Pushing stuff through the air
Hey, I would like to use a new-old puzzle element. It's basically just the diversity vent, but I want it to push things. It should do two things: change the flow of paint and blow the player up in the air.
trigger_push would be lovely to use, but it doesn't work through portals. Point push works okay with the paint, but it doesn't really blow the player upwards, more to the side. And if I set up a direction for it, then it stops working through portals as well..
Does anyone have an idea how to do this? Or maybe some settings I could have missed, because I'm a noob 
EDIT: What I'm doing now is making the paint really slow, so it's easier to manipulate it even with a weaker point_push, so it doesn't interfere with the flight path of the player; and I have quite a strong trigger_push, that actually flings the player. The problem with this is that you actually have to enter your portal under the air exhaust, otherwise it won't push you high enough. This might be confusing for the player..
also: How does info_placement_helper work? I can't seem to make it do anything..
Doing stuff like this might be a little technical.
Parent a trigger_push to both orange and blue portal.
To enable them to push stuff when a portal is placed below the diversity vent, place a func_portal_detector below the vent.
Lets say I parented a trigger_push to both the Orange and Blue portals, I'll name them push_orange and push_blue.
Since the portal detectors can detect the different portals, set the output of the func_portal_detector to be something like
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OnStartTouchPortal1 : push_orange : enable and
OnEndTouchPortal1 : push_orange : disable
(This makes it so that when a Blue portal is below the vent, the trigger_push on the Orange portal will enable.)
Do the same for the Orange portal,
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OnStartTouchPortal2 : push_blue : enable and
OnEndTouchPortal2 : push_blue : disable
The OnEndTouchPortal2 makes it so that when you remove the Blue portal from below the vent, it will disable the trigger_push on the Orange portal.
I hope this helps, feel free to ask if you are still unsure.
First of all, make sure that you orient them properly: the red thin axis line pointing outwards of the wall/floor/whatever. Then turn to YES both the properties "Use helper's angles" and "Force Placement"... that should do.
useful tools and stuff here on TWP 
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[/spoiler]Habzs: this seems like a good idea. But how do I parent something to a portal? Also, this isn't singleplayer, so I have multiple portal pairs.
josepezdj: thanks. I guess I could have just kept trying 
For some reason I thought that the red arrow had to be parallel to the surface...
Place all four portals in a nodraw-portal box or something, give each a different name, and parent stuff to them. To make the trigger_pushes keep the right orientation you can put an info_target in front of each (also parented to the portal) and set it as the target of the trigger.
It should work for co-op. Just do what FelixGriffin said and you're good to go.
To parent something to a portal, place a prop_portal entity, give it a name and set the parent in the trigger_push to the portal.
Thank you, it's much better now. (I haven't tried turning it on/off yet, but that's pretty straight forward) It still requires some "skill" to actually use the thing (if you don't jump, it won't blow you upwards) but if that's gonna be the worst thing about my map, I'll be pretty happy
Is there a way to make a trigger_push affect paint? I would love to get rid of the the point_push entity. (Though that's the entity that adds the particle effects if it reaches through a portal.. I'll have to experiment with this)
Speaking of particle effects. Is there a way to properly browse Portal 2 particles? I want to add some dust flying out of the vent, but nothing showed up with what I tried..
Copy the particles from the VPK and put them in portal 2/portal2/particles (the folder should already exist). There should be an effect called something like "dust_suck."
And try setting the flags to "Everything," "Correct Mass," and "Physics Debris." That will make it affect everything it's programmed to affect.
Wow, that's awesome! Suddenly I actually see what I'm doing
And I realized why my particles didn't "show up" ingame before. I haven't done any lighting yet, so the whole map is on fullbright. And dust kind of needs a light source to actually become visible..
About the flags. I should be using an info_particle_system, right? Because that doesn't have any flags.
Those are flags for the brush entities, not the particles.