if you scale your brush so it's twice as big, it will store its original size and then make a note *also, multiply every vertex coordinate by 2. This is fine, except when you modify the resulting brush or a clone of that brush, things get wonky. When you have a brush that fits what you want, it's nice to transform it permanently so if you need to come back to it later, it doesn't behave in a funny way. The benefit is that 3 days later, when you decide to rotate your brush slightly, you're not surprised by the way it suddenly deforms in every direction because you forgot it was scaled 1.75 on X, 0.875 on Y and 2.145 on Z.
It should be done whenever you're satisfied with your brush and want to "solidify" what you made into a definite brush. Either on the red builder brush, or on the brush you added/subtracted from it just after it was subtracted/added.
Also reset your red builder brush and transform it permantenly if you're doing something ambitious or it behaves weird, it fixes a lot of issues.
truije15 wrote: ↑Thu May 14, 2020 5:20 pm4. Should brush scaling and rotation be avoided at all cost?
Scaling is mostly useless and creates more problems than it solves. It should be avoided. Work on your measures and use vertex editing.
Rotating is definitely useful, but instead of using the specific tool (
), just select your brush and use CTRL+RMB to rotate it. It doesn't cause the issues the rotating tool causes and doesn't need a transform permanently step. The only difference with the dedicated tool is that you are limited to one rotation axis per viewport, but sinc you get three of those, everything's covered anyway.
truije15 wrote: ↑Thu May 14, 2020 5:20 pm5. What is the effect of vertexes that have large positional errors? If I go and look at some of the brushes (select brush -> edit -> copy -> paste in notepad) in my map almost all of the vertex's are not on the grid. Just as an example a vertex might look like this: "Vertex -00128.000000,+00016.003296,-00144.000000". There's an error of 0.003296 units. Does this cause disappearing faces (my current issue).
It has a small effect, not usually enough to break a map, but can cause a few disappearing faces. Fixing these in notepad (round to the nearest .000000 usually) definitely helps. After fixing these and rebuilding maps, I always get a different geometry build, which can fix holes.
truije15 wrote: ↑Thu May 14, 2020 5:20 pm6. Should a new red builder brush be used for every new brush?
No.
truije15 wrote: ↑Thu May 14, 2020 5:20 pm7. Is vertex editing safe to use because the vertexes snap perfectly to the grid? (I started checking the resulting brushes from vertex editing and the vertexes seem to be perfectly on the grid afterwards.
8. Should brush clipping be avoided?
Vertex editing and Brush clipping are flawless tools and
should be your main method to create new geometry. They generate no error and have no associated bugs as long as you don't go against logic: in vertex editing mode, this means not putting several vertices from the same brush at the same position (it crashes) and not having edges of the brush cross each others (this makes a brush with no inside and no outside and everything bugs, but you can simply delete the brush and start again, it doesn't crash). With a creative use of the clipping tool, you can do away with the 2D shape most of the time, a tool which tends to generate many unneeded edges and cuts and should be reserved for concave shapes. The vertex editing tool is the single most important and stable tool you have at your disposition and should be your main input.
truije15 wrote: ↑Thu May 14, 2020 5:20 pm9. Should intersect and deintersect be avoided?
It should be reserved for merging several brushes into a mover, as movers must be a single block. In all other cases, it's better to do without as it creates very complex brushes and you have no control over how the brushes is made when the intersect/deintersact makes cuts all over the place to keep every face convex.
truije15 wrote: ↑Thu May 14, 2020 5:20 pmTypically in the past I almost never made brand new red brushes, I would either duplicate or polygon-to-brush and then vertex edit or brush clip.
Thisis fine. New brushes with the red builder brush are fine too, you can use it.
truije15 wrote: ↑Thu May 14, 2020 5:20 pmI would use intersect and deintersect to combine brushes if I couldn't rotate them together.
This is suboptimal but depends on how careful you are and how complex the resulting intersected brushes are.
A few notes about what has stuff said in this present thread:
- When transforming a brush permanently, all texture scales and positions are reset on the brush. This is also the case if you select a vertex of the brush in vertex editing mode, even if you don't move anything. This is a pain in the ass.
-
Semi-solids. Don't listen to what's been said here, semi-solids are absolutely fine and their use is paramount when making very complex stuff, what's been said here looks like empirically guestimated stuff. Here's what's the deal with semi-solids: they do not create errors, never, but they often are the subject of errors caused by other brushes.
They cannot be subtracted from, they act as blue solid brushes, but they do not create cuts, so they do not add any complication to your BSP tree. But they are sensitive to cuts created by other brushes. If you line a semi-solid brush's face with the a BSP cut made by something else, chances are, this face of the semi-solid will become invisible. They do not create holes as they are not filled with "THE VOID", as would happen if the face of a subtracted brush or a solid brush vanished. They simply let you see through this face of the semi-solid.
If you do not have very complex things or a increased density of small details in a specific place, you may not need them.
As they do not react with the BSP tree, they should not touche portals.
But unlike what's been said here, they can touch and penetrate (in an honourable way) solid and subtracted brushes without causing an issue. They will only have problems if they line up with BSP cuts or if two parts of the same semi-solid are in different zones separated by portals. Usually one half will disappear.
All these are limitations of non-solid brushes. Semi-solids are called this way simply because they are treated by the editor and the engine as non-solid brushes, yet have a collision like solid brushes. So they're half and half.
- If you have disappearing faces, it can be caused by no less than sixty thousand million different things and you cannot pinpoint a cause (unless half your map disappears when a specific brush is added; then you can). The best way to fix disappearing faces is making sure brushes are as simple as possible (no unnecessary edges, which means intersect/deintersect should be limited in number and complexity), vertices are on grid (the rounding error in brushes is most of the time not enough to cause trouble but if your geometry is perfect, you may fix a few), you have at least some zoning (keeping the local geometry mostly separate from the rest of the map, it helps keeping things manageable for the engine) and if you have a simple-ish solid brush that touches only subtracted and/or solid brushes, no portals, without hitting things at odd angles, try making it a semi-solid and rebuilding. If it doesn't fix the issue and creates more, you can always set it back to solid.