[TUTORIAL] Doing a cute cave

[Spike]

A very easy way to make a quick cave with the subdivide tool.

First make an structure like that, this will be the base.

http://img79.imageshack.us/img79/1505/cavetutpt5.jpg

Now we are going to divide the diferent zones, so we can subdivide. To subdivide in a correct way all edges must be touching other edges of another brush, so our base brush won't work.

It should be something like that.

http://img79.imageshack.us/img79/7536/cavetut2tp6.jpg

Then we make it a displacement, but only the visible faces! If you subdivide all the faces of the cave it will crash! Only select the visible faces.

http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/1245/cavetut3hh2.jpg

It should look something like that, of course I changed the textures to fit the cave, now apply the alpha texturing and you will finish the cave.

http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/8445/cavetut4ey2.jpg

http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/3066/cavetut5uy4.jpg

All credit for this tutorial goes to a great spanish mapper called Baxayaun, I have only translated it and I've made my own screenshots.

[TotalMark]

http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/3066/cavetut5uy4.jpg

We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of OZ!!!!!!!!

[grazr]

It looks sort of alright there, but probably only because of your choice of textures. Sub-divide does not normally give beautiful results and should be used sparingly if at all. You might want to recommend people to give it a going over manually afterwards to make cliff egdes more rough and raw.

Sub-divided displacements scream sub-division ingame. Atleast to any novice mapper. Which these days seems to be most of the steam community..

It may be prudant to also include information on how to edit alpha textures. Don't be afraid to go into details. It's not very good to have someone read your tutorial only to go off and read another to understand some things you've missed out, even if they are half relavent to your subject. If they play a part in your result, explain it. Also don't be afraid to draw on your screenshots. This looks like it will only make sense to people who already know how it's done and can follow your words with memories of their own experiences of having done this themselves.

[MangyCarface]

Great little tutorial. Subdivision is an awesome tool, I think, but of course you need to then tweak the resulting structure with a high-radius geometry paintbrush. Subdivide produces too-standard geometry alone for natural structures.

Anyway, how to Paint Alpha Textures:

Filter your TF2 Textures with "blend". Choose one of these natural textures and apply it via the texture tool to the face you wish. Then, click the Displacement button in the texture application toolbox and click on Paint alpha. This will allow you to increase the amount the second texture is shown on top of the first. Experiment with radius and power to create good looking blends.

[YM]

I'd just like to say:

Do not ever leave displacements subdivided only if they are suposed to be 'natural' it will make you look like n00b of the year

[Spike]

Oh yeah, of course it need to be tweaked after the subdivide. I'll add more things on the tutorial

[LouisArmstrong]

could you tell me how i would find that nice grass texture you have on the very top?

[grazr]

It looks like a blend texture, so look for that in the name.

Try "nature/" in filter and "tf" in keywords. You'll get a limited selection in your pallette that can help narrow down your search.

It looks like nature/blendgroundtograss001b. But it's giving me odd grass sprites (They appear brown in hammer for me.. ).

[Cameron:D]

My blend alpha always look reversed in hammer, so dirt is grass, and the grass will be dirt in-game... really annoys me.

[grazr]

I used to get that for hl2 a while back, but it doesn't fot TF2.. I havn't compiled a hl2 map in a while.. so i dunno if it still does.

[Apom]

This one has been linked from the VDC's wiki page on displacements for a long time, and looks very similar:

http://www.hl2world.com/wiki/index.php/Tunnels

[Spike]

This one has been linked from the VDC's wiki page on displacements for a long time, and looks very similar:

http://www.hl2world.com/wiki/index.php/Tunnels

All credit for this tutorial goes to a great spanish mapper called Baxayaun, I have only translated it and I've made my own screenshots.

I took it from a spanish famous mapper who did a videotutorial about that (in spanish), so I translated it and uploaded it here

[Kill_the_Bug]

Very cool Spiker!! I think you did a better job than valve's boring tunnel in badwater - way to go!!