Duhhhh, Ummmmmm, Dahh, help me

[El Capitan II]

This question is like asking the all-knowing, almighty god what the "33" on Rolling Rock bottles means, but it feels like I've figured out what the meaning of life is, I just can't figure out those damn two numbers.

 

SO, Up until today, "V" would bring up the vertices on my patches just fine and then I would manipulate them to hearts content, singing of rainbows and unicorns and laughing gayly for hours. But today was a dark day, cuz I must have hit something accidentally and now the Vertices are evil Vertices, not allowing any one of themselves to be singled out - I can only highlight a line of them at any one time. I've answered every question I've had about Rich Diesal's tutorial myself, figured out every error I've had up until now, found the meanings of key buttons with a little logic and patience, and beaten god in a game of chess in under thirty moves. But them thar vertices have my panties all up in a bunch.

 

Duuuhhhh, Ummmm, Dahhh, help me

 

Thanx in advance

[El Capitan II]

Ok, so I found away AROUND that problem, though the answer to my question is still out there some where. But I have acquired one particularly vexing new question and another frustrating problem that I may just solve by the time I get back to check for replies. 1) How does one go about making a good spot light. Period. Artistic Interpretation, personal preference and insight, et cetera all welcome. One that differs from a radial light by more than just the name would be nice. And also, I have a feeling I'm just making a simple mistake, but I keep getting an error when I go to group my model and the clipping shaders together that says "Failed to Create Entity." I just walked off some frustration and I'm going to tackle it again, so maybe I'll figure it out. If anyone finds these messages and throws me a life line, THANX.

[Karshaddii]

As for the vertexes--I had that problem once--combed throught the Radiant manual with an electron microscope--but I couldn't find anything to fix my prob. So I re-installed it and all worked well.

 

As for the spotlights--I don't really follow you?

 

Im guessing you already know how to connect a light entity to and info_null using ctrl+k--right?

 

And if thats not good enough--you could always make a beam shader and color it the way you like.

[lassev]

I had the same problem with vertices just the other day, when I was doing nothing more complicated than a curved ceiling to my corridor. It was otherwise fine, but when I had to do the corner, where two curves met, it was a nasty thing to notice that althought the corner was fine, the curves had on the other, wrong end, also a shaped figure, where they should have had just a straight line, so to speak, 90 degrees, not the the reversal 45 degrees.

 

Eh, hope my explanation wasn't as complicated as it sounded. Anyway, using the 3D view for selecting control points led inevitably to the problem mentioned: the whole line was selected. However, it was the same thing with selecting just a one point by clicking using the 2D view.

 

Try selecting the desired spot (2D view) by pointing not to the control point itself, but near it, and drag the appearing selection square over the control point. This did the trick for me, and everything was fine.

[Karshaddii]

That sounded like it could have been a REAL big help....could you explain it again plz?

[lassev]

Me? Uhhuh. Well, anything for colleagues. I think I can now safely assume we were talking about the same problem, if it is a problem anyway, for to me, it's a solved one, as I pointed out.

 

To shape the curves using vertice control points with V command, you get visible thouse little points, that you can click with your mouse to select (SHIFT + click, I think). Yet, by clicking (selecting) the exact point with you mouse, in the 3D view or the 2D design view, you actually seem to select the whole line of control points. And so, if shaping a simple curve, you get a parallelogram:

......_________

..../............../

.../_________/

 

but you actually wanted a half parallelogram (ot what ever, English is not my first language):

..._____________

..I...................../

..I____________/

 

 

I hope these figures will show right after posting, I have no way to know, have I? EDITED notice: don't mind the dots, it won't show correctly without them.

 

So, don't select the vertice control point by clicking just it with your mouse. If you have noticed, when you are using V-command, you can draw kind of transparent like rectangle in 2D (just like in Windows). Draw this rectangle so that it captures only one, desired, control point in the corner or whereever in your curve. This is the solution I worked happily with.

[Karshaddii]

Neato!

 

Thnx for your time...