Inverting boxes and adding a bottom Created 20 years ago2004-07-22 12:08:54 UTC by Drek

Hello, I'm afraid I am the dreaded mapping newbie. I've been doing alot of reading, and getting to know Hammer a bit. However, I have a question. These are newb questions I know, so even if you could point me to the right tutorial, that would be just perfect.

I want to create a large cave. What I did was used GenSurf with "Ceiling" orientation in the hopes that this would create a cave, and I thought this was what it was supposed to do. However, what I got was a hill. I guess what I need to know is how to create a cave in GenSurf.

Either that or I need to know how to add a floor to the bottom of my cave, and delete the box part above. Looking at it more closely I think I did create the cave correctly, however, I'm not sure whether the textures were created inside or outside the cave. Perhaps it doesn't matter, are textures two sided?

Oh boy, I know this is complete newb stuff, but if you could please point me in the right direction, I would be grateful.

gensurf? sry, if your making a cave in hammer the only way i know to do it is hours of piecing together every brush. if youre looking for help with gensurf, try their site. and if youre as noobish as you say then try laying off the advanced stuff till you got more knowledge if the engine and suchlike.

Well I never was much for starting easy... I didn't know that GenSurf had forums, the site looked pretty dead when I visited it, but I will check it again...

As I thought, there are no GenSurf forums...

a friend of mine made a pretty sweet cave kinda easily with nems terrain generator... did u try that?

oh and nem has forrums

Ahh, I didn't know about nem. Thanks for the tip, I will do a search.

and get his batch compiler! its much better then the hammer compiler!

Or teh ZHLT GUI.

I'm using ZHLT. But I don't know about the GUI...

You could use Tools -> Flip Objects -> Flip Vertically.

Indeed. Or just rotate the selected brushes 180 degrees in the side view.

Well, I figured out what the problem was. I had created the cave with GenSurf, using a bitmap, and the "ceiling" option. When I created it, I was presented with what looked like the top of a cave, but when I tried to add a bottom to it and compile it, I kept getting brush outside of world errors, so I thought that my cave ceiling, was actually a hill.

Anyway, I eventually did a search on the brush outside of world error and figured out that the real problem was that I had the map too close to the edge of the map limits.

There were openings on the sides of my cave as well where the ceiling didn't quite reach the ground, those I tried to cover up by creating rectangular brushes and pasting them over top of the holes, I was actually trying to create a flat brush to do the job. But that looked sloppy to me, then I had an inspiration and deleted the bottom and all my sloppy patches, and instead created a box that surrounded the cave, giving it a neat bottom and sides, with no leaks.

I hate that feeling when you are such a nOOb that you don't even know enough to ask the right question to get help.

Anyway, to make a long story a bit longer. I added my little player spawn point, and a light, and compiled the map, after frigging around with textures for a bit, and hey presto, it worked! I was able to walk around in my first little map - a moment I will surely never forget.

Oh, and on an aside, so far I like GenSurf better than nem's Terrain Generator. Being able to generate terrain from a bit map is unbelievably powerful. I know also that I can raise and lower terrain easily in GenSurf, but I've forgotten how to do it....