Patch VS brush for a simple wall

[ailmanki]

Imho you could achieve the highest visual quality by using patches. If the physics arent nice, use those brushes.
The nice thing about patches is, that one can actually configure the game as one wishes..

I guess UT can use that also?
http://wet.peyote.ch/netradiant/subidivisions

[Rylius]

I compile with -patchmeta all the time, this turns patch meshes into the usual trisouped stuff - that way I can exactly control how it looks ingame from Radiant. I can't control what the players have this cvar set to, so I'm going for this approach to get consistent results.

But I do agree, patches are a very easy way to create some quality visuals - I personally use them myself quite a lot.

[KroniK]

Rambetter's Pipe generator can only generate perfect curves, so I think it is ok if you only make bevel from square brushes for your curved corners. May be Markinho can confirm but if you want to create slim/fat curves, you can play around with the extrude parameters and then cut the generated brush, but it seemed to me not very convenient.

Ok So yes rambs generators can only create perfect curves, however creating something that is not at least based on that perfect curve is asking for lemmings!! Your bezier curves do not seem to provide any advantage over simply removing the top 4 or 5 slices of one of rambs pipes. If anything, because the steepness of the curve increases as you get closer to the peak, it is extremely likely that you will have MAJOR lemming problems! you can create just about any style of launch ramp using rambs generators by just removing the slices you dont need!

Besides having a slightly different look... i dont see how having a ramp that is not based on a perfect curve could give you any advantage....


EDIT: is there a tut on phong shading?? I think that this would make the ramps in my icy map look a lot nicer but idk how or what phong shading is and/or how to apply it

[vulture]

For concave curves you should never have lemming problems. Overlapped brushes (the best brush to use for ramps imo) basically make it impossible for lems to happen. In the rare case that there is an exception (e.g. if you yank out the end, leaving an exposed corner) you can fix it by adding a tiny aligned patch mesh, or maybe adding a shingle if appropriate.

[xandaxs]

Kronik. Check the CMM shader generator