[article] Realistic tunnels and caves

This is a discussion topic for the article "Realistic tunnels and caves" by Fakedawg which can be found here

Article description:

Shows you how to make a tunnel through the use of displacements

Its a good tutorial... BUT...

The sew tool- It only works when the faces are lined exactly. I've found that if surfaces do not meet perfectly then they go all screwy on you and don't sew. Maybe this tut could have done with a concave corner tutorial just to show the more complex issues.

Ya there are some strict rules you do have to follow when working with displacements like the sew thing you mention - I'll expand the tut later on - Also the SDK documentation is now updated with more info regarding displacements - it's a must read!

I'm not having much luck at all with the displacements. It seems that whenever I displace something, the material no matter how thick just becomes a wafer thin surface and loses all the other sides. The simplest way to explain it is if I try to displace one surface of a cube, the cube becomes a 2-dimensional surface, even although the other sides are still visible in the non-camera views. Also, in that map in particular I had my info_player_start outside the cave, and Gordon just fell right through the ground. What am I doing wrong?

"Note - You don't have to texture the sides that won't be seen with the "nodraw" texture, as they will be discarded when we create the displacement surfaces - I just use it to show which sides we will be using ... " So, yeah, that's the intended effect, BE.

Learned so much from this, wondered how they did all that awesome detail, id been CARVING before this! this is by far the best tutorial ive used thus far. very very clear and easy to follow, too.

Excelent tutorial. Clear, wasy to understand and nice step by step instructions.

You rock! No pun intended. Very helpful tutorial indeed and nicely done.

You rock! No pun intended. Very helpful tutorial indeed and nicely done. Every aspect was covered.

Very helpful and clearly written tutorial. I'll have to try it again though, Hammer crashed on the Paint Alpha part the first time I did it!

Wonderful tutorial that will defenately come in handy!!!!

Gongratulations! Its a great tutorial. Only that you should subdivide all the faces except the road. When I subdivided all the faces I got an error while compiling. That makes me wonder how will you make a cave which has 4 round sides (cylinder-like)?

Anyway, gj!

Very very good, good work

Wow, flawless and magnificent... I shall use this often, and be reminded of your awesome tutorial, thanks a ton!!

What they ^ said. =)

Wow this was i great tutorial!!! i found it very easy to follow and got a very nice cave at the end im glad people who know hammer well can take time to help out us noobs. A masterpiece

Great job man, good tutorial, my maps always get messed up when I tried to achieve natural looking caves before. was very helpful to me.

I plan on reading this closely and I feel its a great tutorial but, it is not 56k friendly. It took 6 refreshing to get all the images to complete and several minutes. They could have been reduced by 20-30% easily.

I would appreciate it updated with better image sizes please.

Very nice tutorial man! helped me out alot. i have been trying to figure out how to blend textures togather for some time now and this is the best demonstration of it ive seen! hehe keep all the good tutorials coming man!

I signed up just to say, this is the single most helpful tutorial I've read in a long time. Thank you.

This tutorial was great because it didint just and only tell how to make that damn hole in wall aka. cave. It also told almost all basics to make these surfaces look nice. I allready know all this but I can imagine that this is very clear tutorial for newbie.

Fantastic. Makes something that could be a bugger to work out on your own very simple.
Might be worth adding that you can only make a displacement surface on a 4 edged face, but that's minor.