Doom3world

I found that there were some requests for a stairs tutorial, so here is one.
Myself, I'm a beginner, so stairs seems like a not too difficult tutorial to begin with.
The tutorial assumes you know how to make a basic room and brushes.

First, create a square room of 512 units width. Make the height 256. Then on one side of the room, make a platform at 128 units. This is going to be the floor that the stairs will lead too. See screenshot:


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Now for the stairs. It would be strange if the steps of the stairs would be floating in the air, so we need to attach them to sides of the stairs. Let's fitst create these sides.

Create a brush as shown in the next screenshot. The height of the brush is the same as the height of the platform.


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Now switch to XZ front view. We are going to clip off some pieces of the brush. Make sure the brush is still selected. Hold the ctrl button and click with the right mouse button on the lower left corner of the brush, and then on the upper right corner. You'll see a yellow triangle. See screenshot:


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Now press enter and the red part of the brush gets deleted. Clip off another triangle as shown in the next screenshot. If the wrong part of the brush is selected, you can invert the selection by pressing ctrl-enter.


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Now hit spacebar to clone the brush and drag the cloned brush as shown as in the next screenshot.


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Now that we have the sides of the stairs, we can begin adding the steps.
The steps are basically a collection of brushes that we put between the 2 sides of the stairs.

So create a brush and size it as shown in the next screenshot. Make sure the two small sides of the brush are exactly touching the two sides of the stairs.


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Clone the brush 5 or 6 times. Every clone is another step of the stairs. Move each brush so that you get a nice stairs. Your make should look something like this:


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There you are: Your first stairs

Now throw in a player_start and a few lights, compile, and load up your map in Doom.

The stairs geometry is far from perfect and I didn't really bother about the textures, but at least it gives you an idea how to build a stairs.

Tips:
- The only limit is your imagination. you can adjust the steps, the sides of the stairs and the platform any way you like.
- Add a railing to the stairs and the platform
- Don't put any lights under the stairs or the platform to make it dark. You can put a monster there! Or a secret or anything else you like.

Have fun!

Thank you!

(And thanks for sizing these images down!)

`Tis good for people who dont bother to experiment in the editor .

personally if I make stairs like that I always set my grid snap to 1 or 2 when I make the steps - they always seem too thick if your snapping to 8 on the grid.

yeah yeah im picky BUT maybe other people like skinny steps too heheh

In a level I try to mix those sorts of things up. Its looks a little boring when your entire level is made with grid 8 and everything has the same thickness.

Good tutorial though - a friend of mine just asked me yesterday how to do stairs and I went through using remote desktop in XP to show him was cool.

You can save yourselves lots of work if you save them as prefabs as well That way you won't have to add them in each and every time.

Good tutorial

Good tutorial. Helps get us newbies on our feet.

People probably do experiment with the editor, but its a vastly large and complicated tool for begginers like myself. I didnt learn how to make stairs in this tutorial, I learned how to cut and trim brushes with the Ctrl-Right click tool. Thats somthing you really wouldnt learn by experiment, its somthing you would find on accident. This tool has endless possibilities. Thanks!

Nice tutorial - but could I make a suggestion? I just tried my first stairs and I find that its much easier if you create the steps themselves first. Why? Because if you place your sides first the stairs probably wont be spaced out evenly (unless you managed to cut perfectly.. and Im not that good.. hehe).

I created the steps first.. then placed the brush to line up with the top and bottom step. From there I could accurate clip it to line up.

Just my 2 cents!

EDIT: by the way - I didnt know about the ctrl-right-click either. I've always been going up and turning on the clipping tool manually. Nice find!

I'm the same as bljohnson, I make the actual steps first, then I just put in a vertical rectangular brush alongside them, and using the 'e' key, pull the brush into the shape/position I want for the stringers (the side pieces supporting the steps).. it's quicker for me than all that clipping, but that's just a personal preference..nice tutorial though.

I am not trying to sound elitist or anything but this is a poor method of creating a staircase. Just looking at your screenshots you can clearly see the runners on each side of the stair well do not properly align with the actual stairs. Also you failed to mention some of the specific stair well textures that are included in the game. If you are going to create runners on each side make sure the stairs are uniformly lined up so that the top edge does not extend past the runner. This can be achieved by making the runner's top edge meeting horizontally with the final step and the same for the lower stair. (Do not vertex manip the bottom runner to be be flush with the floor.) Just take a run through the first map, Mars City and look at the stairwells. Here you can see where the runners and trims meet and create a well designed case. Remember proper texture alignment and choices create believable environments. Using the proper staircase textures can create a form of sameness that allows for more believability.

I'm not trying to flame here but nice 1st post Prodigy. The guy said right up front that he was a beginner. I found this tut very helpful just as review. IMO we need more posters in this community like PsychoDad and less like ProdigyXL (unless Prodigy wants to do an updated tut) If you are gonna come down on someone at least link to another more informative tutorial. Remember we were all noobs at one time.

/rant

ya, way to rip on a guy who made a tut. how lame is that?

oh and BTW


REAL steps are made just like this in game, the only difrence is, besdies detail crap.. is that ID uses NO CLIP to go around and between steps,
this makes for smoother movement and prevents you or things from getting stuck under or between steps or going right behind them.


i know this cuase its in almost all the steps made like that in the doom3 SP maps.

so, add this on to this tut, and ur all set.

It wasn't my intention to create a perfect stairs. I wanted to show to others the basics of creating a stairs. Of course I'm not going to spend a whole day for the tutorial to perfectly align everything. I will do just that when I'm going to make a stair in a level I'm working on.

You obviously have a lot of experience in 3d level editing. That's good for you. I don't have that experience, just like a zillion other people here. Those are the people I'm writing the tutorial for.

Anyway, if you feel like making a tutorial yourself on how to make an even better stairs, be my guest. I'm interested.

Thanks for the suggestion. I see you point and I'll try it on my next stairs.

It's nice to see that different approaches lead to the same result. One person prefers approach A while the other prefers approach B.

Good short tutorial PsychoDad, tis nice for people who've never done this kinda stuff before to learn how to walk before they learn how to run (e.g. using translation and rotation arrays in 3dmax like i use, altho hardly 'running' its a lot more complex than the basic way of doing it, but i guess its cos you can make some very impressive geometry...anyways i digress).

As for ProdigyXL's comments...well...he makes one hell of an entrance for a 1st post. He's also made most people think hes an asshat.

Thought it is nice to read a step by step, especially tips are always welcome. But personally I'd simply pick a SP map by id that already has a perfect staircase, go in copy/paste it into my own map. Perfect texture choices, alignment etc for free

Note: I have yet to test this out though.

do you realy want every staircase in ever map to look exactly the same, i think not

This method works, but unless you have the back hidden, it's quite ugly. Here is another method that is more visually appealing to some:

Looks better in my opinion

.map file

Yeah, I copied one of Id's staircases to a test room and have been studying it. So, patch meshes are another way to go as cremator has pointed out. No dis to you PsychoDad : thanks for taking the time to write this tutorial.