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Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by Captain P on Sun Nov 21st at 10:01pm 2004

Ehm, tajgenie, do you Snap to Grid or do you work freely off the grid? Having Snap to Grid on makes sewing really easy...

Displacement mapped faces do have to be rectangular, but normal faces don't have to be rectangular to be able to sew a displacement map to them. It's all about the edge their base brush shares with another brush.
Neither do they have to have the same shape. For example, I sewed two displacement maps (256x256 size both) with one triangular brush (512x512 cut in half). Since the displacement maps edges were together the same width as the triangular brush' edge, sewing was no problem.

Subdivide currently does nothing as far as I know, but you can alter the number of subdivisions with the Power option of the surface. Clipping displacement mapped brushes also makes them maintain their previous shape, but since the Power of both new dismaps is still the same, the number of triangles is doubled, thus the shape is more detailed.

As for tunnels, you can make more than one face of a brush a dismap. Just select the faces you want and then create a dismap. This is very handy for aligning cliffs with their top and things like that. Tunnels could be done like this too. Sewing here is especially easy as two faces from the same brush automatically share an edge.
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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by tajgenie on Mon Nov 22nd at 9:24pm 2004

? quote:
Ehm, tajgenie, do you Snap to Grid or do you work freely off the grid? Having Snap to Grid on makes sewing really easy...

Displacement mapped faces do have to be rectangular, but normal faces don't have to be rectangular to be able to sew a displacement map to them. It's all about the edge their base brush shares with another brush.
Neither do they have to have the same shape. For example, I sewed two displacement maps (256x256 size both) with one triangular brush (512x512 cut in half). Since the displacement maps edges were together the same width as the triangular brush' edge, sewing was no problem.


I always snap. Snapping is super

As for sewing, I experimented with every combination i could think of at the time, and my results are posted above. Maybe I was slightly unclear in it:
I think you are saying that adjacent faces during a sew don't need to be the same as long as the edge is the same. I can see how this could work, I need to test that too. However, the edges do not have to have the same length though. you can sew a huge cube to a small one, but only the overlapping edge of the brush will be sewed, and the rest of the huge cube will remain as is. If you got it to work the way you said, though, I guess it works.
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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by Captain P on Mon Nov 22nd at 10:56pm 2004

Indeed, they don't have to have the same lenght, but then most of the times only a few vertexes will be aligned.
And indeed, it's all about the edges of the base brushes.
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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by Nickelplate on Tue Nov 23rd at 8:21pm 2004

What exactly is a "displacement surface?" Is it just another name for "Brush" If not, what is the difference and how do i make a displacement surface? I need to make a realistic hill and I don't know how. Also, can a regular brush overlap a displacement surface? cheers [addsig]



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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by ReNo on Tue Nov 23rd at 8:41pm 2004

http://www.snarkpit.com/editing.php?page=tutorials&game=HL2&id=112

I haven't read anything of much use about whether you can overlap brushes and displacement surfaces, but I'd assume its ok for now.
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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by Captain P on Tue Nov 23rd at 10:15pm 2004

I assume the same as well, ReNo. After noclipping through some HL2 maps I think it's perfectly ok to do so. Dismaps aren't cut when a brush touches it, instead, it just continues. I think it must be seen as a replacement for the brush you inserted and not as a bunch of faces like in original HL, e.g. vertexed terrain, in terms of face-splitting and the like.

I also think the base brush of a displacement map is used for VIS and determining leaks, although I haven't tested with that yet.
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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by Fakedawg on Wed Nov 24th at 6:42pm 2004

So I found the answer to my questions regarding subdivide and tunnels, over at mapcore.net - courtesy of Zaphod ...

I figured I'd make some pics of the process as it might be a little difficult to understand it if I just explained it in words ...


First make a hollow cube like this:



Make sure that the edges of the inside faces line up like this:



Then create displacements of all the 4 inside faces like this:



And finally - with all 4 displacements selected click the "subdivide" button - and you should end up with this:



You can also use this on outside corners as well as combine inside and outside corners like this:



So now we know what the subdivide button does, and it should prove very helpfull in the making of tunnels, caves etc ...

I haven't really had time to explore any further uses for this yet - but I'll mention this - you can tick off "Auto subdivide" in the displacement window ...


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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by ReNo on Wed Nov 24th at 7:23pm 2004

Thanks for that, it had me stumped to be honest
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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by Fakedawg on Wed Nov 24th at 8:27pm 2004

NP man - You should add this to your displacement tuts ...
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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by G.Ballblue on Wed Nov 24th at 8:49pm 2004

:O :O :O

Sewing = L337

One question: Can A displacement object seal leaks? Does the hull of the displacement decide whether it seals or not, or is it the actual "polygon bending"?

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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by Fakedawg on Wed Nov 24th at 9:37pm 2004

From what I understand it doesnt seal leaks as the brush doesn't block vis when it's turned into a displacement - it's turned into an entity if you like ....

Rectify this prob by slapping a brush the same size as the base brush of the displacement, textured with "nodraw" under it, to seal off the area ...
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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by Naklajat on Thu Nov 25th at 4:03am 2004

haha... boo hoo... i spent a few hours on a few displacement surfs because i was trying to keep them inside the level... maybe i should have tested it first... anyway, good job with the tutorials and such. even though i wasted all that time its better than it could have been... i would have made the dirt in my level the old fashion way if I not read your tutorial reno...
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 Re: Displacement surfaces [sewing and snapping]
Posted by Nickelplate on Thu Nov 25th at 4:26am 2004

Hey thanks for the link. I have started Displacement-ing already. I have a great map going now. I hope to post an update in the maps section when it's about half done, just to let folks know about it.

On another note, was anyone else really not satisfied with the ending of HL2? It seemed really anticlamitic to me.

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