Primitives and Basic Lightmaps

In this tutorial I am going to show you how to make some basic primitives.
At the end of this tutorial, you will be able to create these basic primitives:

To create different primitives you have to select the one that you want using the New Objects window.
Select the Block Tool and it changes the New Objects window to the privative option.

From this selection we can chose any of the above. (I will not cover the torus object in this tutorial because it seems to be creating invalid objects).

First of all I will show you show to use the block tool, even though you most probably know how to use it. :werd:

Block

To create a simple block press the Block Tool and then select Block from the New Objects Window.
Then click and drag in a viewport. Once you have created a block to your desired size hit Enter.

Easy!

Wedge

Wedge’s are just as easy as a Block. With a block you could manipulate it to be a Wedge but it’s much easier to just create a Wedge. So select Wedge from the New Objects Window and then click and drag on the Viewport to your desired size and hit enter.
Wedges come out sideways; but that’s no problem. Exit the block tool and go into the Selection Tool. Select the Wedge and hit, Ctrl+M . Or just Right Click on the wedge in one of the ViewPorts and select Transform

With Rotate mode selected, under the Values collum enter 90 under X and click OK.
Your block should look like this (maybe with a different texture though):

Easy!
Cylinder

With the rest of the Objects you have options. How many Faces you want the block to have etc…

Faces/Lightmaps
When creating an object you get the choice of how many faces you would like to have. If you have more the block may look smoother but it could be more expensive on your computers resources. If you were creating an object that was far away then you could use less faces and vice versa. Or in a small detailed map you could use more faces. But there is an alternative.
I won’t go into to much detail but; Lightmaps are a good way to control the smoothing/sharpness of an object with light. To put it simply; Lightmaps control the smoothing of an object and control static shadows. They are not as expensive as creating more faces. Every block that is textured has a default Lightmap, is 16.
To change a Lightmaps properties, open up the Texture Application.

On the right you can see the Lightmap scale box. Generally the lower the number the ‘sharper’ the face(s) will look, and vice versa. The lower the number is it generally will look better. But you may have to toy around to find an ideal number.

Here’s an example of two blocks that are exactly the same but have two separate Lightmap scales:

The left cylinder has a Lightmap scale of 4, and the right has a Lightmap scale of 16. The screenshot has lost a bit of quality but, in game there is a difference. The cylinder only has 14 faces, the most you can have is 32. (I will go into more detail about Lightmaps in another tutorial)

Lets move on to creating the Cylinder then.
Like creating any other block you choose what size you want it to be, then choose how many faces you want. If you were creating a proper cylinder then I would recommend any number of faces over 7, depending on the amount of detail you require.

Spike
Once you have the basic grasp of creating a block with a custom amount of faces its easy to do time and time again.
So the same concept with the cylinder applies to creating a Spike. With the spike though the textures may come out at an angle.

Sphere

When creating a Sphere you need to take into account the size of Sphere you are making. For example, if you create a Sphere that is 16x16x16 with 16 faces then it will look like this (Right Sphere).

Whereas if you create the same size sphere with only 6 faces it will look like the left Sphere.
You may be wondering what it means by 6 faces, and then it creates a Sphere with 36 faces? Well heres an example.

When you choose how many faces you want to have it puts that many faces on each layer. So in this case 6 on each layer.
When creating a sphere you need to take into account how big the Sphere is going to be and where it is going to be placed. Don’t forget you can use Lightmap scales to make it look more realistic.

Arch
The arc tool is a simple yet very useful tool. No one says that you have to create arch’s with it do they? You can create spiral stairs, curves, a lot of abstract blocks with it. Here’s a quick something I just made with it:

I will show you how you can make that in a minute.
Now to access the Arch window select arch from the New Objects Window and drag out to the size 1024x512x256 then hit Enter.

This will bring up the Arch Properties Window.

Here is what each option does:

Wall Width:
The width of each individual face.
Number of Sides:
The amount of faces to create on the Arch. Min 3 Max 100.
Arc:
How circular the Arch should be. 360 would be a complete circle, a hollow Cylinder. Min 8 Max 360
Start Angle:
The angle to start creating pieces. You can just later rotate the Arch if your not happy with it.
Add Height:
This option allows you to “build on top of each piece”. This is how I created that ‘ribbon’ before. You can also create circular stairways with it a swell.
Preview:
Preview what the Arch will look like with the options at the minute. (It will not show the Add Height Results).