Is there any way to make it stop moving the vertices automatically? It constantly wants to keep the brush shape valid, but sometimes I just need to get the brush into an invalid shape momentarily.
Then I need to cut the brush into really simple pyramid shaped objects and later csg merge them. The brushes get merged, but it leaved a line/split to one side that should be 4 sided polygon and then texture alignment goes stupid, the other triangle has the texture rotated some 90 degrees and the other one does not. Quite impossible to get the textures aligned properly after that strangeness..
Here's an image of that: http://koti.mbnet.fi/jeejeeje/misc/polygonstrange.jpg
They are just two brushes, but I was unable to shape them that way without splitting one into 4 brushes. If it just let me put the vertices where ever I want to put them...
Vertex manipulation, GtkRadiant
Radiant is a total cunt for this. It's the only functionality that I prefer Worldcraft for.
There isn't an option to change the way Radiant modifies brushes based on your action as far as I know. Wish there was
The solution I'm afraid is to get used to it. But by that I don't mean 'suck it up'. No, what I mean is learn to anticipate what Radiant will or won't try to do to your brushwork, then work out the sequence of actions you need to perform to end up with the shapes you want without going down a series of actions that leads to hideous brush mutilation*
For the brush shapes in your screenshot, the sloping underside should have been the last feature you added to them. It would have been best for the top and bottom surfaces to remain horizontal up until then. Always try to create surfaces that slope across more than one axis AFTER any other brush manipulation.
Your best ally for such surfaces is the three-point clipper. It allows you to create many of the sort of shapes in your screenshot without any vert moving at all. Can take a bit of practice to get your head around cutting in three dimensions, but it does work rather well.
There's also Edge Manipulation, which is simpler but much more reliable. Endeavour to make each action you perform on a brush as simple and axially restricted as possible, so move edges instead of verts when you can.
To sum up:
think through how best to get from initial brush -> brush you want
use edge manipulation first where possible
use the clipper second where possible
use vertex manipulation last, and try to move as few verts as possible and in only one axis
Lastly: your taskbar looks eerily similar to mine. Please stop it.
HTH
*that should so be the title of a map
There isn't an option to change the way Radiant modifies brushes based on your action as far as I know. Wish there was
The solution I'm afraid is to get used to it. But by that I don't mean 'suck it up'. No, what I mean is learn to anticipate what Radiant will or won't try to do to your brushwork, then work out the sequence of actions you need to perform to end up with the shapes you want without going down a series of actions that leads to hideous brush mutilation*
For the brush shapes in your screenshot, the sloping underside should have been the last feature you added to them. It would have been best for the top and bottom surfaces to remain horizontal up until then. Always try to create surfaces that slope across more than one axis AFTER any other brush manipulation.
Your best ally for such surfaces is the three-point clipper. It allows you to create many of the sort of shapes in your screenshot without any vert moving at all. Can take a bit of practice to get your head around cutting in three dimensions, but it does work rather well.
There's also Edge Manipulation, which is simpler but much more reliable. Endeavour to make each action you perform on a brush as simple and axially restricted as possible, so move edges instead of verts when you can.
To sum up:
think through how best to get from initial brush -> brush you want
use edge manipulation first where possible
use the clipper second where possible
use vertex manipulation last, and try to move as few verts as possible and in only one axis
Lastly: your taskbar looks eerily similar to mine. Please stop it.
HTH
*that should so be the title of a map
You lose for using PSP 8. PSP turned into an evil Photoshop clone (including extremely long loading times) with version 8. I stopped updating at version 7, and I still use it every day!
Or at least the name of a death metal album from 1991.Kell wrote:hideous brush mutilation*
*that should so be the title of a map
F. A. Špork, an enlightened nobleman and a great patron of art, had a stately Baroque spa complex built on the banks of the River Labe.
Goes kinda offtopic now, but whatever...
I think photoshop is much worse than Paint Shop Pro 8. Photoshop sucks really bad and I wonder why it's so popular in the media business. It's more expensive than Paint Shop Pro, it has worse user interface, which makes it very slow to draw anything.
Everytime I've seen someone use photoshop and the user has been a regular photoshop user, they've just encountered problems, like how to do this and this, while in Paint Shop Pro (even version 8 ) that stuff is about always visible or very easy to find. Also they've been very slow to do any drawing.
Maybe Paint Shop Pro 8 has some similar features like photoshop, but it sure has the same good fast interface as older Paint Shop Pro versions. Don't really know what exactly makes it a photoshop clone.. is it the custom brushes? Personally I think it's great to be able to draw an image and then make it a brush and draw some other image with the new brush.
I think photoshop is much worse than Paint Shop Pro 8. Photoshop sucks really bad and I wonder why it's so popular in the media business. It's more expensive than Paint Shop Pro, it has worse user interface, which makes it very slow to draw anything.
Everytime I've seen someone use photoshop and the user has been a regular photoshop user, they've just encountered problems, like how to do this and this, while in Paint Shop Pro (even version 8 ) that stuff is about always visible or very easy to find. Also they've been very slow to do any drawing.
Maybe Paint Shop Pro 8 has some similar features like photoshop, but it sure has the same good fast interface as older Paint Shop Pro versions. Don't really know what exactly makes it a photoshop clone.. is it the custom brushes? Personally I think it's great to be able to draw an image and then make it a brush and draw some other image with the new brush.
zbang!
Splash screen can be toggled off. Same with toolbars, you can float them or you can dock them to the sides of the screen. You can set the toolbars minimize or temporarily hide when you're not using them, if they're floating kind of and are floating in the way of your drawing. They can be disabled completely too.
Now that I just started looking how you can customize the program, I noticed you can change the menus, what's in the toolbars/make new toolbars, change the shortcuts and add new shortcuts for stuff that don't have shortcuts.
I've kept the interface pretty much as it is.. I have layers, materials/colours and brush variance toolbars floating. Tool options I have docked under the menus and tools I have docked to the left side of the screen.
I remember I had floating stuff in Paint Shop Pro 7 too.
Now that I just started looking how you can customize the program, I noticed you can change the menus, what's in the toolbars/make new toolbars, change the shortcuts and add new shortcuts for stuff that don't have shortcuts.
I've kept the interface pretty much as it is.. I have layers, materials/colours and brush variance toolbars floating. Tool options I have docked under the menus and tools I have docked to the left side of the screen.
I remember I had floating stuff in Paint Shop Pro 7 too.
zbang!
What's new in PSP8? I know there a few holes in PSP7 feature-wise, but I never remember them. Some sort of 'offset' tool to aid making textures tile is one of them.
F. A. Špork, an enlightened nobleman and a great patron of art, had a stately Baroque spa complex built on the banks of the River Labe.
Let's see... Some of these things I list now may not be new, but I'll try remembering if they were in version 7... I think I'll just list the interesting/useful ones..
Tools:
- Mesh Warp, creates some grid and points.. then move them to distort the image
- Warp Brush, lets you do similar stuff as the mesh warp, but this is brush, which has various modes to warp the image
- Scratch Removal Tool, kind of like some blur brush, but works differently (feels interesting, I just found about it)
Effects/Filters/Adjustments:
- Balls and Bubbles, creates lots of bubbles that can fill the entire image and tile, can have bump maps, shine and lots of other stuff, useful for making liquid textures
- that Offset tool, it can offset the image and wrap it around, so you can fix the seams or just to check if there are seams
- Seamless Tiling, automatically tiles the texture, but usually it's best to use the offset tool, since this tiling tool tiles the texture in somewhat stupid way
- Kaleidoscope effect, can also make seamlessly tiling textures, but it's more a special effect
- Some noise add and removal filters
Other stuff:
- edit selection like it was an image, using greyscale palette
- Close all, shows a dialog which lets you choose what images to save, so it doesn't ask the save or not question about every image
- batch process, possibly using a script
- script recording, put the recorder on and use some filters, resize, recolour... and then stop the recording and save it for using with the batch process
Tools:
- Mesh Warp, creates some grid and points.. then move them to distort the image
- Warp Brush, lets you do similar stuff as the mesh warp, but this is brush, which has various modes to warp the image
- Scratch Removal Tool, kind of like some blur brush, but works differently (feels interesting, I just found about it)
Effects/Filters/Adjustments:
- Balls and Bubbles, creates lots of bubbles that can fill the entire image and tile, can have bump maps, shine and lots of other stuff, useful for making liquid textures
- that Offset tool, it can offset the image and wrap it around, so you can fix the seams or just to check if there are seams
- Seamless Tiling, automatically tiles the texture, but usually it's best to use the offset tool, since this tiling tool tiles the texture in somewhat stupid way
- Kaleidoscope effect, can also make seamlessly tiling textures, but it's more a special effect
- Some noise add and removal filters
Other stuff:
- edit selection like it was an image, using greyscale palette
- Close all, shows a dialog which lets you choose what images to save, so it doesn't ask the save or not question about every image
- batch process, possibly using a script
- script recording, put the recorder on and use some filters, resize, recolour... and then stop the recording and save it for using with the batch process
zbang!
Offset and scripted batching definitely sound interesting.
Something similar to Mesh Warp was actually in Animation Shop 3 (part of PSP7), as an animation tool (it might have even been in AS1 but I don't remember), it interpolated the mesh vertices and faded at the same time. Useful for those cliched face-morph animations.
Close All is actually probably quite handy.
PSP7 had scratch removal btw. I found it handy as the first step in removing a watermark or other text stamp from an image
What I wish PSP7 had (though maybe I never found it), is a tool for the image browser... After opening an image, I wish there were left and right arrows so you can open the next image without going back to the image browser. Could be so useful for finding that perfect texture to steal
Something similar to Mesh Warp was actually in Animation Shop 3 (part of PSP7), as an animation tool (it might have even been in AS1 but I don't remember), it interpolated the mesh vertices and faded at the same time. Useful for those cliched face-morph animations.
Close All is actually probably quite handy.
PSP7 had scratch removal btw. I found it handy as the first step in removing a watermark or other text stamp from an image
What I wish PSP7 had (though maybe I never found it), is a tool for the image browser... After opening an image, I wish there were left and right arrows so you can open the next image without going back to the image browser. Could be so useful for finding that perfect texture to steal
F. A. Špork, an enlightened nobleman and a great patron of art, had a stately Baroque spa complex built on the banks of the River Labe.