Creating 3D Maps: Geometry
Creating Walls
Every structure starts with a foundation. Let’s create a sector.
I selected the back and right linedefs of the sector and chose the Extrude Linedef action, which extrudes a linedef (by a given distance and angle) into a new surface.
A surface is the same as a sector, I just use it to differentiate flat 2D sectors from 3D ones.
Applying the Extrude Linedef action creates two new surfaces with the linedefs as their basis.
I also used the 3D Iso Camera action to switch to a 3D view of the scene.
I selected the two surfaces we just created and ran the Extrude Sector action.
When we Apply the tool, the wall now has depth.
I used the Toggle Editing Geometry action to hide the editing geometry.
Extrusions are non-destructive. You can change the extrusion depth at any time by reapplying the Extrude Sector action—including reverting to no extrusion by setting the depth to 0.0.
Cutting Holes
Let’s cut a hole in a wall for a passage. Select the right wall and run the Set Editing Surface action.
After applying the action (or, if you have Automatic mode enabled, simply clicking it), you see the editing profile of the surface.
The turquoise outline shows you the boundaries of the surface you are adding profile details into.
Here I added a sector for a door into the profile. Each sector you add to a surface profile creates a hole by default. When you activate the isometric camera again you can see the result in 3D (I also applied a tile to the walls).
Holes in profile surfaces are independent from the extrusion of the wall itself. You can change the depth of the wall extrusion and the holes will automatically adjust.
For a gate, a nice decoration is to select the top linedef of the profile and apply the Arch action to create an arch for the doorway.
You can have any number of holes of any shape, edit the profile geometry for windows or reliefs in any way you want.
Hole-Based Actions
Instead of just using a surface profile as a hole, you can also apply the Recess and Relief actions to create a recess and relief of a given depth or height. You can drag and drop tiles for the sides and cap to the given action.
A more sophisticated profile action is Gate / Door, which uses the given icon to create a gate or door for the hole. The key is that, by selecting the sector, you can use the Edit Sector action to associate an item for the gate (set Item Name to the name of the Item Template). In the item behavior code you can then dynamically open/close the gate and make it blocking by setting the visible and blocking attributes of the item.
All this is discussed in more detail in the upcoming scripting chapter.
Creating a Roof
So far Eldiron has done the surface building for us. To add a roof we need to build a surface sector ourselves.
Flat Roof
You can select the vertices you want to create a new surface sector for and apply the Create Sector action
which will create a new surface sector. After extrusion and applying a tile the roof will look like this.
Gable Roof
For a gable roof we need to create new vertices. Undo the flat roof creation and select the two linedefs of the upper side walls like this:
Applying the Split action on the two linedefs will split them in two, i.e. create a new vertex in the middle of each of them.
Now we can select each vertex with the vertex tool, which automatically selects the Edit Vertex action. Here we change the Y coordinate of the vertex from 2 to 4, moving it up.
Selecting the four vertices and applying the Create Sector action again will create one half of the gable roof.
The Create Sector action works with both vertices and linedefs. Use it to create custom surface sectors for your geometry.
Of course you can further decorate roof surfaces or floors with profiles (recesses / reliefs) like we did with the side wall.
Shift-clicking geometry with the vertex tool creates a new vertex at the hit position—handy for quickly adding and connecting vertices.