What are the green lines?

Pandademic

I've accidentally turned my lines bright green several times, some combination of mis-clicks that I can't seem to replicate. Can't figure out what they do, or how to get rid of them. Looked for them in official maps and they do appear, like the spiral steps on descent, but I'm not sure why.

Dr_Random

I'm pretty sure they represent smooth edges. Pressing S or N with edges selected with the select tool turn them on or off respectively.

SteveRock

Correct - green lines use smoothed and shared normals. So they're good for things like round pillars. If you turn on the lit view, you'll see the difference.

Pandademic

Ah, I see. Thank you. Tried using them on a bunch of curved structures in editor, didn't see much difference though. Looks like it adjusted the shadows slightly, making them diagonal on each face instead of vertical. Maybe it works better with non-dev textures. I'll experiment more.

Flaterectomy

I saw this and thought I'd quickly drop an example on how to use the Make Edges Smooth function.

Example pillar, not smooth in any way. You wouldn't use this in your map, as it just looks bad:


Now you may think I'm going to make this thing smooth! and just smooth out every line:


As you can see, it doesn't look smooth. It's all diagonal, like @Pandademic mentioned. You're unfortunately not going to approach prop-like smoothness along every line with this function.

However, to get as close as possible to what you hoped to achieve, "de-smooth" the horizontal lines, and you get this:


Much better. Now if the sharp edge bothers you, I advise applying some kind of circular prop to trim it:

Rudy.cz

Awesome! I am much wiser now! :-)

Can I put your mini-tutorial to my web-page along with the others?

Flaterectomy

I'm not sure it's elaborate enough for that, but feel free.

Pandademic

Yeah, that's an excellent example. I got the same results as your first pic, was not impressed, but seeing the rest... I need to start using this feature. I think it definitely has a place in Rudy's FAQ.

Here's your advice put to use: just applied the smooth tool to the top set of tubes, really happy with the difference.