Help with spiral staircase Created 16 years ago2007-08-12 16:12:54 UTC by SmokinAces

I made a spiral staircase, per the tutorial here. However, the top stair does not line up with the top floor. I just need to rotate it (the entire staircase that is), so it is flush with the floor. How can I do this? I looked in properties, and there was no option to rotate it. Help please!

Select all the stair brushes, then press CTRL + M. The menu that appears will let you scale, move, and rotate objects without having to use the selection tool in a 2D view (which is better because rotating in the 2D view doesn't snap). To spin the stair case, you'll want to use the Z axis. Changes are calculated in degrees, counter-clockwise.

Just click twice in the selection and circular grappoints appear on each corner, click one, hold the leftmousebutton, then drag. Hold shift for a more accurate rotation.

Oh.. didn't know about the Shift key trick.

Thank you very much. I used the "shift" trick, worked great. Now I have another problem with same stairs. Not a big problem, but it bothers the hell out of me, so I won't proceed further with map, till I figure it out. In the stairwell, no matter where I put light entities, even right above them, stairs 6 and 3 from the bottom, are black on top. I want players to be able to see all the stairs. I assume it's a shadow or something, but damn it, it can't be. I've moved lights around in there all over, at least 10 times, and no matter where I put the ligths, those two stairs are always black on top. Even ones right after them are seen plain as day, makes no sense to me. Any thoughts?

are you using a model texture?

Im not sure what you mean by model texture. I tried two different textures. The first one was one labeled as "stairs". I could never get that one to align right, even on the stairs you see, so I switched to one for "floors", just solid concrete. Either one, both those 2 stairs appeared black on top, no where else on the stair, just on top.

Place a cubemap near the stairs. 64 units off the ground.
in-game after you compile, bring up the console and enter in: buildcubemaps
try that

Im sorry,I dont know what you mean :

Find the entity env_cubemap and place it on your map directly above the top step of your spiral staircase...

Then when you bring up the map in-game, open up your console and type the command "buildcubemaps" and let it run. Then re-start the map...

I'm betting all my money that it's a model texture. Select a face of the problematic stair brushes and look at the texture's full name. If the word "model" or "prop" is anywhere in there, it's a model texture. Models use texutres that are lit differently from world geometry because their lighting conditions can change if they're moved around. Pick a texture that doesn't have the word "model" or "prop" anywhere in the name and you should be good.

Nope, neither "model" nor "prop" are in the name. The complete name is concrete/concretefloor027a

EDIT: Ran that buildcubemaps, it didn't seem to do anything, my screen flashed for like 2 seconds and that was it. I reran map, and now the top two stairs are black!

Darn, I lost all mah money :<

Host the map so we can take a look at it.

wait
isn't there one of those console commands that you switch from 1 to 0 a bunch of times until something happens?

EDIT

wow thats really generic... ill try hunting it down

EDIT2

after much searching... found a possible solution

No. After you build the cubemaps, try loading the map again or changing the console parameter "mat_bumpmap" from "0" to "1" a couple of times. It should work, because I had he same problem in some maps and it fixed it.

it was a topic started by me ironically enough

Hehe, i've been gone a couple days, but will try that. Thanks. If it doesn't work, I'll post my map

Well, mat_bumpmap did absolutely nothing. Should I have mentioned it's a spiral staircase? Anyway, how can I upload my map? I'd like someone to look at not just the steps, but if you have time the whole map, and see where it could be improved. I just started it, so there isn't much to it yet. Again, any help is appreaciated.

EDIT: Figured out how to upload my map, here is the link:

http://twhl.co.za/mapvault_map.php?id=4771