cremator@Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2004 7:17 pm :
A quick and dirty tutorial on how to make curved stairs in DoomED.

First, change your grid to size 16. (Or press 5 on your keyboard)

Now, create a 4x4 major grid units block (height isnt important).

Fig 1

Next, use the patch menu, to change the brush into a bevel.

Fig 2

Now, either create another bevel, or clone the existing one, and place it like so:

Fig 3

Create a brush that covers both bevels completly:

Fig 4

Now, the hardest part. With the brush that covers both bevels selected, change your grid size to 1, by using the grid menu or pressing "1" on your keyboard.

Zoom in to the outer bevel, you'll notice the bevel isn't a perfect curve, but broken into segments of bends. Where the bevel bends is where we'll be making our cuts.

Press "X" to enable the clipping tool. Find a point in the bevel where the curve changes directions (even if slightly). The key here is to locate the bend in where the 2 lines meet on a grid point (I know this sounds complicated, but it isn't)

See here for what I mean:

Fig 5

Now, with the clipper tool enabled, click on this meeting point. A blue dot should appear. You'll need to make 2 dots for a complete 2 point clipping to occur, your next point will be at the corner of the block, on the complete other side:

Fig 6

Now, after you have your 2 points, hold shift and press ENTER. This will clip the brush, but save both sides (you need to save both peices).

Hit ESC a few times until nothing is selected. Now, Select the large peice of the brush, and continue the clipping process like you did on the first stair:
Progress 1

Progress 2

After you've got all of them chopped up, they should look like stairs from the top view. If you want, you can clean them up by clipping the parts that hang out of the bevels:

Fig 7

Fig 8


If you've managed to make it this far, then its time to make the stairs into stairs. Start by changing your grid back to size 8. (Press 4 on your keyboard)

Select all of the steps (everything except the bevels):
Fig 9

8 unit stairs are really smooth, so make sure you drag all of the selected brushes down to 1 grid block (with the grid 8 option on)

[url=http://webpages.charter.net/moze/curvedtut/10.jpg] Fig 10
[/url]

Now, deselect the first step, since its already at the right height:

Fig 11

Drag the selected steps up 1 block. Then deselect the 2nd step. Drag the rest up 1 more block, deselect the 3rd block. Drag the rest up 1 more block, deselect the 4th block. Get where we're going with this?

Finally, you can delete the patches if you want your steps to not have walls. They were simply a guide for my stairs.

Ingame Shot

Zip File containing the .map


UPDATE
Some people may have been confused on where I told you to clip at. Hopefully this will help you more.



A bevel isn't a perfect curve. It contains subdivisions, which are basically different patches that go at a slightly different angle to either make the curve smoother, or rougher.

It's best to go by the subdivisions on a patch when clipping the steps, especially if you want to use a curved wall around the steps.

Here is a bevel with the subdivisions lowered.
The red arrows point out the bends in the bevel, which is a good place to clip for your stairs.

It may take a keen eye to do this with default bevels since they have a higher number of subdivisions (bends). Hope this clears it up for you.


I realize this may not be the BEST way to do curved stairs, but hopefully it will give some new mappers the chance to learn how things are done. Also, I went really fast on explaining the methods of doing this. If anyone is lost, feel free to post in this forum or message me on the doom3world channel on irc.



sodar@Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2004 7:25 pm :
Good Job! Bookmarked.



Black Dog@Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2004 7:48 pm :
That's the method I use, except I use the polygon function. :)

One more thing: if your clipping is accurate, you can speed the process up by only doing a 45 degree section of the stairs. To complete your stairs you then copy and rotate/mirror that section, and assign heights after everything is in place.



Origin73@Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2004 7:57 pm :
Very nice! Thanks!



cremator@Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2004 8:40 pm :
Black Dog wrote:
That's the method I use, except I use the polygon function. :)

One more thing: if your clipping is accurate, you can speed the process up by only doing a 45 degree section of the stairs. To complete your stairs you then copy and rotate/mirror that section, and assign heights after everything is in place.


Mind sharing? I haven't heard of that method before.



MaTT-RG@Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2004 8:51 pm :
What is the best way because I don't like this one. I don't understand how the outer bevel is supposed to meet up with the smaller one because the bigger one has more bends in it also I don't understand how I'm supposed to see all thoose bens in the big one becuase I see jaggies everywhere and when you get close to the outer bevels bend it becomes very hard to even tell.



cremator@Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2004 8:56 pm :
MaTT-RG wrote:
What is the best way because I don't like this one. I don't understand how the outer bevel is supposed to meet up with the smaller one because the bigger one has more bends in it also I don't understand how I'm supposed to see all thoose bens in the big one becuase I see jaggies everywhere and when you get close to the outer bevels bend it becomes very hard to even tell.


Well, you could use map models to do this with. But I'm unsure of what you said. You use the outer bevel to find the line changes. Sure it takes a keen eye, but on grid 1 it isn't extremely hard to notice.



cremator@Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2004 9:17 pm :
Ok, to go into better detail Matt.

A bevel isn't a perfect curve. It contains subdivisions, which are basically different patches that go at a slightly different angle to either make the curve smoother, or rougher.

It's best to go by the subdivisions on a patch when clipping the steps, especially if you want to use a curved wall around the steps.

Here is a bevel with the subdivisions lowered.
The red arrows point out the bends in the bevel, which is a good place to clip for your stairs.

It may take a keen eye to do this with default bevels since they have a higher number of subdivisions (bends). Hope this clears it up for you.



Black Dog@Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2004 8:54 am :
Quote:
Mind sharing? I haven't heard of that method before.


Sure. Some things to be aware of; vertexes aren't distrubted evenly or in the grid in DoomEdit's poly function for some reason. I use GTKRadiant to make stairs. Also, circular brushes created with the poly function and bevels are not quite the same shape.

These are the steps.

:Draw a square brush four times the radius of your stairs' inner curve.

:Convert it to a polygon using the polygon function (brush menu -> arbitrary sided). The max is 32 sides, which does limit the number of stairs you can produce. 32 sides will give you 8 stairs per 90 degrees.

:Clip the polygon in half, then clip that to a perfectly even 45 degree segment. You now have an eighth of a circle.

:Repeat that, this time with the radius of your stairs' outer curve. Use the same center point so that both brushes overlap.

:Select both brushes, and hit v to enter vertex mode (so you can see the vertexes), and x to enter clipping mode. Clip the brushes radially (center to edge) using vertexes as a guide. This needs to be done accurately with a grid size of 1.

:For each stair, clip to the inner curve. Discard the inner brush. If you want more stairs than a 32 sided poly can give, then at this stage you can split each stair manually, and if you want walls, place a angled brush at the end of each stair.

:You now should have a 45 degree segment of flat brushes. To make a longer staircase, select them all->clone->z rotate->x (or y) mirror->move the cloned stairs into place. To make yet more, simply clone->rotate->mirror another 45 degree segment. If you want you can use one 45 degree "template" many times to create a spiral staircase without much work (though you have to be careful to keep everything separate on the Z-axis).

:Edit the heights of all your brushes to create the stairs, then texture.


I think your method is probably better. Using patches for the walls is easier, and you can also easily change the number of stairs produced with the method by altering the subdivisions of your guide patches. The only thing you aren't doing is the 45 degree template clone/rotate/mirror thing, which saves quite a bit of work.

Nice one! :)



Black Dog@Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2004 9:07 am :
I can never resist a bit of pimpage: here's an example of the technique in good old Q3. There was a Q2 map by Kamarov with a room very much like this, so maybe it's just as well that the map was never completed.

Nice stairs though. :)

Image



Th0r4z1n3@Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2004 9:26 am :
I used this tutorial for making a spiral staircase but can also be used for just curved staircases I guess (by deleting the brushes not needed)

http://planetquake.com/bubba/spiral1.html

It's another method than this one.



bb_matt@Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2004 10:49 am :
Nice one cremator !
Added to the tutorial list.



SonyVaio@Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2004 6:43 pm :
how do i clip the edges thats what you have missed out
:oops:



irishlostboy1980@Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2005 8:47 am :
where are the pics? 404 file not found. can we please have the pics back? i wanna make stairs. :cry:



voldemort@Posted: Fri Oct 07, 2005 4:24 pm :
Was boning up on some of the tutorials here when I saw this one but unfortunatley the pics are gone

Dont know how It was done here for sure but the fastest Way Ive found to create a circle stairway is this

FIrst create a round opening in the top floor
next create a cylender the heigth of the stairwell (this will be the center collumm

Lets assume that even the steps are rounded

if thats the case simpy create a brush the rough dimensions you need for the step

Then go to the patch menu and select more endcaps

then square endcap

this gives you a nice 1/2 cirlce bevel


Now while its selected hit SHIFT+C

select endcap this creates the rough stair
now simply begin the cloning and rotation process

But maybe you want wedge shaped stairs for your round staricase

thsi is just as simple instead of square endcap use a square bevel



andrew johnson@Posted: Fri Oct 07, 2005 6:48 pm :
er i tried look at pics but the links is broken! please could you fix it



voldemort@Posted: Fri Oct 07, 2005 7:06 pm :
heres some simplistic shots on the individual stair createion
Image
Image