Source 2 Hammer: How to Create Interlocked Planks

You might have seen Olly Moss' tweet about interlocked planks in a hallway, all built within hammer in source 2, for Half-Life: Alyx.
This is what inspired this video, and you can see the tweet here:
/ 1286860372130103297
Download this map to take a closer look in Hammer:
www.dropbox.com/s/ap5xoao0n53...
I have recently released a map for Half-Life: Alyx! Check it out here:
steamcommunity.com/sharedfile...

[@maxwell_edison]

perpendicular

[@Saandy_]

Yes I actually meant parallel of course. Just wanted to say perpendicular because it's a cool word ;)

[@tavinmj]

hammer stopped being a level design tool and now is a 3d modeling tool

[@paulbunyangonewild7596]

Broooooooo. I for real though he went and made square brushes for each plank and actually modeled them, this is WAYYYYY BETTER!

[@LeafMaltieze]

Another way to do the corner is to just make the walls a separate disconnected object. Or, extrude down into the floor, then merge the vertices, then extrude up from there for the wall, thus hiding the ruined plank effect under the floor.

[@ThisIsGlitch]

this is soo cool, you are just cutting the planks in a way that looks good

[@tutpanorama]

Hey. Looking forward to other Source 2 tutorials from you. I liked it very much! Like, subscription.

[@mossshhh]

This is amazing ✨ more Tutorials please 💙 Subbed 👍

[@breakerboy365]

the edge cutting shapes turned out to be much different than I expected I thought there would be edge cuts in the same shape as the floor panels, instead of changing them into triangles (which probably makes source 2 happier anyway)

[@sasanekpl1130]

0:00 lol this looked just like real life, source 2 is great

[@arbuzxx]

Damn, that looks beautiful. Imma wait for CS:GO to transfer to source 2, and I'm going into full dedication mode for that. I am gonna create so much of this Interlocked Planks that everyone will be stunned by my extraordinary abilities!

[@hamzakhalil7932]

Its gonna take a long time for csgo to transfer into s2. So i would suggest just practicing s2 hammer now by download steamvr which is free and also uses s2. Im doing the same and practicing hammer for s&box.

[@shallex5744]

@@hamzakhalil7932 it's here

[@Linkz64]

I attempted something like this 2 years ago but I failed miserably, thank you so much!

[@Brucewillis235]

this was rely helpful thanks

[@AN7HROSwift]

They somehow managed to make the Source2 hammer editor both easier and much more complicated than Source1 hammer editor..... God this is so frustrating.....

[@Saandy_]

Source 2 hammer does take some time to learn as there is a lot to it. Having experience in 3d modelling and texturing gives you a step up! I would recommend this channel to get started: kzbin.info/www/bejne/i4vbpIeshcp3Z68

[@amber.mp4]

gosh i love source 2 this is so cool

[@Nyllsor]

Great little tutorial! :) More pls! P.s. Subscribed

[@admiral1279]

Thank you so much :)

[@LordExtrasus]

this is insane!

[@BKCqazlll456]

good video!

[@emmettbrown3463]

pretty cool

[@xXGe0rgEXx]

Thank you for making this video but the audio is incredibly quiet, practically inaudible.

[@breakerboy365]

increase volume

[@Xale007]

I don't get why all those arc vertex would be necessary

[@S4NSE]

cool video

[@SirYodaJedi]

If this were GoldSrc, you'd just create a new texture and call it a day, lol. I'm not familiar with Source 2, but couldn't you just not draw edges from the verts in the corner that don't touch the corner onto the wall? The wall is going to use separate material anyway, so if it needs to be a separate mesh to do that, I can't see that hurting anything.

[@Die-Coughman]

I believe its bad practice and hurts performance in some way. I think it either hurts performance or vis slows calculation speed. I'm not entirely sure. I'm still trying to wrap my head around building things with meshes.

[@gumballegal]

the more i try the less i understand the new Hammer old habits die hard ig

[@Saandy_]

Don't give up!

[@gumballegal]

@@Saandy_ ty :) i wont, its soo heckin cool!

[@1080pAdrenalinGaming]

Cool tutorial! How are you playing the map with a mouse and keyboard? Thanks.

[@Saandy_]

When you launch the HL:A tools you have to de-select the box named "Vr enabled" or something similar. After that you should be able to run the map in no-vr mode from hammer. This is not made to be used in any games, it's just to be able to look at and debug your map.

[@1080pAdrenalinGaming]

@@Saandy_ thank you!

[@Jofoyo]

Why do you manually triangulate the faces around the interlock? Surely the engine will do that automatically on compile to a sufficient standard?

[@Saandy_]

I triangulate those faces to be able to select them, and to rotate the texture UV 90 degrees (3:51). The two diagonal, parallel lines going across the quad help us to make the Zigzag pattern, and afterwards they can probably be removed so that the result only consists of quads, but at the same time there really is no substantial harm (if any) in leaving them as triangles. If you are reffering to what I'm doing at 3:18, I would say it's always best practice to not have any ngons (faces with more sides than 4) present on any mesh, and without doing this step, the big triangles on both sides of the quad would have a LOT of sides, as all the lines connecting two vertices counts as a side. In my experience, having ngons on your meshes in Source2 can lead to bad light mapping, and stretching textures.

[@Jofoyo]

@@Saandy_ Yes, I was referring to the latter. I'm not entirely sure how Source 2 handles the triangulation, but unless there's some weird BS going on behind the scenes it should have the same amount of faces and sides with the automatic triangulation. Flat, coplanar ngons typically don't cause any real issues unless your mesh is deforming using morph targets or a skeleton, so it really shouldn't be a big deal unless you've got some whacker geometry going on. But again I'm assuming Source 2s hammer doesn't do some crazy shit to the meshes. I don't have HL:A yet, I was just curious as to the new Hammer editor, but I really like what I'm seeing so far as opposed to the old BSP editor.

[@WilliumBobCole]

I also felt this was an uneccessary step, so I loaded up the hammer editor for the first time to test it out, and it seems that the engine is quite capable of triangulating n-gons without massively ruining your lighting or textures. It is possible to get some issues, but from what I could gather, what you see in editor is what you get in game, so unless you have specific reasons to manually triangulate, for example you need specific slope directions on non-flat geometry, you should be perfectly fine either way. I moved vertecies in all kinds of horrible positions, and the engine seemed to automatically (and in real-time) adjust the triangulation to what I presume is a "minimum energy state", but anyway, it seems consistent and robust so I really think the extra edges are not necessary here... One thing I wanted to try but couldn't figure out, was if it was possible to dissolve all extra edges EXCEPT those at the zig-zag seam, so that there was just one single face to select when rotating the texture, however, dissolving those edges seems to want to take verts with it, collapsing the zig-zag back down to a single diagonal line. It's not the worst thing ever, but if anyone knows if it's possible, I would love to know. My only thought on this is that maybe the engine for some reason doesn't want to have n-gons with concave areas? I don't see why though, since, as above, it is clearly more than able to triangulate the mesh smartly...

[@mazzaferno3123]

this is interesting but imo it would be so much easier/faster to just to make a corner piece texture..

[@Brucewillis235]

yeah but where's the fun in that

[@distanced]

Why do you need to bevel the corner at all?

[@Saandy_]

You don't have to! But in the picture I referenced it was beveled.

[@hydewick4333]

link for map is broken? I'd like to have it on hammer ^^

[@Saandy_]

Sorry about that! I added a new link that should work! Don't know what happened with the old one.

[@hydewick4333]

@@Saandy_ Thank you! You are awesome :)

[@longjohn7992]

What game are you using

[@Saandy_]

This is Half-Life: Alyx

[@pepecruz2172]

Siiiiiii

[@SneakyCorndog]

can't hear shit

[@wolfcl0ck]

This is pretty epic ngl

[@glitchysoup6322]

Why are you so silent?

[@Saandy_]

Bad mic setup and mixing.

[@SirKolass]

Damn, gmod needs to change to source 2, source hammer sucks.

[@Saandy_]

Yes! It's happening and it's called S&box!

[@AlfaPro1337]

Why is this Source Engine?

[@AlfaPro1337]

@@kreuner11 Nah, it's still Source. Source 2 is just a souped up Source engine, with in-house physics. There's no screen space reflections OR the latest, Ray tracing. I could still count the number of polygons on each model. Heck, light still baked into the map, instead of dynamic.

[@NotCamperPolska]

@@AlfaPro1337 And Source is Goldsource with havok physics,Goldsource is Quake engine with skeletal animation. If you keep breaking down,you will end up at creation of universe. Also, source 2 doesn't have raytracing or screen space reflections (yet) because VR is more demanding than regular PC game. Raytracing is also too new and too expensive especially during GPU shortage for average gamer to buy.