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From HalfLife 2 Knowledge Base

Today we are going to learn about Mr. Spike, and Mrs. Cylinder. And how they can be used to make some beautiful geometry offspring. This will cover some of the basics, and some more advanced usage (combining the two angles and other fun stuff).

Go ahead and fire up worldcraft, and create a new map. Don't be afraid it will be just fine... do it... DO IT!@%$!@%

Mrs. Cylinder

Okay, now that we have a nice fresh layout we will detail the usage of creating a cylinder.

So now select the "cylinder" in the brush properties window. Now before you make the brush take note of how many "sides" it has. This basically determines how smooth the cylinder is, the more you have the better it looks. The less you have the faster it runs. (For the purposes of this tutorial we will go with 12 sides)

So now you will create a brush just like you would normal create a box.

You hit the enter key expecting a square but OH NO it's round!!! Don't worry it's perfectly normal, cylinders are round that is how it works.

Alone this brush isn't very exciting in fact it's about as interesting as a fat guy on a bicycle with no shirt. :yak:

This is where out friend Mr. Spike comes in.

Mr. Spike

So we have our bland looking cylender woop de do. So in the brush properties window change cylinder to, no not box silly change it to "spike"!

At this point you probably rushed ahead and made a spike, and are now staring at it in confusion as it looks a lot like that box you love to use. Make sure when you select the spike it is setup correctly.

Notice the "sides" option is still there. Make sure you set this to 12, then make a spike that is the same size as the cylinder in terms of length and width.

And when you create it what do you see? A spike perfectly lined up with the cylinder!

WTF A POINTY STICK?!?!

WARNING: This section contains more advanced editing techniques using the clip tool. (If you so much as mutter "what about carve" I'll rip your throat out via your spleen.)

So you are probably looking at your pointy cylinder cursing at me because you wasted your time making a pointy stick. Well this will cover much more, than that. Remember that tutorial about using the clip tool that you most likely didn't read. If you have not read that tutorial yet I would STRONGLY suggest you go read that now before continuing.

Okay now we are going to play with the spike some more to give it a nice taper so do the following:

1. Make the spike realitivly flat (64 units tall in this case). 2. Select the clip tool from your tools panel and click the button 3 times so that when you clip the item it splits it into to parts. 3. Now clip the spike in half. 4. Select the top portion of your freshly cut spike. 5. Now make this portion 128 units tall 6. Again select the clip tool again and cut the top portion in half 7. And make the new top portion 256 units tall.

So now you are like okay so now I have a curved (concave) end. But what if I want to make it blunt? Fear not it can be done also quite easily just by changing a few steps so now do this.

1. Hit the undo button until you have only one spike. 2. Make the spike tall (256 units tall in this case). 3. Select the clip tool from your tools panel and click the button 3 times so that when you clip the item it splits it into to parts. 4. Now clip the spike in half. 5. Select the top portion of your freshly cut spike. 6. Now make this portion 128 units tall 7. Again select the clip tool again and cut the top portion in half 8. And make the new top portion 64 units tall.

And now you have a rounded pill (convex) shaped blunt end! No you might think why do this why not use the sphere tool? Well using the spike we can more easily modify and edit our shape than we could a sphere as you will soon see. Not to say it is bad, far from it the sphere brush is wonderful but for this it is not the best and should really only be used in a few circumstances.

How is this useful? Well combined together it can be used to make the following.

• Pointy sticks
• Tall columns
• Fancy looking support columns
• Stair rail supports
• Cheese rocket ships
• Make it look like you gave a shit when making your map but not using the box tool only.
• Make a nice tapered tower
• Lighthouse
• And anything your sick and twisted box shaped mind can think of.

Enjoy,

Gamer121 a.k.a. FuzzyFish