Greetings!

So happy that I finally managed to run the Hammer, and with help of wiki tutorials did my first map.

Before doing anything next, I would like to get my whole level design accustomed to, for me, one crucial thing. Walls size and textures scale. Because one image is better than thousand words, here is what I am trying to achieve:

http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/1417/thist.png

What scale do you use for texturing your levels?
When using 0,25 x 0,25, it seems very good according to hammer grid, but it looks too big in the game.

the scale 0,15 x 0,15 looks better (at least to me), but has problems with scaling according to grid. And playing with the offsets may be good for actual edge, but on the other side of wall it may break another edge... So *I would like to use smaller scale than 0,25 that also does fit the editor grid somehow.

I hope this ..makes some sense

thanks for any advance!

0.25 is the standard value. If you want to use an odd value you'll have to have unusually sized walls and align them manually.

Stick with 0.25x0.25 as far as texture dimensions go. With most of the white/black tile textures that's what's used ingame and it looks the best. As far as alignment goes, it's usually good to set Hammer's grid size to 8 or 16 (I prefer 8; use the [ and ] keys until one of the small numbers in the lower-right corner of the window turns to 8 or 16). Making brushes that have dimensions of powers of two (32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, etc) will always ensure that the textures fit, but you can easily make smaller brushes' textures fit. The smallest tile texture at 0.25x0.25 will fit on a brush that is 32x32, and the tiles double in size from there.

Finally, just experiment. That's the only way you'll be able to improve your work.

yep, that's what I'm talking about. Assuming that textures are 256x256px (or 512x512) images

the 0.25 scale means 512x0.25 = 128 grids
while 0.15 scale means 512x0.15 = 76.8 grids ( .8 !!!)

so the only chance is to use textures that are already splitted into more tiles like...4x4 instead of 1x1 / 2x2

Thanks for replying. I am going to get more creative and read some more on wiki and play with brushes.

You can also use the Face Edit Tool to re-align the textures so the lines meet together properly. Use the arrows near "Texture Shift" to move the texture up, down, left, and right. But don't forget to click the brush before you try shifting anything.

Well, I got another problem.

I am following panels tutorial and something seems to be * up.
The wall panel is differently rotated in Hammer, and then differently in the game. IDK what may cause that.

screenshot: http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/3288/asddsb.jpg

the wall seems to be ok, but the wall arm is rotated strangely

attached two screens with map vmf

http://www38.zippyshare.com/v/601018/file.html

thanks for any advance

New to Portal mapping, but it looks like the same problem i had when i made my TF2 Payload map. I had the cart facing in the right direction, but when i compiled the map, the cart was facing in a different direction. All i did to correct this, was to keep turning the cart and compiling the map, until it faced the right way. Just do the same with your arm, rotate it and compile map again.

Just use normal texture scales if at all possible and use different sized textures if you don't want them to be "really big". Sometimes if you have weird alignment in a map you need to offset all textures in a room by 32 units or something, but that usually doesn't happen.

29A wrote:
Well, I got another problem.

I am following panels tutorial and something seems to be * up.
The wall panel is differently rotated in Hammer, and then differently in the game. IDK what may cause that.

screenshot: http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/3288/asddsb.jpg

the wall seems to be ok, but the wall arm is rotated strangely

attached two screens with map vmf
http://www38.zippyshare.com/v/601018/file.html

thanks for any advance

Look up the 'idle' model for the animation you are using. Put that in the 'default animation' box, so that it has the panel facing in the right way, rather than just the default way.