Carving tool.

[witalldonebefor]

What tool is it? Like where is it? And if it's buggy why is it here?

[blacksmith123]

The carving tool isn't actually a tool, but more of an action (like hollowing). Basically, if you select a brush, block, whatever you want to call them, right-click it and press carve (or press ctrl+shift+c), it will remove and geometry that passes through it, sort of like scooping it out. It works just fine, and is pretty handy, but when you're working with something with a lot of faces, it gets inefficient and creates a lot of unnecessary or strange geometry that takes a bit longer to render.

[zyklus]

This is because the carving tool's algorithm is really quite simple. It's like a smart splicing tool (shift+x). It begins with the object in query, and for every face it has, will make a planer splice (a plane coinciding the face) in the surrounding objects. This algorithm is true when you carve a cylinder into a block.
http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/1546/smartspliceew7.jpg
Am I right? This algorithm is simple enough to work for every object* (mathematically, not aesthetically).

*Another reason why every object has to have planar surfaces.

[haymaker]

that is the general idea, but where the evil rears its head is in how many unneccessary cuts it makes, AND its been known to create micro-fractures/leaks along its own cuts, for instance in your pic, between 4 and 5 there may be a void less than 1 unit.

BAD.

A better way is to
1 create your template cylinder
2 make your brushes around it so that there is a square hole
3 fill in the remainder voids with vertex edited triangle brushes
4 delete your template.

actually, something very similar to this (http://forum.interlopers.net/viewtopic.php?t=3960)

[zyklus]

that is the general idea, but where the evil rears its head is in how many unneccessary cuts it makes, AND its been known to create micro-fractures/leaks along its own cuts, for instance in your pic, between 4 and 5 there may be a void less than 1 unit.

BAD.

A better way is to
1 create your template cylinder
2 make your brushes around it so that there is a square hole
3 fill in the remainder voids with vertex edited triangle brushes
4 delete your template.

actually, something very similar to this (http://forum.interlopers.net/viewtopic.php?t=3960)

I know, I was using this as a demonstration of the carving algorithm. However, a much faster way of doing the above is using the arch tool with the vertex manipulation :).

[haymaker]

Ah, good idea.
I've never had to run a hole in a wall so I was just going by what I know.
I suppose the arch tool would work for all kinds of curves, in and out, if you clip and vm it properly. That would be faster than drawing brushes, yes.

Another thing to watch for if someone's thinking about carving a door, apparently it will split the floor up if the carving block is in contact with it

[zyklus]

In such a case, I find that using the "clipping tool" an alternative to when the "carving tool" produces unsightly results. ;)

[Angry Beaver]

http://members.shaw.ca/dvdgillen/carvekitten.JPG


The only time you can ever use carve wihtout killing kittens is on rectangular blocks to save time clipping them would take.

Carve is usefull in the right situations, but most people can't get it right.

As for holes see below
http://members.shaw.ca/dvdgillen/goodcorner.GIF

[Geowil]

if you know what your doing and clip a certain area of a square brush so that carve doesnt completely murder it, then its ok.

(when i first started mapping, took a 256x256 wall, carved a cylinder into it, the wall was so fractured afterwards that pieces of the wall actually deleted themselves during the compile xD (albeit invalidness was to blame?)).

One thing i did notice, it makes extra brushes O.o. I carved an arched into a 16x256 brush to make a doorway earlier today (second time i have ever used in in a year and a half of mapping) and there were 8 excess brushes that were not there before hand on top of the actual door way that i had to delete just to delete out the pieces for the arch xD.


so really the final verdict on the carve tool should be intermediate to advanced approved, but people new to map making should stay very far away, maybe put a nuclear fall out bunker around the carve tool and seal it up even, from it xD.