MAKING PIPES

 

Making pipes is quite simple yet a very overlooked method of enhancing your level.

 

Note: I work with the smallest grid setting possible, remember that when looking at these screenshots.

Firstly a good texture for them helps a lot.

Filter:

gen- some good dark pipe colours

silo- a good rusty one

pipe- not very good but usable.

I will use the one under silo for this lesson.

Let's create the pipe first shall we:

Select Cylinder under the PRIMITIVES menu and then choose 10 sides:

Then once you have done that drag a dotted line out using the BLOCK TOOL and make it roughly 6 or 7 grid units wide. Then create the cylinder.

Now you need to rotate it so it is horizontal because that is how I am having mine in the tutorial.

Then once you have done that fit it into your level and stretch it out to fit where you want it.

Now that was simple wasn't it?

But what if you want your pipes to bend round a corner?

That is very simple, first clone the pipe and make it as long as you need. I made mine half the size of the original. Then clone again and rotate the new pipe and overlap the ends exactly. Make sure at this point it is all lined up with your walls.

Overlapping like the above pictures? Good. Now we need to do some clipping. While the pipe is selected click the clip tool (SHIFT-X) and then clip the edges off diagonally to make them bend.

Make sure you clip it exactly, just like the pictures.

You can use SHIFT-X to cycle the clip functions to make it easier. Once you have done that it should look like a really nice pipe.

You can see the difference it makes in the below screenshots:

That pretty much covers pipes for now. Be careful though because over use can make the level take ages to compile. My friend wanted a doom 3 style room and filled it with pipes everywhere. Looked amazing but took 1 hour 30 minutes to compile! lol!

 

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