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Triangles or Displacements?
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 Re: Triangles or Displacements?
Posted by Guessmyname on Sun Feb 27th at 10:50am 2005

"Triangle Terrian"
Pros
Easier to control.
Doesn't have to cover a quadrilateral area (as in, cover an area with four sides)
Easier to optimize

Cons
Takes longer to make
Unknown if it takes a while to render/compile etc

Displacements
Pros
Fast to build
Can use Alphas
We know it doesn't take to long to render

Cons
Harder to control
Has to be in a quadratic area
Doesn't block vis etc

Well? What do you perfer?
(feel free to add to this list as well)
[addsig]



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 Re: Triangles or Displacements?
Posted by $loth on Sun Feb 27th at 10:57am 2005

Displacments I prefer, it doesn't have to be in a quadratic area as you can use displacements to change it to say a triangle. Also you can just put a block with nodraw on it to block the vis.
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 Re: Triangles or Displacements?
Posted by LAzerMANiac on Sun Feb 27th at 6:41pm 2005

second that, $loth
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 Re: Triangles or Displacements?
Posted by Joe-Bob on Sun Feb 27th at 6:46pm 2005

I imagine that the biggest advantage triangle terrain has over displacements is the fact that you can tie it to entities, while with displacements you cannot.




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 Re: Triangles or Displacements?
Posted by Myrk- on Sun Feb 27th at 7:08pm 2005

Displacements are awkward. I hate the way you can't easily make a fitting triangular corner piece. Bah! [addsig]



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 Re: Triangles or Displacements?
Posted by SaintGreg on Sun Feb 27th at 7:26pm 2005

Displacements. They render like lightning for the triangle count. They are a bit awkward and valve didn't give you as much freedom with them as they should/could, but for ordinary terrain, use displacements.

Not blocking vis just means that you can actually make the bsp simpler by having less clusters by approximating the terrain with larger more structured world nodraw brushes.

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 Re: Triangles or Displacements?
Posted by thursday- on Sun Feb 27th at 8:20pm 2005

? quote:
Displacements are awkward. I hate the way you can't easily make a fitting triangular corner piece. Bah!


Sew. Although if the vertex ranges are too vertical from one another it does look horrible. I manually do it with bit at a time. It's tough but has a nice overall smooth effect.
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 Re: Triangles or Displacements?
Posted by omegaslayer on Sun Feb 27th at 8:32pm 2005

Displacements are better, end of story.....

? quote:

Cons
Unknown if it takes a while to render/compile etc

Yes, world polies are one of the hardest hits on performance, when possible you should model complicated geometry or turn it into a diplacement.

? quote:

Cons
Harder to control

Actually in the hands of a person who knows how to use displacements, displacements are easier to control than triangles.

[addsig]



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 Re: Triangles or Displacements?
Posted by Gwil on Sun Feb 27th at 8:34pm 2005

Effectively displacements ARE triangle terrain anyway, the methods used to raise/lower a point is the just the same as moving a vertex was on the old triangle terrain method.

Displacements were added to make terrain creation easy and move AWAY from tedious and unreliable, bad looking triangle terrain all along so... [addsig]




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