Making curved roads in Hammer Editor (like in Highway 17)

[@wisdomax2891]

you can tell he has a lot of experience in hammer by the frequent references to depression, insanity and death. incredible tutorial, reminds me of 3kliksphilip.

[@awesomegraczgie2131]

hammer and mental health (deterioration) go hand in hand :D thank you!

[@guessimissedthelz32]

@@awesomegraczgie2131 The internet is made for disagreement, but I as a twitter user has found nothing to disagree on, I agree.

[@kuklama0706]

Ones unaware of QuArK editor shall suffer.

[@jorge_781]

"an ancient piece of garbage nevertheless the best software ever made"

[@awesomegraczgie2131]

better than Vegas Pro :P

[@Fesiug]

Educational. Informational. Even had health & safety warnings regarding prolonged exposure to Hammer! Many subscribed and likes and thanks.

[@awesomegraczgie2131]

glad you've enjoyed it :) hope you won't get depressed nor become insane :D

[@s_callahan]

no way is that fesiug

[@Fesiug]

@@s_callahan Yea

[@rmod8]

This is an amazing tutorial. This video is definitley going into my tutorial collection for this absoltuely ancient software

[@randalhopkins9984]

It's fairly ancient but with Hammer++ being out it's closer to a modern mapping software, not to mention Source 2's editor being as advanced as it is

[@retr0breezy]

I think I have learnt more from you than any other hammer tutorial. I love the humor please do more hammer tutorials!!

[@jezihh]

Insanely good advice to tell people dont try to recreate stuff from tutorial videos,since if it fails it can cause anger and sadness..

[@awesomegraczgie2131]

honesty and genuine care for my audience :D

[@JakeBeatz]

little tip, use arrow keys to nudge using vertex tool, it will avoid the brush from becoming invalid from any mistakes when changing it

[@TinyDeskEngineer]

That's something you can do?

[@JakeBeatz]

@@TinyDeskEngineer yes enable arrow key nudge in settings or google it, valve has documentation on how to enable and use it

[@Wadetata]

@@TinyDeskEngineeryep

[@InfoDisco]

You know its funny, Im currently trying to design an object/level editor for my game engine, and thought to myself: "Why am I trying to reinvent the wheel? I'll just see how other editors work" within 10 minutes of searching about the hammer editor, its clear that everyone hates it LMAO. I suppose not a great editor to replicate then!

[@awesomegraczgie2131]

Hammer editor is not great, but in my opinion brush based level design is the way to go and if I were to make my own editor I wouldn't go with anything else than that. First: brushes with worldspace texturing give mapper freedom, they are not limited to the model assets, they can make whatever building with whatever textures they can and add extra detail assets on top of that. Second: there is a wide spread misconception that brushes = BSP. That's not true. BSP is heavily associated with brushes because of Quake, GoldSrc and Source, but you don't need to use BSP in your game engine for brush based maps to work. Brushes are just regular collection of vertices, edges and faces just like any other digital geometry.

[@InfoDisco]

@@awesomegraczgie2131 Thanks so much for the detailed reply, I will now be looking more into both brushes as well as world space texturing! And while it's great to know that BSP isn't necessary, my game engine does indeed rely on BSP in order to handle hitscan collisions. (It's probably not actually BSP, but some similar compartmentalization algorithm). Are there any other editors you've used that are widely liked and could give me some better inspiration than hammer? Thanks!

[@awesomegraczgie2131]

sadly I only used hammer editor, but look into Radiant, I believe it's an editor for Call of Duty? Don't know, type in Radiant mapping. The program looks quite similar but also things like displacements are much better.

[@InfoDisco]

@@awesomegraczgie2131 Sorry for the late reply but I really appreciate this recommendation, thank you!

[@IAhmadGT]

​@@InfoDiscodo you make devlogs? I'm really Interested to see what you making! Also there is a community made hammer called hammer++ you can see the new features added to it.

[@puzzlepuddles6712]

never really attempted to make this but the triangles tip is pretty handy for vertex tool enjoyers like myself. great tutorial

[@muxinmuffin]

A modern example of curved roads can be found in Black Mesa's c2a5a (Surface Tension). You'd almost think they were spline paths, but they are simply arch displacements on a flat plane that were gently raised to create a hill. The result is nothing less than fascinating and even practical. The surrounding terrain corners also smartly used vertex manipulation to form a wedge with 4 vertices, allowing them to be displacements and sew to the road. The techniques used are similar to those in the tutorial, but more malleable and a lot less tedious because of being made of displacements.

[@s_callahan]

thanks for explaining the math so well, it may be an odd compliment but this is a very digestible easy to watch tutorial tutorial compared to many i've seen. tldr good shit bro 🤘

[@awesomegraczgie2131]

thank you so much! it's super cool to hear :) Maybe I'll make some more hammer tutorials in between shitposting

[@CBCguy]

Great tutorial and great comedy! Also spot on warnings.

[@awesomegraczgie2131]

thank you, much appreciated :)

[@AZSDXC8954]

now i see why half-life 2 took 6 years to come out

[@TinyDeskEngineer]

func_detail brushes are static. They're part of world geometry, so there's no reason to add the keyvalues for preventing the use of the Physgun or any of the tools as those keyvalues will have no effect whatsoever.

[@awesomegraczgie2131]

yes, that's right, I don't know why I've been adding those to func_details. But they are absolutely required for func_brush

[@cargyllion]

@@awesomegraczgie2131 Probably PTSD tbh

[@DJBLVZD]

This is why im using Unreal Engine for my Half Life Mod. Mad respect to any modders that have used Source to create their projects.

[@thegreenfox011]

i actually really enjoyed this tutorial, good jokes, you seem like an awesome person

[@awesomegraczgie2131]

thank you so much, it's very nice to hear and I'm glad you've enjoyed the video :)

[@TheDurka]

The Highway 17 mappers should've got a raise from Valve

[@theyellowpepper9951]

amazing vid. its crazy how different the new editor is

[@marioguywastaken]

Very underrated channel ngl.

[@awesomegraczgie2131]

thank you :D

[@guessimissedthelz32]

i like the warning at the beginning

[@Aserverof]

i started using hammer through source 2. i cant imagine how people made actual maps using this software

[@awesomegraczgie2131]

it isn't as bad as you think, but it definitely is not as good as you'd expect a "modern" level editing software to be :P

[@puzzlepuddles6712]

i love the humor in this video too

[@vhetutor]

This is really good

[@aggressiveslav]

Fantastic tutorial, thank you

[@Marduk401]

I wish Trenchbroom could do this side to top texture apply too. :(

[@demogaming8895]

I wonder why valve didn't develop an easier way to make roads for their own convenience. Just imagine a Valve level designer struggling to build the highway 17 maps because of the roads, and instead of doing something about it, they said this is completely fine, let's just keep suffering

[@awesomegraczgie2131]

That would be a reasonable thing to do. With the access to Hammer's source code and few skilled programmers it would be quite trivial to implement, and I'm not talking about a super developed, advanced solution. Even crappy one would do - for example you lay the basic shape of the road with brushes, define the "height points" and the program does the heavy lifting of cutting the road into triangles, then moving the vertices up or down.

[@AccretionRecords]

4:05 when I click the vertex tool which selects it and go back to clipping tool it still gets rid of a piece of the road.

[@awesomegraczgie2131]

you need to click the clipping tool, not the vertex tool

[@AccretionRecords]

@@awesomegraczgie2131 oh ok thanks

[@Yourlocalwordrobe]

i was searching for tutorial about kint nodes and node graphs etc but i can watch it

[@pipe8248]

What a legend

[@SavvygeMediaGroup]

thanks im about to make a train i needed to know how to make a tunnel

[@awesomegraczgie2131]

making tunnels is simpler, unless you want a curved and inclined tunnel...

[@krystof0118]

Very nice tutorial

[@awesomegraczgie2131]

thank you :)

[@kingkurtis]

I think if you do this for a movement gamemode it can edge bug due to floating point inaccuracy, so mappers be cognisant of how you use this. Will work fine in most game modes though even if there is vertex shifting.

[@uncertaintytoworldpeace3650]

Nope

[@uncertaintytoworldpeace3650]

Can you explain what you mean? Sometimes I make stairs and ur making me worry

[@kingkurtis]

in surf/bhop you'll be pretty likely to have your speed interrupted as you transition between the separate brushes as there'll be a sub unit height differential between them, if you're just running around normally you'll be fine@@uncertaintytoworldpeace3650

[@smokingaccordionplaya98]

guys i dont understand what are we supposed to divide or multiply and whats width (im not a native english speaker)

[@Rexio-cg3gs]

Bardzo zachęcające intro do używania Hammera

[@awesomegraczgie2131]

cała prawda o tym programie :P

[@Rexio-cg3gs]

@@awesomegraczgie2131 Dobrze, że przynajmniej ten Hammer na Source 2 jest o wiele lepszy

[@awesomegraczgie2131]

testowałem go trochę, wygląda znacznie lepiej ale nie miałem zacięcia aby zrobić coś konkretnego w nim

[@yeth797]

No, naprawde xDDD

[@TinyDeskEngineer]

1:33 what kind of witchcraft is this

[@MARK2580]

It hurts to look at this, just use Hammer++, I can't imagine how it is to use the old wretched standard hammer. Also, func_detail cannot be interacted with in gmod in any way, so adding properties is useless.

[@awesomegraczgie2131]

about the func detail, yes, you're right. I've got a misconception, probably I've mistaken the func detail with func brush.

[@joaov1774]

hey, when i texture the curved road, the end of the curve ends up havingthis slight checkerboard look to it, any idea what might be causing this?

[@TinyDeskEngineer]

Is it a faint checkerboard pattern overlaid on top of the original texture? If so, it's probably because the road material being used will have cubemap reflections on it. In that case, it will look normal after you run the map, it just won't display correctly in most versions of Hammer.

[@Axolotl720]

You are literally the best

[@kuklama0706]

Try QuArK, it support HL2

[@chexo3]

There has got to be some internal tool they used to do this like once or twice then never released

[@awesomegraczgie2131]

probably, or they all went insane and that's why there was no HL3

[@martinseitune3787]

Sos un capo!! ❤

[@aparkedcar9704]

Dont tell me im gonna have to do math for hammer

[@preteritomaisqueperfeito4275]

the hammer is a joke

[@awesomegraczgie2131]

do the math! Otherwise the math's gonna do you ;)

[@spikeof2010]

doing gods work

[@fridge-j3r]

very good tutorial

[@burningjdm]

Nice!

[@Thanatos6000]

figured it out. changed my mind tutorial isn't bad

[@redscarfinfinite9743]

The only good part of hammer is not needing to learn how to code just to use it

[@denifnaf5874]

No wonder this gsme took 5 years to make

[@TinyDeskEngineer]

On top of the fact that creating a new game engine along with a new game to go along with it usually isn't very easy.

[@awesomegraczgie2131]

I guess they are currently developing a helium cooled quantum computer, powered by Xen crystals for Half-Life 3. That would explain the long time it takes

[@denifnaf5874]

​@@awesomegraczgie2131 and simulating all the induvidual nose hairs on barney

[@MaYeRsDz94]

what a nightmare

[@b3ntley412]

Youre going too fast. Gotta slow down a bit lol

[@memmoman]

[@thelastcube7886]

oh no... maths...

[@SK1N_WALK3R]

I aint doin all that, back to roblox studio.

[@maxik2693]

Yeah, of course, to do this in 2023, it's necessary to have schizophrenia. It seems to me that such things are easiest to do in the same Blender, and then export them using the addon in .vmf, why suffer such a f*ck 🤨🤨🤨🤨

[@awesomegraczgie2131]

that's a reasonable perspective. But for someone who spent years tinkering with hammer it's much easier to do it that way, than to throw the Blender into an equation. But hey, if you have a way of going from Blender to hammer - that's great!

[@maxik2693]

@@awesomegraczgie2131 I will say this, in a blender such things are done much easier and faster. It has a set of tools that speed up the creation of complex geometries, unfortunately, the Hammer editor does not have this... In general, these tools are present in any modern 3D package. The same road, there you can easily change its angle, direction, and so on. I'm already silent about "geonodes" in blender, which can completely automate the creation of a road.

[@maxik2693]

There are several add-ons for Blender that allow you to export your model to .vmf format. Of course, for high-quality exports, certain rules must be followed.

[@awesomegraczgie2131]

I agree, but at the end of the day it all comes down to personal preference. One may prefer spending 2 hours in Hammer than 20 minutes in Blender

[@trax8207]

As someone who's never used the hammer editor, this looks so overcomplicated for no reason. Even the Roblox editor is a thousand times better and much more simple.

[@MenachemSchmuel]

this is an internal valve tool that hasn't been updated since 2004

[@madbanana22]

the roblox editor is built to be easy and intuitive this is a piece of ancient history that should have never left valve software

[@BigSavageG]

Hammer editor is a piece of garbage nevertheless is the best software ever made. Nice contradiction. You could have used Hammer ++ since original Hammer is cancer

[@tskysmilles]

epic