Portal Problem

[Blake]

Hiya, i've been having troubles with my portals. Basically when I'm playing in the map, and try to travel between rooms, I hit sticky sides and slide along an invisible wall in the doorway. I can wriggle my way through, but that's a challenge.

I've been looking at other peoples posts(from 2007 and further back ) and a couple people had the same issues. Something to do with the Boolean operation buggering up the faces and vertices? I read you have to realign them or touch them up, but I can't quite see exactly what the Boolean operation has messed up, if that is it in anycase.

Anyone have any suggestions? Been trying it for ages. Is there another way to cut out a section of walling? (proper new to 3dsmax.) Or will I have to draw it out splines?

Anyhow.. yeap. It's a pain in the ass

[Phlookian]

Booleans are fine as long as you remember to carry out repairs as you go (once the object becomes complex enough, each new cut will produce unneccessary vertices, you need to delete these and rebuild)

If you are working from the mike schell tutorial, he tells you to create a seperate piece of floor in the doorway (you did tag this as a floor, yes?)

It may also be that your floor sections dont quite meet. In this case you might want to adjust each vertice by hand to make sure there are no floor pieces that have gaps between

The answer will be simple, but I'll need more info here

Nice to see you're sticking with it

[Blake]

Heya Phlookian

Ah ok, I'll keep that in mind in the future with Booleans. Though, do you know a way to slice a section out an object? The slice plane seems tedious, though I might not know it's full potential. It just seems too restricting to be percise with.

Yeap, i'm working from Mike's tut, trying to get the basic thing down. I've tagged both rooms aswell as the doorway floor.

In regards to them not meeting, this might be my issue. When I'm looking at both rooms and the doorway in a viewpoint, it all seems to match up. But when I zoom in all the way, like properly, they are slightly off position.

I'll align them up after this and see how it goes. My only thing with that is, that it is going to be so tedious with any object. I guess I'll have to learn coordinate placement or something like that. Is there a way to move an object and have it snap to the grid lines as I move it about? I can't seem to get that down that way.

Proper basic questions about Max, but I'm getting on with it, just some lose ends.

Anyhow I'll give it the floor alignment a try with zooming in at maximum or coordinate placement.

Oh, I'm going to make a map the way I want to if it's the last thing I do

[Phlookian]

I don't know of a way to snap objects to a grid, however, I usually snap the rectangles/ splines etc to a grid before I extrude (make them 3d). Just make sure the left snap icon at the top of screen is highlighted.

I never use slice (& boolean a lot, but always go back and clean up the mess before moving on)

If you havent progressed too far with your model, i'd re-attach the floor/ walls etc back together and weld your vertices.

You can either do this by hand (drag your mouse over several vertices that should have the same location, then weld them (shortcut =control-W) you may have to change the weld parameters if they aretoo far apart

If you select all vertices and then adjust the settings correctly. you should be able to do this in a single stroke

or use the vertex weld modifier (always collapse the stack after using this

While you have your model as one object, this may be a time to locate things onto the grid. select each vertice at a time, and with the move tool selected (shortcut=W) check out the grid references at the bottom of the screen (XYZ). you can alter these by hand to make them make more sense (shortening to 2 decimal places, or whatever scheme you have in mind)

Once your vertices are located correctly, you can detach the various objects back to walls/ floors etc

[Blake]

Ah brill, I'll give that a shot tommorrow, that sounds like a good approach.

It was the alignment by the way. I zoomed in a aligned them all up and now it works. Well, works better. It's still giving me an issue with moving through. It stops me for a split second twice as I pass through the portal. It's noticable but besides that its a fluid motion through the doorway in comparison to the crappy way it was before. Still not good enough, but it's getting better

I havent' textured the flooring so it's all white, but i can see a vauge break between the flooring of each room and the flooring of the doorway. I'm not too sure why this is there because it looks aligned in Max.

I recon though I'll jump on the method you've suggested, seems alot more structured.

Thanks for the info Phlookian

[Phlookian]

All adjoining pieces should ideally have matching vertices at all points. I imagine that there arent any at the points where your doorway touches the other floor pieces. When you re-attach all your parts of the floor together, delete the polys without deleting the vertices, then redraw them making sure that the main floor parts include the doorway vertices.

[bitshot]

I always deleted the bottom of the door boolean. That is to say I did not use the bottom plane of the box created by the boolean process. Instead I would extend the floor of the room to go under the walls. Then the only thing you need to remember to do is put the portal on the correct side of the door. The portal should align with the joint of the two floor plains. The portal would then be on the stationary side of the door, the door swinging away from the portal which is the proper setup.

*EDIT* I got to thinking about it, sometimes I would detach the bottom plane and attach it to the floor poly of the related room. I did a mixture of both depending on the situation.

Since doing some modding I given much thought to the building process. If I were to start again I would let the walls extend through the floors just a little. This would help prevent glitching and create solid boundries.

_____________________________________________________

Hey guys, it's been a real long time but I still look in from time to time. Great to see things still rolling! Map making is soooooo addictive.

Cheers!

Edited June 15, 2009 by bitshot

[Phlookian]

Hey Bitshot,

Glad to see you're still kicking about

You're definitely missed around here

[migryder]

boy X2 that...

still working for Chris King?

You better download P2 if you're gonna be around!

mig

[Tinker]

Since doing some modding I given much thought to the building process. If I were to start again I would let the walls extend through the floors just a little. This would help prevent glitching and create solid boundries.

Hold shift and then pull them down to create new polys, then you can detach them and tag them as non 2d to ensure they do not cause any outside conflicts. Good tip for rocks and cliffs around the map, as well as walls and so.

[bitshot]

Hey Guys, Thanks.

I miss being around there too. I am not a King anymore, on to bigger things. In fact I have started my own business.

I have done a little reading up on P2, very impressive I must say. I will definatley need to download that. I will talk some more about that in the proper thread. But first let me say hats off to all of your hard work.

I have a map that I have built in my mind and should I find a few spare moments I may crank it out. The only problem now is how high that bar has been raised! You guys rock!

I am needing to get Max working again following a nasty virus that made me wipe the drive clean. I have attempted it but what I need is "activation for dummies"

So, onto the P2 thread for some more reading and brushing up!