to all those mappers who loves/know how to make nice displacements/hills/caves, props to you cuz I hate them. I'M HORRIBLE WITH THIS DISPLACEMENT TOOL AFTER A DECADE OF HAMMER
to all those mappers who loves/know how to make nice displacements/hills/caves, props to you cuz I hate them. I'M HORRIBLE WITH THIS DISPLACEMENT TOOL AFTER A DECADE OF HAMMER
If I do use a cliff/tunnel combo. I use the same block size and after making it a displacement, I subdivide. Then manipulate the geometry. If there are any gaps/ending to the displacement, then I just convert to hiding them with a prop or structure. Or slap another displacement on it (Forming a rock of sorts) It took me years to understand it's limits. Though, definitely still a noob 🙃
I had to git gud at displacements last year. I spent some time flying through Valve's antlion caves in Episode 2 and picked up a few things. Before anything you really need to know how to lattice your displacements so that they will all sew properly. It's really hard to explain without demonstrating it but essentially your displacement geometry needs to consist of a grid of four-cornered brushes.
The other mistake people make is they just subdivide everything and call it a day. This obviously varies depending on what you're doing. For caves I find it works best if you only subdivide the ceiling and walls (making sure to sew the floor back on afterwards). Then you can use the paint geometry tool to expand and collapse regions so you don't just have like, smooth pipes.
External displacements / distant cliffs are a lore more work. When building a mountain for EZ2 I had to use huge groups of lattices. In hindsight it might have been easier to just have that geometry modelled, but it works so we're rolling with it.
You'll find that the materials you decide to use on your displacements are a huge factor of how good they will look in-game. So it's worth experimenting with different ones. Valve's cliffs are very simple but they look nice because of the way they are textured. I hope this helps someone!
*a lot more work!
This is very true! I've been doing this way for a while, making perfect cubes 1024x1024 brushes that can easily be sew together without a problem. I don't always let the subdivide do the job- I try to create some noise and shake somethings up around it to make it more dynamic and different from other places. Its just too much of a task and anything can happen during this process of creating the hills or the brush being invalid by minor mistake.
While the offsets in Source are not ideal, they are fine for the job. Source 2 offsets are generally cool
You can do so much great stuff with displacements! it's totally worth it to just make a "fugg around" type of test map and and try things out! The maps i'm most proud of are made with extreme displacement usage, i know it can be hard, just force yourself to learn it and you will love it.<3 seems like we cant post links :( but definitely check out "developer.valvesoftware.com"wiki"Displacement" it will help you a lot! Happy subdividing and have a great day! :D
lol, dafuq ... now he shows it xD HOW?! Hope that helps you! developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki… developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki… developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki…
I'm never gonna learn it