Building With CSG

This page covers making Architecture the old-fashioned way: with CSG brushes that compile into a BSP.

For a gentle introduction to the concepts of unreal building, see Mapping Lessons, Unreal World & Unreal Geometry.

Creating Shapes

All building starts with the red builder brush. This is in a way a 3D cursor, which the mapper shapes and edits before using it to imprint a new brush on the world.

The red bruilder brush can be given new shapes with:

• Brushbuilders, the standard brush shapes in the toolbox
• Custom Brushbuilder
• 2D Shape Editor, a simple & powerful tool for making more complex shapes

Once you have a basic shape, it can be edited with the following techniques:

• Intersection and Deintersection
• Brush Clipping
• Vertex Editing
• Brush Transformation

It is important to align brushes and vertices to grid, to reduce chance of BSP holes:

• Keeping brushes snapped to the grid
• The Snap to Grid feature

Brush shapes can be saved to disk and reused in other maps:

• Brush Exporting And Importing

Creating Space

Making world brushes out of the red builder brush:

• Subtraction And Addition
• Brush Sinking
• Brush Order
• The Build process

Technical

Technical specifics on the objects and tools used in creating architecture.

• Brush
• Solidity
• Invisible Collision Hull
• Zone
• BSP

Architectural features

Techniques for making complex architexture.

• Making Curved Corridors
• Making Stairs
• Making Terrain (UT)
• Making Arches
• Making Trim
• Making Trim with the Extruder
• Making Flames
• Building A SkyBox

Effects

• Invisible Collision Hull: Glass and masked textures.
• WarpZones
• The SkyBox
• Making Liquids
  • Aquariums & stuff
  • Making waterfalls

Special surfaces

• Making Windows
• Fluid Surfaces

Facts & Techniques

• General Scale and Dimensions
• The Snap to Grid feature
• UnrealEd tips: add any general tips here for now!
• Brush Duplication (more of an interface thing but here for now)

Related Topics

• Topics On Mapping
• Map optimization