small portalable surface?
great hack 
could confuse players though. but if its for just a panel (like this) thats pretty bad ass
I had a similar problem with needing to portal small surfaces. I noticed that when I tilted the surface even 1 unit you could visibly tell that it had been tilted and it looked a bit messy.
So what I did is I had my rectangle of concrete texture flush with the metal wall and then put a wedge brush 1 unit deep over the top of the concrete and textured it nodraw (things textured with nodraw can be portalled). This means that it looks completely flat but actually isn't.
You can also tilt it way less than one unit.
Let's say 0.01, it should be totally invisible, but I don't know where is the engine limitation regarding coordinates.
How would you tilt it less than 1 unit in hammer?
if you zoom in ALOT, and hold (i think its alt (the no align to grid button) OR turn off grid align, and move really slowly you'll notice it moves in less-than-1 unit increments. but like he said the engine might have limitations that piss it off.
Hammer hates that have dimensions of less than 1 unit. Those lead to microbrush errors in the compile log.
gepy wrote:"The companion toilet cannot speak, however it can take your crap."Journey - no idea on length = don't know the % done
no no no, it hates brushes that are smaller than 1 unit in any of the three dimentions. That shouldnt be any problem here as that brush should be at least 8 if not 16 units deep.
CTRL+M > Move > Axis > 0.01