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Your First Map (Hammer)
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 PostPosted: Mon Dec 22, 2008 1:17 am    Post subject: Your First Map (Hammer) Reply with quote Back to top

Congratulations! You’re now set up to start actually building the map itself! However, first you must learn what tools you’ll be using, and what each tool is used for….

To see the tools and their locations, go to File>New

To construct the map’s architecture and texture it, you only need to use 4 of Zoner’s 11 Half Life tools. (Defaulted on the left after opening a new map via File>New.)

Zoner’s Half Life Tools will now be abbreviated by ZHLT for the rest of this tutorial.

The tools are:

Selection Tool: (1st Tool from the top the ZHLT) This the most widely used tool. This is used to resize blocks, and select blocks and faces (sides of a block).

Block Tool: (5th tool from the top of ZHLT) The block tool creates the building blocks of your map. The allowed use of blocks per map is unlimited, so go crazy with this tool! After you make a block in one of the three views (top, front, and side), you must hit enter/return for the block to actually be created. A created block is indicated by a change from the color white to another color.

Toggle Texture Application Tool: (6th tool from the top of ZHLT) This is the more advanced texture applicator of the two texture applicators. This tool not only allows you to apply a texture to a block, but also to set the scale of each texture, shift it’s placement, or rotate it.

Apply Texture Tool: (7th tool from the top of ZHLT) The simpler of the two texture applicator tools. With this tool, you can simply select a face of your box in the Camera view, browse for a texture you want to apply to the selected face, Click OK, and then select the Apply Texture Tool.


Also, in the Architechual Industry, the Front, Top, and Side views together are known as a Multiview drawing.

Now let’s get to it!

To see the textures in the camera view, go to View> 3D textured Polygons

Because you already hit File>New before, there’s a map already open, so there’s no need to open another. Select the block tool. Draw a square in one of the three views. It should appear as a square in all three of the views. However, it is actually cube. The default texture is some kind of pink and black circle with an upside down V inside it. This is okay, but I suggest changing that to what’s known as the NULL texture. That is the fourth to last one on the list for when you browse for textures. Just doblue-click that and it will be your default texture.

Because this is your first map, I suggest only using 3 or so distinguishable textures. (Bricks, wood, and metal. Etc..)

In my experience, I find that texturing things last is the easiest way to build a map, because you that way you can see the map’s geometry, you can then see what textures suit it best. But you can do as you please. After the box is created, select the box in the Camera view (You may have to wiggle around a bit to find it). Once selected, it should turn a shade of red (but if it’s textured with the null texture, it’ll turn black.) Once selected, go to Tools>Make Hollow. This will hollow out the inside of the box, that way, things can be built on the inside of it. I suggest making the walls 16 or 32 units thick. Never make a wall less than 8 units thick.

Once hollowed, you can start building what ever you want inside! For now, though, we’ll keep it empty. With the box still selected, go to Tools>Ungroup. From now on, when you select this block, you can only select one face at a time. This can be useful in texturing, moving walls, and plenty of other things.

SAVE YOUR WORK.

Now we can start with the second room of your map.

Make another block, about the same size as the other one. (Don’t make it exactly the same. Then you won’t be able to tell them apart!) Hollow that one out as well, and then texture it with whatever you want.

SAVE YOUR WORK

Now you’ve got two rooms, but how would Bond get from one to another?

A doorway, of course!

To make doorways, or holes in blocks, for that matter, you must use a block as your “Carver”. Create a block with the block tool wherever you want the doorway. It doesn’t matter if the block sticks out a little bit. After the block is created in the shape you want your doorway, go to Tools>Carve. Once you do that, delete the created block. The actual door will be added after you import the map into the Goldeneye Setup Editor. Now that’s a fine looking doorway if I do say so myself!

Windows can be created the same way. Just create an elevated block in a wall, and then carve it out, and then delete the block. Piece of cake =]

Lastly, with all maps, you must create a box textured with the NULL texture (4th to last texture in the texture list) surrounding your ENTIRE map, to prevent any “leaks” you may have in your map. Think of your map as a container of oxygen in the middle of space. If there’s a leak, all the air leaks out, you’re fate is…you….well….you’re rescued! Wink

Just create a block with the null texture around the map, and then hollow it out with the hollow option in Tools>Hollow.

Now you can add a start point!

Information on doing that will be included in the next tutorial. (Compiling and Importing)


Flopperr999
 
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 PostPosted: Mon Dec 22, 2008 3:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

It's appreciated, but I have some thoughts about it. You don't have to care about leaks, as the map wont be used in Half-Life. A map will compile just as well floating in the abyss with nothing surrounding it, if .RAD is turned off. Also, NEVER, NEVER EVER use carve. I wouldn't suggest the hollow tool either, unless you just want to try something else and doesn't care about imperfections. Carve could destroy your map. It's unpredictable and wasteful. Always use the lego method. Build your map block by block. It will take some more time, but you will know for sure how it's built. If you want to create more advanced geometry, a hole in the wall for example, you can first create a cylindrical block in the size of your hole. Place the cylinder on the wall, as a pattern, and start using the CLIPPING tool on the wall, follow the lines of the cylinder.

This is from the actual Valve wiki:

Quote:
"Do not carve"

Carve is not a very smart tool, and it has become a standard saying that people should never try to carve with anything except rectangular blocks that are aligned to the grid. For example, trying to carve a cylindrical hole in a wall will horribly mangle the wall. As to optimization, there are three problems:
This can sometimes confuse BSP, although not always.
When the brushes are broken into triangles for drawing, there will be many more than are needed.
If this wall is a world brush and it touches other world brushes, those brushes will also be broken into triangles poorly."
 
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monkeyface
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 PostPosted: Mon Dec 22, 2008 3:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

I've mapped for Half-life and Counter-Strike, and I've learnt this the hard way. Tutorials are often for people that are new to the software, and it's doing them a disservice telling them to carve away. Obviously, if you know what you're doing, you can carve. But the results will vary, and it's much more safe just working with square brushes and the clipping tool. I've got nothing to say about the Null texture as that is completely correct. And when compiled, fly around the map and search for missed spots. Carve and hollow wont always result in problems (hollow is rather safe, but it's sloppy and you wont need it to stop leaks) but I would advise people not to use them, at all. They will learn more and the map will look cleaner.

Not saying that those maps didn't come out perfect, but at some point there will be problems using carve. Especially if you want the maps to be really big, you're going to need ever triangle to work with you. That's why carve needs to go.

-EDIT-

Read the section about the http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Carve_Tool
Even the official documents advices you NOT to use the carve tool. And yes, I've used the Hammer tool for a long time. I did use it to create maps for Goldeneye, and I'm using the latest version to create maps for the source engine.


Quote:
You also have to remember that GoldenEye and Half-Life are different games, and different techniques have to be used. Maybe the null block doesn't have to be used with Half-Life, but we aren't dealing with Half-Life creation here. We are dealing with GoldenEye. GoldenEye requires no leaks. What happens if we get leaks? We get blackouts all over the map.


Carving is still a wasteful technique, though, doesn't matter what engine. The null texture has the be used for Half-Life, and should also be used for Goldeneye, I never said anything about the null texture, it's great that the tutorial mentions it, it's a perfect way to optimize your map.
None of the 10 maps I ported required you to "fix" any leaks, as it's a problem that affects the light in Half-Life. If you're not compiling the light you don't need it turned on, and as the map is going to be for Goldeneye, you certainly doesn't need to fix any leaks.

I think it's good to open up for discussion, techniques and work-flow can always be discussed and improved, no matter where you are.
 
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 PostPosted: Mon Dec 22, 2008 5:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Just helpful feedback, no need to take offense.
 
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 PostPosted: Mon Dec 22, 2008 8:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Monkeyface, getting rid of leaks is still important for GE because they'll also prevent the useless geometry outside of the map from being removed during compiling.

Quote:
Lastly, with all maps, you must create a box textured with the NULL texture (4th to last texture in the texture list) surrounding your ENTIRE map, to prevent any “leaks” you may have in your map. Think of your map as a container of oxygen in the middle of space. If there’s a leak, all the air leaks out, you’re fate is…you….well….you’re rescued!

I'm surprised you didn't comment on this, this is very bad advice. While this can be useful for finding leaks, you certainly don't want to release a map that required this trick to compile, you want to fix the leak first. If you do this anything outside of the map, that shouldn't be visible, will still remain as a part of the map. You could null texture the entire outside of your map, but that's a waste of time and still doesn't guarantee that you'll get everything that should have been removed by the compiling process.

Skorps/Flops: ZHLT are the compiling tools and have nothing to do with the editing tools in Hammer. I would suggest fixing that in the tutorial. I do appreciate that you took the time to work on this, I tried writing something like this myself but I'm just not very good at describing these things.
 
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 PostPosted: Mon Dec 22, 2008 8:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Discussing the use of the "Carve" tool.
 
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 PostPosted: Mon Dec 22, 2008 8:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

I don't carve, and I don't hollow. It's less following advice, and more that I simply prefer to build my rooms, doorways, windows, etc. manually. I used to use hollow to make round rooms and corners, but now I use the arch tool instead. As the Valve wiki article says, carve and hollow won't split the walls efficiently when you're working with non-square/rectangular shapes. More useless geometry equals a slower framerate in the final map. Whether it'll be inefficient enough to have a major impact on performance I can't say.
 
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 PostPosted: Tue Dec 23, 2008 3:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Dragonsbrethren wrote:
Monkeyface, getting rid of leaks is still important for GE because they'll also prevent the useless geometry outside of the map from being removed during compiling.


Didn't know that, thanks for telling me. But it should be clear that this is the reason to fix leaks then, at least when you're making maps for Goldeneye.

Quote:
Lastly, with all maps, you must create a box textured with the NULL texture (4th to last texture in the texture list) surrounding your ENTIRE map, to prevent any “leaks” you may have in your map. Think of your map as a container of oxygen in the middle of space. If there’s a leak, all the air leaks out, you’re fate is…you….well….you’re rescued!

I'm surprised you didn't comment on this, this is very bad advice. While this can be useful for finding leaks, you certainly don't want to release a map that required this trick to compile, you want to fix the leak first. If you do this anything outside of the map, that shouldn't be visible, will still remain as a part of the map. You could null texture the entire outside of your map, but that's a waste of time and still doesn't guarantee that you'll get everything that should have been removed by the compiling process.


Right you are. Rather than just creating a box around the map and hollowing it, you should "integrate" the box with the map. The actual walls in the map should be used as "box" walls, and the places where there are skies, should be filled with a null textured box, as close to the surrounding geometry as possible. There's a great tutorial for optimizing your map in Hammer, but I can't find it at the moment.
 
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 PostPosted: Tue Dec 23, 2008 10:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Dragonsbrethren wrote:
I don't carve, and I don't hollow. It's less following advice, and more that I simply prefer to build my rooms, doorways, windows, etc. manually. I used to use hollow to make round rooms and corners, but now I use the arch tool instead.



Haha man I practically built the ENTIRE Township AND Medieval Castle (TBR) using the Carve tool....

Sure, it makes unfriendly brushes when you're carving with cylindrical objects, etc, but I just find it so much easier to carve than to manually build brushes...

It's just a personal preference, I suppose. Smile
 
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 PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2009 6:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Since this guide doesn't mention it, a note on stage scale. The default grid is 64x64, this will import to GE at 1.0 scale. Since GE does support scaling its maps, you can model at smaller (or larger) sizes and use some simple multiplication to get the scale you should use in GE (for example, a map built on a grid of 32x32 can be imported at 0.5 scale, since that will double its size).

Having a sense of scale when you model your map is very important. Bond is about 2x2 on any grid (actually, a little smaller in third person, but 2x2 works well for the first person view), so your doors should be at least two units wide. I usually make my ceilings 4.5 to 5.5 units high, that makes a good "normal" height ceiling, like the ones in Facility and Archives. Switch to a smaller grid size and zoom in for making smaller architecture, like steps, trim on walls, etc.
 
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 PostPosted: Fri May 04, 2018 11:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Dragonsbrethren wrote:
Since this guide doesn't mention it, a note on stage scale. The default grid is 64x64, this will import to GE at 1.0 scale. Since GE does support scaling its maps, you can model at smaller (or larger) sizes and use some simple multiplication to get the scale you should use in GE (for example, a map built on a grid of 32x32 can be imported at 0.5 scale, since that will double its size).

Having a sense of scale when you model your map is very important. Bond is about 2x2 on any grid (actually, a little smaller in third person, but 2x2 works well for the first person view), so your doors should be at least two units wide. I usually make my ceilings 4.5 to 5.5 units high, that makes a good "normal" height ceiling, like the ones in Facility and Archives. Switch to a smaller grid size and zoom in for making smaller architecture, like steps, trim on walls, etc.


Hey, sorry this is an old post, but I did this and my textures looked WAAY too small. Textures from the GE.wad. I scaled down to the main grid being the 32x32, and now my default texture, the red brick at image196, looks much better. Do I need to scale back up to 64x64?
 
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 PostPosted: Sat May 05, 2018 6:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

I think if you use the main grid at 32x32 in Hammer, than when you do import the map into GoldenEye, you would set the scale as 0.5 (though you can slowly increase / decrease to suit your vision). If you're planning on making the map for Perfect Dark, than you should either build it at 1.0 in Hammer, or else you can rescale it later using the GE/PD Editor. PD only uses full 1.0 scale for levels, so even those in GE-X all needed rescaling.

Remember too that you can modify the texture application in Hammer, so the size and repetitions can be controlled pretty well. Been a long while since I last played around with Hammer. But changing the grid size can be helpful in situations where you are building stairs, doorway arches, etc. Smaller details that can't be designed while the grid is currently larger.
 
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 PostPosted: Sat May 05, 2018 2:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Wreck wrote:
I think if you use the main grid at 32x32 in Hammer, than when you do import the map into GoldenEye, you would set the scale as 0.5 (though you can slowly increase / decrease to suit your vision). If you're planning on making the map for Perfect Dark, than you should either build it at 1.0 in Hammer, or else you can rescale it later using the GE/PD Editor. PD only uses full 1.0 scale for levels, so even those in GE-X all needed rescaling.

Remember too that you can modify the texture application in Hammer, so the size and repetitions can be controlled pretty well. Been a long while since I last played around with Hammer. But changing the grid size can be helpful in situations where you are building stairs, doorway arches, etc. Smaller details that can't be designed while the grid is currently larger.


Okay, cool. Yeah, I was hoping this would work in PD, so I'll have to resize it. Sorry to be so pedantic about Hammer, just trying to make sure I do as much right as I can now, so there's less frustration later on. I am making some pretty good progress on it, though.

I opened up a few existing PD levels and that was able to get a sense of how much detail I could put in.
 
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 PostPosted: Sat May 05, 2018 2:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Before you get too in-depth with things, you might want to run some tests. It will give you a good understanding of the processes involved. Importing as .obj, getting the textures to work properly, portal creation, clipping tiles, etc. Once you get a hang of it all, the sky is the limit! (or close to it, hehe).
 
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 PostPosted: Sat May 05, 2018 5:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote Back to top

Dang... I was hoping you wouldn't say that. I have some pretty slow internet and XSI and the PD.wad (there's one in a stickied thread here?) are pretty rough on me. I'm pretty much just running Hammer until I get around some wi-fi.

I'm awfully proud of my Hammer project, but it would be just as good for a multiplayer map. I'm not trying to do anything crazy with curves yet, but... I've found myself really relying on the carve tool to make doorways and windows. Its all 90º, so I couldn't have messed up too badly, right?

I've been trying to follow TimEh's Youtube tutorials. Maybe the zhlt is different in 2018, but I couldn't find the yellow "No-Draw" texture to start getting ready for the next step.

I have rooms already for the CI training room IDs, except for the firing range, and thats just because I didn't know how big to make it. But basically, all the level design basics, doors, windows, stairs, pillars, floors, big rooms, little rooms, hallways, tunnels, ventilation shafts, elevators, bathrooms, etc. All of that legit PD gameplay, I want to be in here. Imagine if the gadget training had you going throughout the entirety of the Institute instead of just those little tinnels in the back?

Like how you can shoot through the grates between Basement and Stack in GE.

Should I upload my .rmf for someone experienced to help me with noob mistakes?

EDIT -- I just went to grab the pd.wad from the .wads thread and it appears to have expired. Do you know where I can find one?
 
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