Hold n while dragging a vertex, sex! I never knew. 

What does it do? 

instead of dragging a whole "border" of a brush.
http://shub-hub.com/files/images/vertexdrag.jpg
http://shub-hub.com/files/images/linedrag.jpg 

Just push "vertex tool" a few times. 

Ahh OK, thanks! I see that it triangulates the faces when you do that. Is that automatic? 

Assuming you have the 'vertex editing splits face' option on, anyway. It'll triangulate a face if you edit verts in such a way that the face is no longer planar. (It will also automatically un-triangulate (quadrangulate?) it when you move it back to a position that does create a planar face again, I believe).

It's a a nice feature! :) 

It is also possible to press n and rmb on it and force the vertex to the grid. Otherwise Quark sometimes moves other vertexes. And even then when you look at the .map file with a text-editor it's a mess too many dezimals. Vertexes that should be on grid because forced are not. That's (apart from the bugs) a reason why I switched to bsp. I couldn't finish a map with QuarK because I struggled with Hom effects as the map got bigger.

untriangulate does not really work in Quark. it results in invalid Polys or moves other vertexes. 

Oh indeed. And I thought I set the right settings this time (no floating point, Quake map format). Gah! 

Trying to explain but words are failing me...
(in a hurry)
You know in halflife you get those wire fences, and grills/grates etc, also stuff like vines and sometimes hanging cables which are made from brushes using textures which are fully opaque, except for one 'colour' which is fully transparent (i believe in the HL Quake Wad its a sort of blue colour)?

Can this be done in Quake?

Im thinking JPL is doing glass, Trinca did some in Wicked Base etc, but what I mean wouldnt be like that (func_wall with ".alpha" key).
I seem to remember one person say "why has no-one done this for quake yet, cause a lot of modern engines support it"

Does anyone know what I mean, or even better how to do it, i.e. what colour in the palette is "invisible"?

(I always thought it was funny in Halflife cause say the fence brush was 4 units thick, if you stood on one side then the other you could see the fence move four units cause the nearside of the brush would be the only visible side)

DOUBLE HARD QUESTION - I CHALLENGE THEE TO HELP!! 

You mean like this?

http://kell.leveldesign.org/screenshots/ss-grill.jpg

It's done as a sprite, instead of a texture, but it's pretty damn close.

It's in the next Quoth pak. 

But isnt there a way of doing it with brush-models? 

I managed with Fimg to make a sort of drags-sprite like hexen2, only it moves to fast.
It is half transparant, but for making it with brushes I heard of a glass thing in the base pak developpement. See BasePack #252.

http://members.home.nl/gimli/drags.gif 

you have to use sprites.

Unfortunately sprites can't be lit by the level's lighting calculations or by dynamic lights, and in any GL engine other than fitzquake you get pink edges around the sprites, plus in glquake the sprites are upside-down, plus glquake doesn't support oriented sprites, only camera-facing ones.

I actually have sprite grates in rubicon 2, but removed them from my levels after realizing all these problems. 

Oh Oh Oh ! Nice !
However, it seems to be applied only on a single face, and there is no thickness... Well, the visual effect is damned good !! Cool ! 

why not just use the alphamasked textures (fuck old engines compatribility, 90% play with the engines that support alpha) 

...Could you ellaborate?
What is an alphamasked texture?

:D

Kell: - Honestly, "what JPL sed!" :D :D 

I've always enjoy the solidity of the Quake engine. Single polygon alpha textures have a paper thin quality that doesn't really appeal to me. I know I don't speak for everyone (obviously) but give me old school heft any day. :) 

Cannot connect to database - post lost. 

I wander what you were gonna say?

(ironic you managed to post "bah" post) 

I agree that Quake looks better with chunky geometry rather than flat alpha textures, but for foliage there's nothing better. Also thinking if animated flames would be possible to replace the old rotating models, but that'd probably involve some sort of prefab creation.

Kell / Preach have eliminated the annoying HL1 effect of seeing both sides of the brush mentioned earlier, which is a good move.

Alpha mask is a black and white texture applied over the top of a diffuse texture - white is visible and black not, with shades of grey being semitransparent.

Quake uses colorkey, which basically defines a single specific colour as invisible (since it's just a string of numbers). The problem is that you get hacky edges from the image compression and there's no transparency gradient.

>> lucky I copied it this time. 

I guess the color choice has been done with a little bit of clue: like a nice pink flashy gay color :P 

its usually either retro gay pink, or modern gay purple. 

I want to convert Quake bsps to a format that Maya can read along with all textures and the lightmap. I wonder if anyone has already made a converter to do this. Anyone know? If not, then I wouldn't mind having a go myself sometime, does anyone have a copy of the bsp specs for Q1? 

Reading the BSP files directly takes balls of steel. :) Are you sure you wouldn't want to maybe convert MAP files instead? It would seem a lot easier. 

Right.Hemisphere.Deep.Paint.3D.v2.3.0.9
it can convert .map to .obj or .ma. without lightmap of course.