| Date |
Tip |
| 2002-10-03 |
Editing terrain can be a very tedious and troublesome task. If you need
to alter the height of your terrain, be sure to make use of the Lock Axis
feature. This allows you to lock the X and Y axies while allowing you to move
freely in the Z axis. The beauty of this is that you can easily manipulate your
terrain vertices in the 3D view without ruining your terrain.
To do this, click on the X and the Y button on the toolbar. Then, select
all of the pieces of your terrain that are touching the vertex you want to
raise or lower (do this by using ctrl+alt+left click). Position the camera
so you can see the vertex you want to move in the 3D window and then simply
select and move the vertex. This gaurantees that you won't mess up your
terrain by moving the vertex on the X or Y axis.
Couple things when doing this. First, if you accidently move the entire block
of terrain instead of just the vertex, press ctrl+z to undo it. Second, make sure your
camera is look in a somewhat upwards angle at the vertex. I have found that
the vertex sometimes won't move if you are looking down at it.
|
| 2002-09-02 |
Many people suggest that you build with caulk, then only texture the faces
necessary to ensure that unseen faces are caulked. I actually don't do it that
way. I build with the "notex" texture (it is the blue & black texture), then
texture the faces necessary and then do a Texture Find & Replace (Textures->Find/Replace...).
I find this easier because I use a lot of caulk brushes and building caulk on caulk
structures gets difficult to see. Using the notex textures offers a really sharp
contrast while building. Just don't forget to do that final find and
replace before doing a light compile!
The "notex" texture is under the Radiant texture group. If you don't have a
Radiant texture group, you need to add the word "Radiant" to your shaderlist.txt
file that is in your main\scripts directory.
|
| 2002-05-07 |
When linking entities you can either manually do it by creating the target/targetname keys on each
entity, or you can simply select the first entity (the source), then select the second entity that is the
target of the first entity, and press CTRL+K. That will automatically like the two entities.
|
| 2002-04-17 |
To hide the grid in the 2D window, press '0' on the keypad. Press it again to turn it back on.
This is great for trying to look at your map from a distance.
|
| 2002-04-15 |
The default gamma levels for radiant make the textures appear a bit dark. If you want to incrase the
gamma setting, go to Misc->Gamma... and change the value there. 0.0 is brightest and 1.0 is darkest.
At home I set the gamma to 0.5, at work, I use 0.8. Your setting will vary based on your particular
video card and monitor.
|
| 2002-04-12 |
When your level gets bigger and more complex, it becomes more and more difficult to focus in
on one specific area without having brushes and entities from higher or lower areas visible. A
great way to filter this stuff out is by using the Invert Selection (I) feature along with Hide (H).
Simply select the area you want to work on using any of the methods mentioned in the past (select complete tall,
select partial tall, select inside, select touching), then, with your area selected, press I. This will
invert the selection and select everything in your level except your area. Then press H to hide
all those selected brushes. Now you're left with just your area without all the other clutter!
|
| 2002-04-08 |
When using the clipper tool, instead of using the menu (Selection->Clipper->Toggle Clip) or
the hotkey (X), hold down CTRL and right click on the brush to set your clipping points. I find
that to be much faster and easier to use.
|
| 2002-04-05 |
Just to round out the theme from the last two days, I'm going to finish the week explaining
the other two variations on the last two commands I mentioned. The two commands are Select Touching
and Select Partial Tall. Select Touching works just like Select Inside, except that it will select
anything that the selected brush is touching whereas Select Inside only selects brushes
that are inside the selected brush. Select Partial Tall, is just like Select Complete Tall except
that it will select everything
that is touching the brush, not just what is inside.
The commands I've talked about the last 3 days are kind of tricky to learn and become familiar with
but they are very usefull. If you haven't learned to use them well, I recommend you take the
time to do so. There is no better way of hiding large sections of your level than by using these
commands.
|
| 2002-04-04 |
Going to continue the theme from yesterday. Today, I'm going to explain "Complete Tall". Yesterday's
tip, Select Inside, is used to select everything that is inside the currently selected brush.
The Complete Tall option does the same thing with one difference. With Complete Tall
(Selection->Select->Select Complete Tall), everything
inside the brush, regardless of the 3rd dimension, is selected. Sound confusing? It is at first.
Here's an example. Assume you are in the 2D top view (XY) and draw a brush around everything you want
selected, with Select Inside, you would have to change to the Side or Front view and size the height
of the brush to include the items in the Z dimension you want selected. With Complete Tall, it will
select everything on the Z axis that is inside the brush. This is a create feature to use if you are
quickly trying to select large parts of your map.
|
| 2002-04-03 |
Select Inside. This is a great little feature to use if you want to select multiple
brushes that are close together. Create a brush that totally surrounds all the brushes you
want selected. It is important to make sure you check the different 2D views to make
sure everything you want selected is actually inside the brush. Then, click
Selection->Select->Select Inside (or, there is a Select Inside button on the toolbar).
Once you've done that, the new brush you created will disappear and everything that
was inside that brush will be selected.
This is very useful if you want to quickly select entire rooms or entire regions of your map. Its
a little hard to understand by just reading about it. Load up a map and start testing it out, once you
get the hang of it it becomes very natural to use.
|
| 2002-04-02 |
Tired of losing all your hard work? Enable the "snapshots" feature by going to
Edit->Preferences->Other/Startup/Auto Save and click on the Snapshots button. When this
is enabled, gtkRadiant will make a copy of your map and put it in your maps\snapshots directory with
a numbered extension (ex: mapname.0, mapname.1, etc.)
Just be sure to keep an eye on this directory. It can get very large very quick. The
frequency that snapshots are taken is based on the setting in your Auto-Save field.
By default, this is every 5 minutes.
|
| 2002-04-01 |
To copy a texture from an existing brush to a new brush, select the new brush face
by holding down SHIFT+CTRL while left-clicking, then, use the middle mouse button and
click on the texture you want to copy. This will also copy the alignment of the texture, making
it a quick and easy way to line up your textures with no seams.
You can select multiple brush faces by using SHIFT+CTRL+ALT and click.
|
| 2002-03-29 |
When working in the 2D window, you can select a brush that is under another brush by holding down SHIFT+ALT.
For example, when working in the top view 2D window, it is difficult to select a brush because the sky brush
is always going to be selected first. Holding down SHIFT+ALT while clicking will cycle through all the brushes
that are under the mouse. Click enough times and you'll eventually end up at your brush.
|
| 2002-03-28 |
You can enable a filter feature for the texture window by going to Edit->Preferences->Display/Texture Settings and
clicking on the "Texture Subsets" option. This will show a text box in the texture window. Simply type in what you want
to filter on in this box. For example, if you typed in "wood", only textures with
the word "wood" in the name somewhere would be displayed.
|
| 2002-03-27 |
When using the clipper tool, instead of pressing ENTER to clip away part of the brush,
press SHIFT+ENTER to keep both pieces. This is great for breaking up a brush so you can apply
different textures to what used to be the same brush face. For example, if you have a hallway
and you want to add a trim texture along the top.
A bonus tip: Go into Edit->Preferences->Interface/Editing and click the option "clipper tool uses caulk". That way
when you clip brushes like I mentioned above, the clipped faces will be caulked instead of textured.
|
| 2002-03-26 |
If you want to see the exact dimensions of the currently selected brush, press Q. |
