How 2 Hammer with func_door

In this video I will demonstrate a technique for creating octagonal rooms on the grid.

With the block tool selected (shift-B), select Primiteves from Categories, And Cylinder from objects.

Ensure you have an 8 showing underneath the objectt selection for an 8-sided cylinder.

This cylinder will be a guide fro the brushes we're about to lay down.

I want to create multiple rooms per level in this structure, so I'm going to make it a healthy 1536

units across.

Now the problem with this is that he resulting cylinder doesn't have any linse that are straight along

grid edges!

So, transform (ctrl-m) to fix that. Rotate it along the Z by 22.5 degrees. (360 divided by 8 = 45

degrees per side, 45 divided by 2 = 22.5 since we want to rotate by half a side)

Cool, now we have sides that are straight lines along X and Z! But the edges aren't on the grid, so

let's scale it up a bit

Now it's ime to lower the grid size. I've been working with 256 so far.

Okay now with a grid of 64, the points look like they're on the grid!

DO NOT BE FOOLED!!! it is impossible for he points on the grid with this method thus far!

So what I do is "wiggle" the corners into place, snapping each vertex so that I am posive they are on

this grid.

derp daderp...

I do the last one twice because I am mildy retarded.

Excitement! This will be the floor and ceiling for the room.

Back to the block tool, let's start making a wall. 32 sounds okay for an outer wall, right?

Oh well, whatever the thickness is, you can use this technique for all 45 degree angles!

Hit enter to create the block...

With the wall selected, shift-drag to create a duplicate

1:25

shift-v to use the most powerful brushing tool in Hammer, Vertix Manipulate

click on each vertex point and move them into place to create the 45 degree wall

This is the way I used to finishe walls like this, until I read in a pro interview on nodraw.net about

angles

IMPORTANT CONCEPT:
a wall along an axis that is 4 squares deep is equivalent to a wall diagonal to an axis that is 3

squares deep
writes this down in your copy book

we have some intersecting brushes here, which is bad! faces on the top and bottom of the intersecting

brushes will flicker as they fight for z-sort dominance (this is ugly)

so I just vertex manipulate the intersecting points to the intersection of the two sides, and all

potential conflict is resolved peacefully and without bloodshed

I make the other side of this brush symmetrical, and the northern wall has been made!

shift-drag the wall to duplicate what will be the south wall, then click on the brush until there's a

circle outside each corner of the selection rectangle.

click one of the circles and rotae the brush 180 degress. (If you haven't already, Default to 15

degree rotations in the hammer 2d views options!)

snap that sucker into playce like THAT then ctrl-click the north wall to select both, THEN shift-drag

to copy both of them!!!

I SHOULD HAVE DONE PASTE SPECIAL BUT I REALLY LIKE SHIFT DRAGGING

snap the east and west walls into place.

now the only thing wrong with the diagonal wall is its southwestern side is clipping into the west

wall >:(!!!

pressing shift-x multiple times will cycle clipping modes. The section highlighted in red will be

removed.

I could have done that just as easily wih vertex manipulation, but I wanted to show a bsic clip!

here I'm just duplicating and rotating the diagonal as before

Opposite sides at once!

nnngg....

ta-da! there, you have an 8-sided room.

and on a grid of 16 no less!

I have no idea what I'm doing here.

time to scale down the big vertex-manipulaed cylinder down to the floor.

floors and cielings, thy're basically the same in the end

to finish this tutoriall off I'm going to cut a door into one of these side walls.

I'm going to assume that every side is going to either have a doorway, or a window with it's top the

same height as one.

So, I'm going to clip all of the sides at a height just above the players.

96 is a good minimum height for doorways; it's not too close or far from the top of the player's head,

and there's just enough room to place a teleporter in

whooooAAAaaA it's 3-D!

select the brush to clip a door into.

I slip and hit shift-v for VM instead of shift-x for clipping! I am pretty bad at this

clippy clippy clippy

I'm clipping at a right angle to the wall's diagonal, and using the x that marks the center of the

brush as a guide to make the 2 clips even with each other.

be sure to hit shift-x until neither side is red, then hit enter to perform the clip.

select the doorway brush. You can either delete it, or make it into an areaportal as shown here. (if

you make it into an areaportal you must do this with all doors/windows!)

click the texture brows button and type areaporal in the "filter" bar. double click the areaportal

texture, and click the apply texture button.

apply texture looks like his!

click ToEntity or press ctrl-m to tie it to an entity, and type func_areaporal in its Class textbar.

or click to autocomplete

hit apply a nd BAM the areaportal is functioning! This tells the game engine to visually seal the

sides of the areaportal, and now things won't be renderd on the opposite side unless they can be seen

through the areaportal.

welp that's all I recorded this time! I hope this helps some people. Get used to stayingon the grid

without making everything with 90 degree angles!