Special effects question with func_detail brush

ok so i have a map that is a large open waist deep lake with small cylindrical hill dojobs scattered about. I used an environment cubemap and the map looks gorgeous. It also unexpectedly made the hill things look wet, as they were placed inside the HUGE water brush freely. My question is, if I change them all to Func_detail or something like that, will my maps lighting still have the profound effect on them? will they still look wet and does light_environment or Light_dynamic go right through entity brushes? The reason I ask this is because I've been having the Neverending VIS problem and thought if i changed around some brushes it would fix it.



Sorry bout the pic, thats the best i could do, unless someone wants to tell me how to get it to be larger

All I can say is try it and find out.

I believe func_detail's still cast shadows and stuff, they just don't
VIS block. Func_details are kind of like "fake" entities with no real
entity information, used only to simplify visibility. So technically
they should still block light, I think.

http://www.valve-erc.com/srcsdk/Levels/performance_and_visibility.html

Detail brushes are a class of brushes that are grouped to avoid
unwanted face splits when small, detailed brush objects meet large
surfaces. Detail brush geometry is made by creating a func_detail entity out of a set of brushes. The brushes that are included in the func_detail
will not clip (or split) non-detail brushes. A common example is a
cylinder brush (such as a pillar) touching a floor in a room. Normally
the cylinder would split the floor face into many smaller faces where
the two brushes meet. By making the cylinder detail geometry, no such
splitting will occur. Any rotated piece of brush geometry is also a
good candidate, and will cause fewer vbsp splits if it is made into func_detail.

Detail brushes do not block visibility and cannot be used to seal
the world or areaportals. Since they do not block visibility, detail
brushes have a side benefit of simplifying the visibility set. Proper
use of detail brushes can greatly decrease the time it takes for vvis to compile the level.

Brushes that are func_detail are an
entity in the Hammer editor, but the entity information is discarded
after the map is processed in VBSP. This occurs to reduce the memory
requirements of the geometry. The entity information is no longer
needed once vbsp has used it for reducing
splits. In the engine, surfaces that were created with detail geometry
are identical to all other solid brush geometry in the level.

Objects that are small, complex, and/or do not seal areas are good
candidates for detail geometry. Examples include pillars, gates, small
rocks, fences, debris, piers, etc. A good way to tell if you need to
switch non-detail geometry to detail geometry is to use glview. In places where you see a high density of leaves in glview, you'll want to switch some of the geometry in those areas to func_detail.

See func_detail in the entity documentation for more information.

See sourcesdk_content\hl2\mapsrc\sdk_func_detail.vmf for an example of how detail geometry can be used to reduce face splits.

yeah i was scared to try it out cuz that map took a couple hours to compile.

Cordon compiling would have let you test this much quicker. It's very helpful for things like this.