Last Revised : 7 February 2000   drakaza@planetquake.com

                                                        Inverted Bevels

    Inverted bevels are simply just curved surfaces mainly used for wall corners, as to
    replace the square junction with a smooth curve. This tutorial shows how to make
    Inverted Bevels for structures like Jump Pads. The top and the bottom surfaces will
    also be capped and textured so that the inverted bevel can be seen from above and
    be walked on as well.

    The first thing you have to do is to create (for this example), a 1x1x3h Major Grid
    Unit prism and click on Bevel in the Curve menu. This creates a different kind of
    bevel, the opposite type to the one we require. We want the textures to show up on
    the other side of the mesh, so you need to invert the mesh, by clicking on
    Curve/Matrix/Invert .

                                 
                                  Top View
                                                 
                                  Front View                   Wireframe

    Now you have a curve that you can use simply for the corner of a room as long as the
    front face of the curve is the only part of the mesh that you see. But for our needs
    we have to do a few more things. Click on Curve/Cap/Normal and select the
    Inverted Bevel option.

                                 

    Now to apply the textures. Make sure you are out of the bounding box of
    bevel when you are selecting the meshes, or else they will not be selected.

                                               
                                              Top View (Incorrect)

    ALT-SHIFT-Click on the top surface (in 3D View), until the top mesh is selected,
    then apply the texture that you want.

                                           
                                  Front View                         Wireframe

    Go into Surface Properties and select CAP . This does special texture aligning for
    endcaps so that the surface texture is not deformed.

    Now ALT-SHIFT-Click on the curved surface (in 3D View), until it is selected, and
    apply the texture that you want. In Surface Properties select Natural , for the texture
    alignment required for curves. Now apply the common/nodraw texture to the
    bottom surface (you may have to click 2 or 3 times) since the bottom is never viewed
    in this example.

                                     
                                                        3D View

    The next step is to seal off the map. The actual curve does nothing to close off the
    hole in the map, so you have to do it manually. I'm going to use a different room and
    a different situation to give you an idea. The texture is common/caulk and it plugs
    any holes in the map if used properly. Make sure it is never visible in the game.

                               
                                            Corner with IBevel moved

                               
                                              "Caulk" brushes added

                               
                                          IBevel placed back in corner

    And that is the way I make my inverted bevels. Here is a screenshot of the Jump Pad
    I made using this kind of bevel creation (minus the caulk process) :