Hammer 4 vertices glitch Created 15 years ago2009-02-13 04:32:26 UTC by Captain Terror

I've been trying to employ a technique i used in Hammer 3.x in Hammer 4, with some infuriating results.

The technique is simple: take a cylinder, slice it up horizontally at various spots using the clipping tool, and then while in VM, use ALT-E to scale various parts to give a "lathed" effect. This practice is great for simply and easily making a multitude of objects.The problem comes when i build one of these objects, save/close/reopen the map in Hammer 4, the vertices end up all askew, that is, where a group of vertices was once all lined up perfectly, they turn out all slightly out of phase with each other. This makes the compiled product look ugly indeed, because the objects that once were completely flush, now have all their vertices at slightly different coordinates, leading to visible gaps in-game.Is this a know issure for Hammer 4, or maybe, is it a glitch i'm encountering using 64-bit vista maybe? I've NEVER had this problem in Hammer 3.x. It's as if somehow Hammer 4 is realigning my vertices each time i reopen the map for anything that is not on the grid, and the effect gets worse the more times i close/reopen the map.

Another related technique/problem i'm having is in hammer 3.x, i used to build stuff entirely out of triangles, and make all sorts of crazy shapes and objects, with no error. Hammer 4 doesn't seem to deal with these objects very well, especially if you try to use the "ALT-E" scaling on a bunch of vertices.

And FINALLY, as a side note, I'm also noticing a problem with moving any sort of complex objects, I have to CONSTANTLY use CTRL-B to snap these objects to the grid. Even with the grid turned down all the way to 1, it seems hammer just can't deal very well with keeping them on the grid by itself. Is this also a known issue?

Phew. Does that make sense to anyone? I'll work on some example pics to illustrate the problem better.

Same happens in the non-orange box hammer 4 on vista 32 and presumably on all other OS's.

I have never encountered the problem when Orange Box mapping.

You'll also notice that the same thing happens sometimes when using the skew tool (is that name right? the one between scaling and rotating with single clicking on brushes in 2D views)
It doesn't always happen either.
Sometimes it's happened to me and I've remade the brush exactly as it was, and no more problem, and sometimes i've duplicated a brush that is fine, saved and closed and found that upon opening - the duplicated object is messed up, while the original is still fine.

Interesting. Could you weed out the misaligned brush and post it in a new VMF for me, please? Just the one/two brushes with one example of this bug, and I'll see if I can find out why this is happening.

Happens on me too, under Ep1 mapping as well as OB mapping.
Remember my upcoming space shuttle mod? I had to redesign the Solid Rocket Boosters and the shuttle's main engines countless of times because their vertices shift after i reloaded the map.

Wow well at least it wasn't just me! = ) (this glitch has been driving me mad)

PB: Sure. = )
Original objects
Just a few brushes as requested

This looks like a standard floating point rounding error, but I can't be 100% sure. Try keeping your measurements so that every point has its decimal value as a power of two - this means try to set up your points and your scale factor so that you have decimal values such as 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, etc. This would likely solve any floating point errors. Try that, and if it's still broken, please report back.

damn computers.

Yes Pengy but notice in the group made out of triangles(which was never scaled whatsoever) the error also occurs throwing the verticies off-grid...

I even contacted Jed Smith(And he actually responded, and was quite nice)when i thought the compile was doing this, but it's discouraging that it's an issue with Hammer 4 itself...

Oh well.. is it worth reporting to Valve? I guess source mappers have gotten along for years without this hampering them too badly, so i suppose i can too, i was just looking forward too having more geometry freedom with source mappping, not less...