Last Revised : 7 February 2000   drakaza@planetquake.com

                                                    Organic Pillars

    Organic pillars take you away from those dull, blocky pillars seen in Doom, Quake,
    and Quake 2. They add to your map, a "living" feel to it, and the curved surfaces
    add to the overall graphical quality of your map. They are not too hard to create,
    but they may be a bit tricky the first time around.

    To start off, create a 2x2x5h (Major Grid Unit) block and click on Curve/Cylinder.

                                                   
                                                      Top View

                                                   
                                                      Front View

    Now press V to change to Vertex Mode and in the Front View, hold down the
    LeftMouse button on the middle, rightmost vertex (the vertex should turn blue)
    and drag it left so that it sits 1 snap away from the middle vertex (Grid16).

                                                   
                                                      Front View

    (NOTE: Do not drag the same vertex twice without unselecting and reselecting
    the cylinder, as a bug in Q3Radiant will mess up the mesh)

    Now do the same for the left side of the cylinder. After this, switch to the Side View
    and repeat the same steps. You should end up with this:

                                                               
                                                                  Top View

                                       
                              Side View               Front View

                              Apply the texture skin/skin6thrust :

                                           

    Now for the tricky part : twisting the pillar. Select the mesh, and press V again for
    Vertex Mode, and move up to the top of the pillar in 3D View. Hold down
    Control and click on all 8 of the vertices of the top surface:
               

                        Now with these vertices selected, click on Z-Rotate :

                                               

            Click on Natural in Surface Properties to fix the texture. After all of the
            transformations in this tutorial, the mesh should look like this:

                                                   
                                                        Top View

                                                     
                                                        Front View

    The Organic pillar is now complete! Add all the blocks and bases around it
    and make sure the top and bottom of the pillar are never exposed. This is a
    screenshot of a quick demonstration map that I made in about 15 minutes: