Brush clipping

[Mambo]

Could somebody please give me a reasonably detailed explanation of what brush clipping is, and how to use it?

thanks a lot. Just by the way, does anybody know if the new version of unrealed has the 'select all actors inside brush' tool? That was really useful, and i noticed it was missing in the first version of UED2.

thx guys

[Phragmites]

ive just discovered it myself, and believe me, its very handy. what is it? its a way of making irregular brushes by taking a simple brush and taking slices off it until you get the irregular shape you want. as an example, im making a level that is intentionally irregular, both buildings and pathways. i started by vertex editing the red brush to slightly overlap the irregular shape next to it and then deintersecting to add the next irregular building. as you can imagine, all that deintersecting and adding soon made some spectacular bsp errors.

i tried out brush clipping next, and though you can only set your start and finish clip points on a grid vertex, its still very powerful. i can now make my irregular shapes easily, but with more precision, so brushes line up exactly and i have no bsp errors.

brush clipping is an editing mode like vertex editing. you press the brush clipping mode button (varies with which version/patch of Ued youre using) to enter it and the cursor changes. you select the brush you want to clip, either beforehand or by ctrl-left mouse clicking in clipping mode. in a 2d window, ctrl-right click to set the first clipping point, which appears as a pin. its snapped to a grid vertex, and you can ctrl-left mouse click to move the pin. you may need to set the grid to a lower setting in order to find a grid vertex exactly where you want it on the brush. ctrl-right click again to set the second cut on the other side of the brush. a red line appears between the clipping points. it has a smaller red line at right angles on one side or the other. this points to which bit will be DELETED when you clip the brush. it can be flipped with a press of a button. you clip the brush by pushing the clip button, or split the brush into two brushes by pushing the split button.

rebuild the geometry and youve now got a clipped brush. you can repeat this until you have the irregular (or regular) outline you want that snaps to the grid very nicely.