Newbie with max 5 question/problem

[PointlesS]

been asking around everywhere...searched all of google...I can't find anything or anyone that knows how to do this...so I turn to you guys...

I'm trying to create a ruined building for my ut2k4 map...keep in mind these buildings are being viewed from far away in the distance and no player will come close to them...usually what I do is take a basic shape such as a rectangle...make that as my building...then create a random shape with the line tool...extrude it...duplicate it twice or so...then use it as a boolean to hollow parts out...it works great for the most part...here's a building I did:
http://www.pointless.binaryoverlord.com/building.jpg

but now I want to create a more complicated building...in this building I took a cylinder...deleted the other half...extruded the flat side of it...and made it all from extruding and so on...but when I do my usual boolean thing I can't hollow anything out...it just like punches a hole in it but doesn't create any more polygons...here's a pic:
http://www.pointless.binaryoverlord.com/building2.jpg

what am I doing wrong? is there another way of doing it?

[MoP]

Boolean sometimes does this. It's a bit of an unstable and temperamental tool - sometimes it works perfectly, other times it really screws up your geometry.

In this case what you could do is (if your mesh is an Editable Poly) - create a new polygon using the vertices that the boolean has created in the shape of the hole, then select the new polygon you just made and Extrude it inwards, then just delete a few verts or move them around inside to make the hole a little less "regular".

Also it's useful to know Boolean operations often leave weird stray geometry - vertices and edges that shouldn't be in the mesh, or that can be removed without affecting the look of the model in any way. Always check for duplicate vertices on top of each other, or weird tiny polygons after performing a boolean operation. If you get rid of those your meshes will be more optimised. However sometimes the booleans work fine and don't leave any messy polys lying around.

MoP

[FatAssasin]

Stay away from Boolean as much as possible, especially if you're making game models. Like MoP said, it's messy and it usually requires a lot of clean up. Plus, it only works reliably on closed meshes. So if you are going to use it, make sure you weld all the verts and that it's a solid object. Think of it like this, if you were going to fill your model with water, none of it would leak out anywhere.

[PointlesS]

thanks guys...I ended up doing pretty much like mop said...did a boolean...extruded and created the polygons...welded and moved verticies...eventually after screwing around I came up with this:
http://pointless.binaryoverlord.com/woot.jpg (http://www.pointless.binaryoverlord.com/woot.jpg)

brings a tear to my eye when seeing smoke and flames comming out of it /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[Joshua Stubbles]

Only thing I'm not big on with the your texture there, is that the building appears to be solid concrete /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

As ar as the question goes, the "cut" tool in editable poly mode is quite good for this kind of situation. You can cut the faces any way you like, while keeping an eye on the edges for mishaps. After that, you can extrude the face inward, or delete it and extrude the edges manually.