A Quake3 level is essentially designed by assembling a series of boxes. A large cube could represent a grand hall whereas an elongated box is a corridor that joins this room to another. In simple terms you can imagine the design of these rooms resembling a simple model built with lego where each lego brick represents a different part of your architecture with perhaps different colors and textures.
(A map in radiant with textures not shown)
In the Radiant editor these blocks are called brushes and you build levels by assembling these brushes together. Radiant allows you to create brushes (and therefore rooms) of different sizes but to ensure that things line up the program provides a grid on which you lay out your designs, each tiny cube in this grid is called a unit. The grid and its units are shown in three dimensions using x, y and z to identify the different directions in space.
(Top View: A brush forming one of the steps is 14x3 units on the grid) (3D view)
Radiant provides many tools to help you construct and modify brushes. Most of these functions are only really used for advanced mapping but some of the most important are examined next.
(The main windows of Radiant)
Above you can see that the main work of editing will go on in the plan view. This is where the map is shown in wireframe and all the brushes can be seen and manipulated. Because this view is flat the side window shows the Z-Axis view which allows you to position and alter the height of brushes easily. To the right is a full 3D view of your map, this allows you a quick preview of how the design is going. Below this is a Texture Window where you can select textures to cover your brushes in.The Info window presents data about the processes Radiant is performing (i.e. listing textures that are loaded e.t.c.). Of course we also have a Toolbar at the top of the screen, this contains shortcuts and menus to help you build and alter your brushes. We will take a look at these functions next.
Making and moving brushes (probably the most important set of tools)
hollow: Will hollow out any selected brush at a depth of
two units. Used to make rooms.
csg subtract: Will remove contents within the selected
brush. Used for making doors e.t.c.
csg merge: Will fuse brush groups when selected.
x axis flip: Will flip any brush along the x axis when
selected.
x axis rotate: Will rotate any brush along the x axis
when selected.
y axis flip: Will flip any brush along the y axis when
selected.
y axis rotate: Will rotate any brush along the y axis
when selected.
z axis flip: Will flip any brush along the z axis when
selected.
z axis rotate: Will rotate and brush along the z axis
when selected.
x scale
y scale
z scale
Selection options
complete tall: Selects all brushes along the x,y axis.
Grouping brush is discarded.
select touching: Selects all brushes touching the
grouping brush.
select partial tall: Selects all brushes along x,y axis
with discarding grouping brush.
select inside: Selects brushes within a grouping
brush and then discards the grouping brush.
clipper: Allows you to place clipping points on a brush.
Viewing options
change views: Changes views in the wireframe window
from x,y, to z.
texture views: Allows you to switch views within the view
window. Trilinear to wireframe.
cubic clip camera views: Will draw or not draw the
entire map while editing.
entity view: Allows you to show entities in wireframe
or grayscale, ect.
patches as wireframes: All patches will be displayed
as wireframes. Speeds up editing.
Extra options (not as important)
free rotation: Allows you to rotate selected brush
along any axis.
free scaling: Locks or releases scaling on a selected
brush.
don't select curved brushes: Can make life easier
when making prefabs.
show patch bounding box: Simply shows the bounding
box around and patch you create.
patch bend mode: Will select varying points on a patch
allowing you to bend or twist the object.
redisperse patch points: Averages out space between
brushes added to a patch.
caps: Will cap any selected patch with highlighted
texture in use.
weld equal patch points: Self explanitory.
drill down: When any control point is selected, all
points below will also be selected.
Using the Mouse
The mouse is used to perform most of the editing function in Radiant, although there are many shortcut keys we can learn those later. Here are the basic mouse actions:
In the Plan view:
mouse1: draw a brush, move a brush, and expand brushes.
mouse2: move the grid and position of the entire map.
mouse3: spins the camera on the grid around. bkspace: delete brush insert: zoom out. delete: zoom in.
In the 3D view:
shift+mouse1: select a brush, move a brush, or entity.(to edit the brush)
shift+ctrl+mouse1: select surface of a brush.(usually for texture editing)
mouse2: move camera about within the 3D space.
mouse3: select texture.
a: look up.
z: look down.
d: move up.
c: move down.
arrow keys: goes in the direction the camera is pointing.
Now we have examined most of the main functions of Radiant it is time to put them into action and create a room. Dont worry if you've missed a bit because we will be revisiting most of the theory here as we build out map.
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