Curves and Cylinders

Thanks to Darkone for the work put into this tutorial.

In this tutorial i will be going over the following types of curves:

Lets get started.

a cylinder is basicly a column,or tube.

first ill show you how to make a column.

1. Lets first make a brush 64 wide by 64 thick by 384 tall.

2. Ok now select the texture you want to use.

3. While the brush is still highlighted, look up top and look for the option "curve".

4. choose the following: curve/cylinder

5. You should now have a cylinder with a box around it.

Wow easy huh?

well theres a little more to it then that,not much but a little.

6. You may see that the texture you have chosen seems a bit deformed. Very simple fix for that,simply hold down the ctrl button and press N.

Now your texture should look perfect.

7. Ok o­ne last thing for basic cylinder build, you have to put a cap o­n it. So o­nce again look up top (while the brush is still highlighted) and choose the following: curve/cap/normal

Now you have a top and bottom to your cylinder.

note: If you didnt notice....the cylinder, top cap, and bottom cap are all now a func_group. a func_group, which i didnt go over in the func_ tutorial is simply a bunch of brushes in a single group for ease of moving,copying, and editing as a whole.

YAY! you now have a cylinder.

this kind you can actually walk through, or make a tube up and add a func_ladder inside of for a cool sewage system effect.

1. Lets make a brush, say 256 wide by 256 thick by 512 tall.

2. ok o­nce again lets choose the option curve from the top menu,then choose cylinder.

3. Dont forget to press and hold ctrl then tap N to set your texture.

4. Now instead of capping this brush we are going to do something a little different. choose curve/thicken,then choose how may times thicker you want it.

for this tutorial leave it at default of 8.

WOW...now you have a cylinder that you can walk through,hide in, oe whatever other uses you can find for it. I think its a great effect for the undustrial type of map.

why not bend the cylinders or tubes? Can we?

The answer is.....HECK Yeah!

1. ok first we will make a cylinder 64x64x512,set the texture by holding crtl +N.

2. This time you dont need to add a cap,well not yet anyway.

3. While the brush is still highlighted press the V key. The V key allows you to bend any curve or patch mesh by clicking and dragging thelittle dots that you see.

4. from any axis you can change the width of the top,bottom,middle, or even bend the whole tube to a 90+ degree angle.

5. in this tutorial we will make it a 90 degree angle.

6. You should now have the cylinder o­n the screen highlighted with a bunch of little green and pink dots all over it.

we will o­nly be using the top 3 dots. there should be 2 green o­nes and a pink o­ne in the middle.

Pull the first green dot down and away to make it look like a bend, then follow with each of the other 2 o­ne at a time, keeping in mind that you want to keep the cylinder the same thickness at this end as the other.

7. ok now you have an angled cylinder but,whoa flat like in the center huh?

ok now you will see the 3 pink dots kinda off to the corner of the bend cylinder. drag the top o­ne to the exact outer corner of the bent cylinder. see figure 3b for end result for all 3 pink dots.

8. Now all you have to do is put a cap o­n it.

same cap as we used in the first cylinder.

Oh and dont forget to hit ctrl+N after you make your curve to even the texture out.

Pretty cool huh?

you can use this to make pipes that go around corners, ducting for a nice effect, or just about anything you can think of. :)