Wellity wellity wellity, an arch tut. Lets begin, at the end of this tutorial you will be able to make arches like this one, hopefully you will pick better textures (fig 1.0):

(fig 1.0)

To start with we need to know where the arch is going, you can resize it later, but its not a good idea because the textures and proportions will change. So as a rule dont do it, make your area you want it to go in. In other words, have a floor and 2 walls and a roof, ill be putting the roof on later. so make something like the picture below (fig 1.1)

(fig 1.1)

So now we need to make a cylinder, select it from on the right box of where u select primitives, select "cylinder" from the box below called objects. As you select it, you'll notice below you can enter a number for faces, in mine ive selected 16. So select that, for less curvy arches make this a lower even number, but if you want decent ones use this one, 16. Now we need to place the cylinder into our area. See the picture below, now what you need to do though, is when your moving your cursor for the cylinder, align it to the walls, not in length though, make it a kind of square, but not the length of the walls, only the height, hard to explain really, see the pic below: (fig 1.3)

(fig 1.3)

Do you see? it doesn't go right along, its a nice square shape which aligns to the walls and the front bit as you can see. As making a square will mean the cylinder is symmetrical. Now select your object and take the clipping tool, (on the right toolbar) and as you see in the picture clip half the object off, so your left with half a cylinder see the next picture (fig 1.4) of where to clip it, keep it exactly half and inline with grid.:

(fig 1.4)

Now press enter to clip the object in half. it should look just like the next image, however it will have black lines now in wc, as clipping objects gives them black lines, to give them a new colour, right click, edit objects new colour, then ok, and it'll turn a new colour. (fig1.5)

(fig1.5)

Now select your object and click on tools and then go down to transform, then you can leave it selected on rotate, then in the x column put in 90, so now click on ok. Now the arch piece needs to be aligned again as in the next picture (fig 1.6):

(fig 1.6)

We are not ready for the construction on di arch, you can see where we need to place the shapes, for this we will be using the vertex tool

Now we need to place the little shapes in, start of by doing one side, put your first object like these next pics (fig 1.7 + 1.8):

(fig 1.7)



(fig 1.8)

You can see where ive moved it to, there's no need to worry about how long it is at the moment, just use the side view to do these shapes.

fig 1.9)

Add the shapes like the above pic (fig1.9), now you can see the one shape ive highlighted there. To do this shape you first put in the rectangle, then select the clipping tool and move the point like it is in the picture in side view

(fig 2.0)

Then add the final shape for that side, now you can either do the same for the other sides, or select the 4 shapes together, (click one, then hold down ctrl to select the others,) then copy them (ctrl+c) then paste them (ctrl +v) now move your group a little bit on screen (otherwise if u dont move it a little bit, then rotate will be blocked out, as it hasn't realised you've selected it) now click on tools then flip objects, and flip it horizontally, now move it into the other half of the area as in the next pic (fig 2.1)

(fig 2.1)

So here we have our almost finished arch, now depending on your methods, what you now need to do is move the arch pieces along the length of you previously made walls. Also we need a roof. You could make it anther way without the roof, but this way, you could add some trim texture to the roof front face.



(fig 2.2)

Finished! It should now look like this above (fig 2.2), if it doesn't then maybe you went wrong somewhere, never fear, just try again :P, Some I noticed on all arches is the textures dont always quite line up exactly, but just about do, you cant really notice that much in game anyway.

Now you can go play with your arch.