Monthly Archives: December 2009

There’s something I’ve always wanted to discuss in regards to mapping with Valve Hammer Editor, and that is the use of the carve tool. As far as I’m aware, the carve tool was never intended to be used with anything other than a rectangular brush, because when given a more complicated primitive to work with (such as a cylinder) the results become quite messy.

This has resulted in many veteran mappers adopting a viewpoint that is essentially “NEVER USE THE CARVE TOOL”, which is then passed on to new and aspiring source mappers who read those kinds of comments in tutorials and forum posts. Despite this, the carve tool remains a useful technique for quickly creating rectangular holes in a brush and shouldn’t be discarded from your mapping arsenal. Continue reading →