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Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by tajgenie on Fri Nov 19th at 12:29am 2004

If anyone has gotten the sew function to work, and knows how they did it, please post here. I can't wait for the next tutorial, and it would probably help in it's writing if someone posted anyways.

also, is there a way to get the edges to snap to other things? its really hard to do it freestyle like the tutorial explains. edge snapping would make the dirt fit into the area really well without leaks and without the ugly mismatch problems.

The following is a digression:
and i still dont know where the hl2 files are, or the help file, or all the prefabs that were listed in the official documentation are. i thought the sdk was supposed to be fully functional after hl2 is unlocked.

EDIT
Oh, and when i tried searching for help on displacement surfaces, all i got was how to have sex with cds. Not helpful guys. We all use Steam now.
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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by Spartan on Fri Nov 19th at 1:28am 2004

What is sewing suppose to do?



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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by ReNo on Fri Nov 19th at 1:54am 2004

It sews up the edges of two or more displacement surfaces, so that you can make complex terrain seamlessly. The feature works fine but you need to be careful while using it to get a reasonable effect. When you create a displacement map, it is split up into a grid. The sew tool will try and make the two faces you select stich themselves together by matching the height of the edge points. If these edge points match up nicely, then you will get a seamless terrain, if they do not, it will try and match them up but most likely fail. Now we can see the grid on the displacement surfaces, you will be able to check if they line up okay far easier.
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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by Orpheus on Fri Nov 19th at 2:11am 2004

well, truth be told, i was much more entranced when the CD sex issue was mentioned.. sewing landmass's is not my idea of enthralling material [addsig]



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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by tajgenie on Fri Nov 19th at 3:55am 2004

so i put two surfaces next to each other and click sew? that didn't seem to work. even when i tried to get them really close it didn't work. i don't understand how to properly invoke the sewing. do i need to select both surfaces?

**confused**
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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by ReNo on Fri Nov 19th at 4:15am 2004

Yes, select both surfaces by holding ctrl and left clicking on them both in the 3D view. Now once you have played around with the two and their edges aren't meeting, press the sew button and the points at the edge should come to meet each other half way.
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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by tajgenie on Fri Nov 19th at 6:08am 2004

seems pretty simple. not working. i click sew and absolutely nothing happens. i remember something about them having to be the same shape. is this the brush or the face?

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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by ReNo on Fri Nov 19th at 12:31pm 2004

I found this over at the Valve ERC that might answer your question...

http://www.chatbear.com/board.plm?a=viewthread&t=514,1100788514,8114&id=729428&b=4986&v=flatold

I've a feeling it might have been your thread actually
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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by Crono on Fri Nov 19th at 12:37pm 2004

hey look, you found a bug

Or rather an unconsidered option when parsing. [addsig]



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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by fraggard on Fri Nov 19th at 1:46pm 2004

? quoting Crono
hey look, you found a bug

Or rather an unconsidered option when parsing.

That happens only when you post from Firefox (and possibly Netscape and Mozilla) as well. So it's probably some Javascript issue. If you post the same link from IE (by copy-pasting the original link) that doesn't happen. I've seen it before but Lep's not too hot on the cross-browser compatibility, so bleh.

</offtopic>





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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by Nostradamus on Fri Nov 19th at 7:19pm 2004

Select your fist face which you have applied displacement mapping to. Now hold down shift and drag the new face to lay besides the other one(just needs to look like it in top view) press sew.
taddaaa




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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by Leperous on Fri Nov 19th at 7:37pm 2004

/offtopic: It's nothing to do with browser compatibility, it's the bbcode thinking that commas shouldn't exist in URLs. However in teh WYSIWYG editor IE will automatically turn things like that into links, whereas Firefox doesn't have the capability, so don't you say that it's my coding that's lacking sonny jim



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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by tajgenie on Fri Nov 19th at 10:05pm 2004

? quote:
I found this over at the Valve ERC that might answer your question...

http://www.chatbear.com/board.plm?a=viewthread&t=514,1100788514,8114&id=729428&b=4986&v=flatold

I've a feeling it might have been your thread actually


Nope, not my thread. But it should help. My brushes arent the same actually. the faces im using are both rectangular, but one is rectagular on all sides, and the other is a wedge. they are also at different levels. i'll see what i can come up with.
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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by tajgenie on Fri Nov 19th at 10:34pm 2004

ok, i actually got it to work. its kinda funky in the way it works. as far as i could figure:
1 the faces you use have to be rectangular (already established)
2 the two edges you want to sew have to be identical in SHAPE (on the brush)
ie: if you have a wedge, and want to sew it to another wedge, and have the triangular sides touching, one brush can be smaller, as long as its in exactly the same proportion as the other one. so you can have part of a big brush sew to all of a small one of half its size.
2.5 you can sew a displacement surface to a normal brush, as long as the base brush of the surface follows the rules outlines above (basically the same as two displacement brushes, only one isn't an actual disp brush)
3. The edge in question must be exactly the same in the original brushes. this means you cant move one brush of even identical shape and size up one unit and hope the top faces sew. nope, doesn't work.

this greatly limits the usefulness of sewing, but hey, it's better than not having it.

btw ReNo, your input was the most helpful, but I can't give you credit as it stands, and I can't do it to myself either
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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by tajgenie on Sat Nov 20th at 8:36pm 2004

Oh, do we let displacement surfaces intersect with other surfaces or brushes? does this cause compile time increases or in game lag?
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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by Nostradamus on Sun Nov 21st at 12:25am 2004

? quote:
Oh, do we let displacement surfaces intersect with other surfaces or brushes? does this cause compile time increases or in game lag?

Works fine for me... only proplem is that you wan by no means carve through it




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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by ReNo on Sun Nov 21st at 3:23am 2004

I think its acceptable, but don't go overboard with it. I believe that if part of a displacement surface is rendered then the whole thing is, so don't, for example, just stick one over your entire level and use that for all your ground.
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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by Fakedawg on Sun Nov 21st at 6:17pm 2004

A couple of additional questions regarding displacement surfaces:

- What exactly do the subdivide button do?

- If the outer edge of the surface becomes unaligned to the grid - is there anyway to have it snap to grid?

- And finally, have anyone figured out a good way to create a tunnel through a "displacement hill"?

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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by ReNo on Sun Nov 21st at 6:58pm 2004

Subdivide, I imagine, would split each of the existing grid "faces" into smaller chunks, giving you more points to play with. I've not tested this out yet, so I've no idea if thats correct or not.

I don't really see how an edge of the surface could become unaligned from the grid, except in the case that you change the direction of "paint geometry" to something other than surface normal (which, for most scenarios, is all you need). If you give me an example I might be able to better help.

I'd imagine the only way to create a tunnel through a hill would be using multiple displacement surfaces that you would sew together. A displacement surface cannot be 'pierced' with a hole, which would be necessary to create a tunnel.
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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by Fakedawg on Sun Nov 21st at 7:37pm 2004

Yeah - that's pretty much what I thought subdivide does as well - but whenever i select a displacement surface and click it, nothing happens ...

As for the edge becoming unaligned - I've experience that happening while reducing the "power of", on surfaces with some high spikes ... It can also happen if you, as you stated, change the morph axis ...

As for the tunnel - I've tried several variants and they all pretty much suck - you end up with glitches between the various surfaces - especially the one on the top of the tunnel ... The only solution I've found so far is to make up the terrain on top of the tunnel by world brushes and then lining up the vertices of the displacement surfaces manually. This works, but isn't really great ...
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