Is where its at. I've experimented some, but I'm not that good at the math and also haven't put together any type of tutorial to the effect.

The best I've seen recently was made by Rj - I trisoup double helix spiraling down as a lift shaft. It's an unreleased map and could arguably have been done with a texture, but was one of those things you see as a mapper and have to appreciate the time it must have take.

For a really good example of curve brushwork (the best I've seen personally) look at SPoG's spogsp1 for Quake2 - there's all sorts of amazing brushwork in that.

No link, sorry. 

fun fact... the dam in rub2m1 is based on a 48-sided cylinder. 

I was suitably impressed. That was some impressive brushwork. 

Spog is a wizard. 

I was actually wondering how the dam was created with such a smooth, natural curve when I first played that map, and knowing the method it was based on now, it makes a lot of sense. Nice. 

if boss2\death.wav is looped?

CoolEdit tells not. 

I had an issue where it wouldn't stop looping. Which is even more incomprehendable now. Fortunately I could work around it. 

The best I've seen recently was made by Rj - I trisoup double helix spiraling down as a lift shaft. It's an unreleased map and could arguably have been done with a texture, but was one of those things you see as a mapper and have to appreciate the time it must have taken.

shame it got ruined by those hundreds of ugly lighting triangles!! 

ugly lighting triangles!!

i HATE those! 

What'd be the solution?

Just increasing the lightmap texture size? 

By slightly increasing the texure scale on it or changing the offset. If necessary split the face half manually and change one half of it.

I hate those too. Fixing them is annoying and time-consuming. 

How were the support beams underneath the walkway created? As seen in this screenshot.

I've tried making beams extruding from the middle of curved corners before, but when working with angles that are anything other than 45 degrees and using vertex manipulation, I find it impossible to maintain the correct width and angle of the brush according to the curves, and rotating it just makes it go off grid. Something like this is what I've attempted to create with no luck.

And how about the sloped curves going along the side of the dam? I checked out the map source and they fit the curve of the dam perfectly while having an angled slope, but when I've attempted this I always get invalid brushes and have to cut each brush into two triangles for it to work. Are there any decent tutorials for any of these methods online? Also what editor was used for the map?

Thanks etc 

Mans i need help with quark please :(
It says : Didn't Split The Polygon and Build Failed :( please :(:(:( 

here's what i do:

you have two identically ratio'd curves:
http://necros.slipgateconstruct.com/temp/ed1.jpg

in radiant, and probably most editors out there, edge selection will show the center of a brush's edge:
http://necros.slipgateconstruct.com/temp/ed2.jpg

choose the width of the cross piece you want to add (here, it'll be roughly 32 units)
http://necros.slipgateconstruct.com/temp/ed3.jpg

remember to keep in mind that making a diagonal this way makes the brush slightly thinner. however, that's less important than making sure you choose points that line up on the grid:
http://necros.slipgateconstruct.com/temp/ed4.jpg

skew your cross piece brush so the side that buts up against your curve is parallel.
use the edge handles to align the centers so that your crosspiece sits in the middle of the brush:
http://necros.slipgateconstruct.com/temp/ed5.jpg

now, simply stretch that brush outwards to meet the outer curve, again, using the edge handles to align the crosspiece to the center of the outer curve brush.
http://necros.slipgateconstruct.com/temp/ed6.jpg

boom. done.
http://necros.slipgateconstruct.com/temp/ed7.jpg 

i left the brush offset by 1 unit so you can see the relative positions, obviously in ed7.jpg, i slid the edge back the 1 unit to connect it properly. 

That's quite ingenious. Maybe one of the reasons I haven't been able to do this is because there is no skew function in QuArK as far as I know. Maybe I should just switch to radiant or something... 

if you're working with 12 sided curves, it makes things much easier too, because you know that every 1/4 ratio'd vertex will be on the grid, so you have a lot of selection when it comes to deciding where you want to place the crosspiece corners and then the middle bit of the curve that's on 45 degrees is of course simple, because the whole edge is on the grid. 

Yeah I figured, been using mostly 12 sided curves throughout my map. As I mentioned I've had to cut slopes into two triangles if I want to place them alongside a curve, otherwise this happens when using vertex manipulation in QuArK: from this to this. I imagine being able to use the skew tool would circumvent this as I've seen sloped curves that are a single brush and not cut in two, again using the dam as an example.

Could you confirm if this works in radiant? If so I'll just switch over immediately as it would make working with such architecture a hell of a lot easier, and QuArK has a few annoying quirks and bugs anyway. Also, how good is WC for mapping with Quake and advanced brushwork vs radiant? 

don't do that. :x the outer edges of the brush won't match the curve. then you'll have to manually resize it.

what i do is first make the sloped brush whatever size, but being on large grid makes it simpler.
then i skew the edge so that the inner part matches the curve:
http://necros.slipgateconstruct.com/temp/ed8.jpg

then, i extrude the face outwards so it goes far past where it should end:
http://necros.slipgateconstruct.com/temp/ed9.jpg

with the clipper, i just lop the extra parts off, by following the same line as the curve itself:
http://necros.slipgateconstruct.com/temp/ed10.jpg

to complete the curve, i take the bit i just made, copy it, rotate and mirror it so it fits on the bottom part.
then, i copy the same part, and skew it so that the inner edges match (just like before) but now the leading vertices will be fucked up, so i just grab those and put them where the previously placed vertices (from the first 2 sloped brushes) are.
http://necros.slipgateconstruct.com/temp/ed11.jpg

this took me about 10 seconds? 20 maybe. 

Yeah I've used that exact method before when mapping with Hammer, but when I attempt the final step of aligning the vertices with QuArK I always get the fucked up brushes like in the image I posted for some reason, so I always end up having to split the brush in two. That's why I wanted to know if it works properly in radiant. 

curves are generally easier to deal with using Radiant over WC/ other editors? 

maybe there's something i missed, but i don't think WC can extrude a face out/inwards along the axis of it's edges. it can only stretch brushes which is, afaik, completely useless. i don't know why you'd ever want to stretch a brush in that way. what i mean is:
http://necros.slipgateconstruct.com/temp/ed12.jpg
top brush is the original. when you try to resize the brush, note the angled edge's profile is destroyed.
i don't know any way to prevent this behaviour.
i seem to recall czg's curve tut relied on this odd deformation, but since it's completely possible to replicate the curves with extrusion, there's really no need for such a strange method of brush manip.

so yeah, for that alone, i find it much easier to make curves in radiant.
once you've got a curve of one radius, you have a curve of ALL radii, since you can just extrude faces out/in.

in those little clips i posted, the brush for the outer curve was the same as the brush for the inner curve. i just pulled the top edge upwards and then pushed the bottom edge up to match the width-- the length of the brush was preserved relative to the size of the curve. i don't think that's possible in WC.

otoh, if it IS, someone PLEASE tell me how. it'll make my hl2 mapping a lot quicker. i always change my mind about working on hl2 stuff because i dread using wc brush manip. :x 

is that it works with multiple brushes selected; i'm not sure radiant can scale multiple brushes like that at once? so taking an entire corridor and curving it round becomes possible (via czg's stretch & skew method)

for individual brushes i just use VM.. just a case of selecting all verts at one end and either dragging or nudging using the arrow keys, like so

of course once you skew the brush it becomes a tad less simple, but seeing as i only ever use this kind of 12-sided curve (ie. flat at the top/bottom/sides) the only diagonals ever needed are either 2:1 or 1:2, which is easy to keep track of when pulling or nudging vertexes around. likewise when you are lining them up round the edges of a curve, the diagonal between the point and the centre of the curve will either be 1:4, 3:3* or 4:1, so nudging vertexes becomes simple. see 1, 2, 3

(in this example however you'd have to clip it at a 4:7 ratio, which is a lot less user friendly (and neat :) ))

for 24 sided curves i use this; again just a case of remembering the diagonal ratios.. 4:1, 2:1, 1:1, 1:2, 1:4, joined from the corners to the middle at 1:8, 2:5, 10:13, 13:10, 5:2, 8:1. bit harder to remember that one admittedly ;p - nudging vertexes can be a bit of a headache. but that's the price you pay for sexy curves, alas

(* - technically 1:1 but putting 3:3 keeps it in scale with the other two) 

otherwise this happens when using vertex manipulation in QuArK: from [this] to [this].

that's weird.. i don't know about radiant but in WC, VM would work fine so long as the inner and outer edges end up parallel. even if a user mistake means they don't end up parallel, WC can still render it illegally - it just won't export to .map properly. so you can always correct it later (the vertexes will still be where you left them in the .rmf)

i don't really know how radiant handles vertexes but i remember one radiant user being surprised at learning how lenient WC's VM is when it comes to illegal brushes; so i'd guess radiant's is more strict and less flexible? judging by how most radiant users seem to avoid VM for stuff like this, that would seem plausible :) 

24-sided curve - again flat at the top/bottom/sides