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A lot of people have been asking for portalling tutorials, and this is the first of 2 that I plan on doing. This will cover indoor portalling. How to do it, and why you need it.
First things first, a little information on portalling to help you better understand it. Portals are used to create "cells". Each of these cells, and everything within the cells, are loaded when you can physically see into it it. Portals do not actually draw in-game, so you won't see these "cells" while playing. If you don't have any portals in your map, everything will all be loaded at the same time, causing severe lag, maybe even a server crash depending on the size of the map.
Structural & Detail brushes:
These two types of brushes are key to portalling. All brushes are Structural by default, all meshes (Patch & Terrain) are Detail by default. Structural brushes add to your total visdata size, Detail brushes do not. Structural brushes can & should be used with portals to seal off an area or room, Detail brushes are invisible to portal cells. What does this mean? If you try to portal a hole in a wall whose brushes are all detail, the game will read that wall as not existing while checking the portals during compile. In regards to portalling and portalling only, think of Structural brushes as "solid", and think of Detail brushes as "non solid".
A portal cell is created with at least 4 brushes. Each of these brushes must be textured with "Portal No Draw" (in the 'common' folder) on 5 faces, and "Portal" (also in the 'common' folder) on only 1 face. Why? Because the "Portal" texture is what determines the barrier of the cell. For example:
In the above image you see 4 brushes. Each brush is textured with Portal No Draw on 5 faces, and Portal on 1 face. The outside faces are the ones textured with Portal because all faces textured with Portal must meet at a corner (T Junction) in order to form a cell. The above image has no top or bottom so this portal would fail during compile, it is only to demostrate how the brushes should meet.
Moving on. For this example, I've built a basic house. 4 walls, a doorway, a window, and a slanted roof.
To seal off this house, we need to portal the doorway & window. Because, as stated above, all brushes are Structural by default we can just throw the portals right in and they will work fine.
Start by drawing out a brush to fit the gap in the doorway & texture it with Portal No Draw.
Now, simply texture the outside face of this brush (ctrl+shift+left click to select 1 face), and it is done.
Now follow the same process for the window.
And this house is sucessfully portalled. Because the Portal texture is on the outside, it has lined up perfectly with the Structural walls to form a seal, or a cell.
Now we'll change it up a little. Lets say you wanted to add some trim to the window & doorway, and maybe add an actual window and door.
Now that I've added trim & a door to the doorway, the existing portal will fail because the trim & door are Structural. Seeing that Structural brushes block off portals, they are canceling each other out. To correct this problem the door & trim have to be made Detail, because Detail brushes are ignored by portals. Select the door & trim, right click in the 3d view and click on "Make Detail". You won't notice any changes to the brushes in Graydiant other than their outline is now green in the 2d view, but they will be ignored in the portalling process of compiling.
Follow the same process for the trim & window.
So now when you enter this house, you are entering a portal cell. If you can see through the window and/or door, the outside will be drawn by the game. If you cannot see outside, the game does not draw anything other than what you can see, hence relieving a lot of strain on the engine and your computer, reducing lag & increasing FPS.
That is basic indoor portalling. When I find more time I will write up a tutorial on advanced outdoor portalling. Feel free to ask any questions about basic indoor portalling here.
