Connecting h2o "brushes"

[meta_mole]

...long time listerner, first time caller...

My understanding of expensive water leads me to believe (confirmed by posts here and elsewhere) that water "brushes" (I know they're not really brushes, per se) can be contiguous with other water brushes. However, I also understand that I may only have one water height in a PVS (w/expensive water).

With those two rules in mind, consider the following: I have a pool of water (think block - straight up rectanglular solid) with a grate at the bottom, which, when broken, allows the swimmer to enter a rectangular passage or duct and swim on into a chamber. The easiset way to build it would be to build the brush architecture of the passage/duct from a hole in the bottom of my pool and fill it with a water "brush" that butts up against the bottom of my pool's water brush. However, if I texture the passage/duct water brush with the nodraw and chosen h2o texture on top, it would seem that I would have two different water brushes in a PVS (the duct water & the pool water).

Please lend me your expertise. Would my proposed method work, do you think? The only alternative I can conceive of is to create a very large, rectangular solid water "brush" and then clip it out meticulously around an inserted brush architecture.

The second question is, can anyone help with how, if my connecting-of-water-brushes idea is correct, I might interpose a breakable grate brush or model?

Please excuse the lenght of this post. I've always had a problem with brevity. Peace. And thanks.

 

[Dead-Inside]

I didn't quite understand your question but it'll work as long as you can only look at one piece of p-water at a time.

 

[Mess]

I think you're proposed method will work. There's definitely no harm in trying before you go all crazy-ass wilth the clipping.

 

[JFry]

I believe there is still an entity called func_water which you could just tie to a brush covered completely with no_draw for the duct. Haven't tried it but I'm guessing it would work.

But is there anything under the pool aside from the duct? I'm pretty sure you could just use one large brush thru the pool and the duct. I don't think there would be a problem with it clipping the brush beneath the pool.

As for the grate, just create a brush and make it a func_breakable. There are lots of ways you could do it but that would prolly be the most simple.

 

[meta_mole]

Thanks, guys. JFry, I tried the func_water entity, and it works. However, if a player is in the duct coming out into the pool, the brushes that make up the walls of the pool don't draw - you can see out into the skybox. I fiddled with it for a while to no avail. It turns out that you can simply create another water "brush" for the duct in the exact same way as the pool brush - same water texture with nodraw on the other faces - and but it up against the pool water brush. It works almost flawlessly.

Thanks again.