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Chips' Fun House Forum Index  ~  Mapping & Modeling  ~  Source Mapping Tutorial #2 - First Map
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Anshinritsumai
PostPosted: Fri Dec 16, 2005 11:19 pm  Reply with quote
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Starting up a fresh map:
After going through Source Mapping Tutorial #1 - Setting up the SDK, you now have a fully configured and operational Hammer editor. So, without further adue (sp?),
File > New (or Ctrl+N for you shortcut users)

Now, you will notice that 4 windows pop up and all of a sudden, a bunch of toolbars become available. Don't fret. We will do this tutorial two seperate ways. One, will be using 6 seperate brushes (geometry such as walls, floor, roof, etc) to make a room. Duplicating the room, and placing a hall between the two so they are connected. And two, will be making a large block and hollowing it out, then duplicating and adding the hallway.

Our first tutorial will be the 6-seperate brushes. Note, to people that have at least SOME experience to mapping in the slightest bit, go on to tutorial #3, skip this altogether. Also note, that this map is EXTREMELY newb friendly. And it is just that, to get you to know what the hell it is we are doing. Also note, this tutorial is HIGHLY optimized for visual learners as I took a butt load of screenshots.

NOTE!! There will be no lights added into this map, so the game will set a cheat (mat_fullbright) cvar (command variable) to on (1), but because the game is requiring the server to set this command, it is ok; you will not be kicked or banned or anything. All players will have this affect. In the next tutorial we will deal with lighting, where this mat_fullbright will be set to 0 (like in every map from VALVe) because we will have lights to luminate the area.

First off, lets see if you see what I see.



If you don't see something like this, something went terribly wrong. But that's rare. So it shouldn't be common if you don't see something like this.

First off, we need to know about the tools we're dealing with.



Selection tool, Brush Tool, Entity Tool, Texture Application, and Vertex Manipulation, you will use more than anything.

Clipping tool is nice, but only if you know how to use it. I'll get more into detail with that if requested, otherwise I won't be covering it.

Applying Overlays is rather useless. I don't know anyone who uses it other than VALVe; even the expert mappers at HL2world don't use them often enough for it to be covered.

Applying Decals will be good later on, but sometimes you just want to use an entity for decals.

Apply Current Texture is almost useless, as you'll be using the Texture Application tool so much. Don't expect to use it alot.

The Brush Tool - This, is your paint brush. You will paint masterpieces with this. This essentially creates every piece of brushwork; walls, doors, glass, roofs, floors, etc.

The Entity Tool - This is your backup. You will use this as much as you will use the brush tool, they are siblings. Use it to create spawn points, make brushes into doors, make breakable brushes, add props, add lights, etc.

The camera and magnify tool will almost NEVER be used if you have a mouse with a scroll wheel, and if you don't have one by now, GO BUY ONE YOU CHEAPSKATE!!

The selection tool is another sibling of the Entity and Brush tools, he selects objects Razz


6 Seperate Brushes
Ok, in this next screenshot, I've manipulated my camera view (top left of the 4 viewports) a bit so you can see the origin (blue, green, and red lines in the shape of an L in multiple directions, showing X, Y, and Z coordinates), so don't be alarmed. Now, what you'll want to do is select the brush tool and zoom in a bit (mouse wheel up - if it screws up and scrolls up in the topic instead of zooming in, check the tips topic).

On the blue lines, we will make our first wall. Now, being that this is our first map together, we want "snapping" turned on, this will make it much easier to produce walls that are aligned to each other and will prevent map leaks (more on this in optimization topic); so click on the "Map" in the main menu bar at the top and make sure there's a check mark next to "Snap To Grid" (Shift + W will toggle this on and off).

Select your brush tool again and in the "Top (x/y)" viewport (top-right), click on the origin (where the two blue lines meet, and drag it 8 boxes to the right. Then drag it 8 boxes down (still in the "Top (x/y)" viewport). Once you have achieved the next screenshot, move on; otherwise try again.



Only continue if you have achieved the previous screenshot.

Once you are done with that, press enter and you will have a block. This will be your floor. Now, if you notice, your floor is highlighted in red in all viewports. It is currently "selected" with the selection tool, even though you're in the brush tool. Don't worry about it too much. If anything, press Shift + S to change to your selection tool. From here, you can move your mouse over the block in the three orthographic (wireframe) viewports and it will change to a 4-way arrow, here you can drag it to other positions. See next two screenshots.

Before Move:


After Move:


Note:
My textures may be different from yours right now, DO NOT WORRY ABOUT TEXTURES YET!!

Once you have that, select your "selection tool" (shift + s), and in the "Side (x/z)" viewport (bottom-right), mouse over your floor. Now, hold shift and click on your block (floor); DO NOT LET GO OF SHIFT; and drag upwards by 5 boxes, so there leave 4 boxes in between. Then let go of your mouse button (don't let go of shift till you've let go of the mouse button first). You're end result should look something like this, and if it doesn't, try again.



From this point, we've now got our floor and our roof. So it's time to start on the walls of this beast Razz

On the left side of the floor, with your brush tool, drag a box along the side, as seen below.



From here, you'll want to move it up one space (in the "Side (x/y)" viewport in the bottom right), as seen below



Then enlarge the height of the block to fit the four space that need to be made, see below.



Once it is done, you should have something like this....



Now, we'll just want to duplicate the leftwall so we have a rightwall, so once again, select the left wall using the selection tool, then hold down shift, and drag it to the right till it's on the other side of the floor / roof.

You will want to come out with something like this...



A little bit tricky part is making the top and bottom walls (looking in Top viewport), without making new brushes and by duplicating current brushes. So follow along very carefully. While in your top view and selection tool, shift + drag your right wall brush to the top side of the screen. You'll want to end up with something like this, and don't worry if it's uneven with the middle of what we have already, snapping will fix that after we rotate the brush.



Now that you've got something like that, click once (left click) on the brush and the icons around the brush will change from 8 squares that edit geometry to 4 circles that rotate the object. Very carefully grab the top-right circle (you will notice your cursor changes to a 360 degree rotational icon when you mouse-over these icons) and pull it down and right; be very careful however. You want this to be precise as all hell, otherwise we're going to have serious problems. Zooming in and out while rotating is possible, and it is recommended that you rotate it to almost 90 degrees and then zoom in and make sure you have it perfectly aligned at 90 degrees (all in a single dragging, do not let go of dragging until you have your perfect rotation). Once you've got your pefect rotation, click on the brush and drag it (NOT SHIFT + DRAG) to it's correct position, note that snapping fixes the alignment problem we had earlier. See screenshot to know what im talking about.



NOW we will Shift + Drag (duplicate) the wall so we have an enclosed room, so shift + drag the brush to the south side of the room, and close it up.



Now, using your selection tool, click into the blackness of space in your camera view (and if you haven't manipulated your camera so you can see what it is your doing, shame on you, do it now), so that you have nothing selected. Now, in your top view, with your selection tool, drag a large box that will grab every brush, and press enter to grab all the brushes within this box you've drawn.



You should have a nice lovely selection of 6 seperate sides. Here we will duplicate the whole setup we've made so we have a second room for our not-so-leet map. So duplicate your selection (shift + drag) and move it either above or below your current room (talking about this in the Top viewport).



Now, in order to make our hallway, one of the walls will have to be modified, but in this case we're just going to make it smaller, duplicate it, and then add in a roof, wall, and floor for our hallway, so grab the two walls closest to each other that are not in the same room/block/etc (south wall of north block, and north wall of south block), or just see my screenshot below to get the idea...



From here, we're just going to shrink this down into 3 squares, from the right side of these blocks (in the top viewport still), click and drag the rightside-middle handle (modifier, to change the size of the block) to the left, till the block is 3 squares wide. See below.



From here, we'll want to duplicate this wall set and move them over to the right side so we have a nice even 3-square wall on both sides of the gap which will inevitably become our hallway. So duplicate them so you've got something along these secksi lines...



Now that we've got our two rooms set up to recieve a hallway, lets setup the hall way. Now, we'll be making new brushes instead of duplicating; being that it'd take a little bit more time to modify brushwork for a beginner than it would to make new brushwork. So using your brush tool, make a new floor, in between the two rooms where the hallway will be. See below Smile



Now, from here we'll duplicate this (in the side or front view) up so it becomes a roof, so drag it 5 spaces up (4 inbetween).



Now is the time to make the walls; so on the right side, using the brush tool, make another brush that will act as a wall; see below, once again.



Then duplicate this wall to make the left side of the hallway.



Now, we've got two rooms and a hallway (double in height, but it doesn't matter, we'll get into dimensions later); time to texture it, add in spawn points, compile it and play it.

So, let start with the floors. Click on all 3 floors in the map, then click on the Texture Application Tool (or press Shift + A), you'll notice that their all highlighted like the previous selection tool, as seen below...



But what you don't relize is that all the faces for the brush are selected, which could pose a problem if the bottom side of these blocks become the roof of another room. See below to understand my meaning.



So, with that said, you'll want to single left-click (normal clicking i guess) on the 3 pieces of floor; clicking once on one and then control + clicking on the other two floor pieces. This way, you will ONLY have those 3 brush FACES selected, and not all the faces of the brush.

Now dealing with the Texture Application Tool window, you'll notice a few drop down windows, scaling, rotation, etc; for now we'll leave those along and only deal with "Browse" and "Apply." So, click on browse and a window will pop up with a couple 1000 textures, including but not limited to concrete, metal, plaster, tile, wood, floors, roofs, doors, humans, vortigaunts, antlions, combine, weapons, etc. It will look something like this but note that my currently displayed textures may vary from yours, this is ok, do not worry about it.



In the window where it says "filter," type in the word concrete and the browser will filter out any and all textures that do not have the word concrete within their name. From here, we'll select a concrete texture for our floor. So now that you're looking at concrete, find a nice concrete texture you like that would look good as a floor, here's what you should be seeing.



And I recommend, for now, using the texture that is in the middle row and is the third to the in the row, as seen in this screenshot (just barely noticable with a white line surrounding the selected texture).



Once you've found a texture you like, double click on it to select it, then click apply in the Texture Application Tool window, right above browse. This will apply the currently selected texture to the selected faces, changing it from the old one.

Now, we'll want to continue on the texturing with the roof. I used a metal texture for the roof, specifically for this tutorial alone, so it looks a bit funny. Either way, it doesn't matter, this helps you identify different textures and properties when you play it in-game. So here's the texture I chose for the roofs.



Now when I apply the texture, close out the application tool, deselect everything, and re-open the Texutre Application Tool, with only the roof and floors textured, I come up with something that looks like this...



Now, it's time to continue on the texturing with the walls of one of the rooms. For the first room (doesn't matter which room specifically, pick your poison), I textured it in tile. So in your texture browser, type in Tile to come up with a few textures. These textures are most notable from the Prison section of HL2 single player; but that's not the point right now. An example screenshot of what I mean is shown here.



Once you've found a nice tile texture, double click it then click apply in the texture application tool, all faces of that room are now textured with tile, but you'll notice that it doubles itself because we made the room 4 lines high instead of only 2 (but as I said, we'll get into dimensions in a different time, possibly the helpful hints tutorial). Don't worry about this for now. Now go onto the other room and type in Plaster. Find a nice plaster texture that you like and use it, same way you did with the Tile texturing.



Then, it's time for the hallway walls and it'll be finished with the texturing portion. So, I went in and chose another concrete texture, but if your in the mood for wood or something else, go right ahead.

Since I chose concrete, I chose something that's rather large and will repeat itself not as badly as the plaster or tile textures previously chosen; see below.



zomg YEAY!! Texturing is done!! It should look something like this, unless you chose your own textures which is perfectly fine too.



Now all that's left is to add in a spawn point or two and run the map. So with that said, click on your entity tool or press Shift + E; you'll notice that a few green lines will appear in many viewports, do not worry about this. It's only if you want to use a precise location for an entity, which is fine, but maybe a tad too advanced for a beginner. So go into your camera viewport and press Z, this will lock your mouse into first person view mode in the camera view, from here you can rotate the camera into any degree or angle you want, and using WSAD to move around. So move into one of the rooms while in this first person view mode, and click on the floor somewhere. You'll notice that a green model of what represents a mockup gordon greeman will appear. This is fine. See screenshot below for an example.



Now, you can do the same thing and make another spawn point in another room, or you can just duplicate it into the other room. Either way it's your choice, always good to have a second spawn point in a multiplayer map.

So, now with that said, it's time to compile this beast. See the following screenshot to know what the hell your going to deal with, as it is a bit hard for some people to see what it is you're looking for here....

So you'll want to find this small button on the top row of buttons, near the end on the right side labeled "Run Map! [F9]", so go ahead and press it or press F9. If you haven't saved your map already, it will prompt you to do so, then continue on with the Run Map phase. See below...



You'll notice there's a few settings in this window. Just keep them all set to normal, and check the box saying "Don't run game after compiling" since that feature doesn't work properly. It always garfunkles up.

When it's compiling, you'll have a compile window appear, and your system will be resource hogging for a few seconds to a few minutes or to a few hours (if you've got a behemoth of a map, it might take afew days).

It should look something like this...



NEVER EVER CLOSE THE COMPILE WINDOW!! EVER!! You may lose the vtm (the file that maps are saved as so they can be edited later) or the BSP (the compiled map) or you may corrupt the files.

IF for some ungodly reason you must stop the compile process, it is best that you go into your Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Delete), click on processes, click on hammer.exe, and then click end process. This will shut it down immedately and without any problems,

Once the compile window says something about copying stuff to the clipboard, close the window. That is the only time it is safe to do so. This means that the compile is completed and your map is in your HL2mp/maps folder, ready for play.

Fire up HL2DM, and create a server, find your map, and click play. Have fun.




More advanced tutorials are on the way. Use this as a base to understand your way around the Hammer editor program and get to know it's tool uses.


Last edited by Anshinritsumai on Sun Dec 18, 2005 10:33 pm; edited 2 times in total

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Anshinritsumai
PostPosted: Sat Dec 17, 2005 4:02 pm  Reply with quote
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Tutorial completed. Tutorial #3 - Lighting under way. Expect it up sometime soon.

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Audhumla
PostPosted: Sun Dec 18, 2005 12:59 am  Reply with quote
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Woo, thanks. Explained very well. Although the 6 brushes way works, you didn't explain the making a big box then hollowing it method... >_> <_<

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Anshinritsumai
PostPosted: Sun Dec 18, 2005 2:17 am  Reply with quote
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Audhumla wrote:
Woo, thanks. Explained very well. Although the 6 brushes way works, you didn't explain the making a big box then hollowing it method... >_> <_<


Oh yea, forgot about that...

Hollowing out things isn't recommended anyway, because then you'll end up with sloppy brushwork, same as carving. It will come out not the way you'll expect it Sad

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Audhumla
PostPosted: Sun Dec 18, 2005 1:09 pm  Reply with quote
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Don't you just make a thick box, then use hollow tool? people can figure that one out for themselves Razz

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Anshinritsumai
PostPosted: Sun Dec 18, 2005 8:12 pm  Reply with quote
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Audhumla wrote:
Don't you just make a thick box, then use hollow tool? people can figure that one out for themselves Razz


Well, ya, that's the general idea of it, but when making a building and you've already got a base ground level brush and a few more buildings, possibly with displacement maps (oooo, new topic!!), making a building or a room out of a big block and hollowing it will cause for some messy brushwork and confusing what exactly is what. Sometimes the added brushes would be useless or interfering with others.

I don't recommend this method if you ever plan on making a detailed map.

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