How to Create Roads in Hammer Source Part 2/8:
3 and 4 Way Intersections

January 17, 2011
Category: Left 4 Dead 2 Mapping, Left 4 Dead Mapping, SourceSDK/Authoring Tools

<--Winter 2011 Level Design Challenge Update

How to Create Roads in Hammer Source is 8-part series covering various beginner and advanced techniques on creating roads.

Part 2 is focused on:

3-Way Intersections
4-Way Intersections
Clip Tool
Texture Problem with Clip Tool Intersection Method
Solutions for Texture Problem
Overlays

Full 8-Part Roads Series with Hammer Source:

1. Road Basics, Intersections and Adding Realism

2. 3 & 4 Way Intersections

3. Wide and Tight 90 Degree Turns

4. 180 Degree Turns

5. How to Create Curved, Sloped Roads

6. Brushes and Props - Blocking Roads Off

7. Terrain - Blocking Roads Off

8. Curved Sloped Roads - Blocking Roads Off

VIDEO: PART 2/8

3-WAY INTERSECTIONS

Create a block in of 3-way intersection, using 3 brushes. See below.

Next we will need to use the Clip Tool and cut our brushes into wedges. Click on the Clip Tool to activate it.

Cut your first brush like so. Make sure you are on the gird of 16 or 8.

When using the Clip Tool:

White = brush is kept
Red = brush is deleted

Repeate the function, you want the brush to be a wedge.

Extend the other two brushes to meet in the middle:

Then use the Clip Tool only on one side of each brush:

4-WAY INTERSECTIONS

To create 4-way intersection, we repeat the function by clipping all the brushes into a full wedge, as well as duplicating one of the brushes to allow 4-way intersection.

TEXTURE PROBLEM

3-way and 4-way intersection are now done but the problem comes with the texture we are using. It creates unrealistic meeting of traffic lines. We don't want this.

To avoid this we have few of options.

use a texture that uses a different road texture
create your own road texture that allows more flexible approach of avoiding the problem below, such as dotted white line
use overlays to effectively hide the problem