[article] Texture alignment through arches using displacement maps

This is a discussion topic for the article "Texture alignment through arches using displacement maps" by trepid_jesse which can be found here

Article description:

Using displacement maps to preserve texture alignment around arches.

Personally I think this is a fair amount of work for somethat that is, for players, is unlikely to be noticed. That said, I feel the tutorial still has merit. It demonstrates nicely that displacement surfaces can be used for purposes other than height variety on terrain, as well as showing that texture coordinates at each vertex of the displacement surface are retained during manipulation. If you do follow this technique when making arches, I suggest you make use of hammer's ability to save prefabs. If you make prefabs for a variety of common arch sizes you can save yourself a whole lot of time in the future.

Thats Quite alot of work for such little road, while the tutorial is well written and designed, the actual aplication of it is minimal. Unless you create prefab after prefab (like Reno said above) then your strapped for a lot of time, when you can just rotate a regular brush 15 degrees and clip sections off, and create a road that looks almost as good.
I like the aplication of the displacement (it seems endless at what it can do with the subdivide tool) and it is probalbly more optimal than using brushes (func_detail mind you).
But all in all I'd give it and 8.5, but since there is no .5 increment ill give it an 8.

I completely agree that this is more of a method to be used by the "perfectionist at heart." I had hoped that I had achieved a rather subtle undertone that this may be a somewhat vain way to spend your time, but it provides the option nonetheless.

Then again, I suppose it also helps to illustrate another purpose behind displacement maps beside general terrain; such as Reno pointed out.

Very helpful and handy!

Very intresting, never thought to use displacment for things like that.

I like it, I think its a great idea, even if it may be somewhat time consuming, and only for the perfectionist. I guess one of the benefits of displacements comes from its shortcomings, in that they are completely unrestricted 3D, not just heightmaps, so no lod, but you can do some pretty cool stuff with them.

Never knew about that shift+left click, that really is sweet, will ocme in handy in the future!

As said above, this does seem to be a lot of work, but as usual, every piece of detail helps -- I would probably recomened that taking a serires of brushes, and transforming then into the correct direction would be easier, since any brush that is moved with that transform tool maintains its texture coodinates.
However, this is a good tutorial -- a bit confusing, but for anybody who really wants to get their hands messy with detail, they should read this.

A time consuming proccess, yet very useful...Great tut!

One thing to keep in mind is that I don't think light bounces off of displacement maps like it does on normal brush faces. I'd show a screenshot from ff_hunted where it was obvious, but I don't think we can just go around showing FF screenshots that haven't been released to the public yet.

But what I mean is that the lighting won't look as good on the curved displacement map arch as it would on just a normal brush-based arch. In ff_hunted, we used this technique in a few areas, one of which being the ceiling in this screenshot...

http://www.fortress-forever.com/?a=media&id=ff_hunted_6

That screenshot has the old brush-based arch in it and you can see the texture breaking on each turn of the arch. Since then, we've updated the ceiling of that tunnel to use a curved displacement map arch. When we did that, the lighting/shadows were really dark in some spots of the displacement map ceiling. To sorta fix it, we added some dim lights similar to the light_spots up in the corners of that tunnel to help make the dark spots not as noticeable.

OK, enough typing. I just figured I'd mention that the lighting acts a little different on displacement maps, so keep that in mind when using this technique...especially for indoor areas where the lighting might not be as constant everywhere.

Can you submit a prefab maybe? im lazy..

Well, given that it was recently on the front page of this site, you can make your own.

http://www.violator.eclipse.co.uk/disped

That handy programs makes the methodology outlined in this tutorial a moot one.

Good tutorial

Brilliant, I'll spend the extra five mins to make my map betetr anyday. Thanks for this tutorial, I use this in every textured arch I make now.

Oh my god, I just spent an hour making a displacement that didn't even work before I read the comments and found the program that did it for me in seconds. PLEASE update the tut!

Well, Varsity, if the displacement didn't work that isn't the fault of this tutorial. You just went wrong somewhere in the midst of creating the displacement.

I've tried using that DispEd program a number of times since this tutorial, but ultimately, I still find it "easier" to do it this way. It's actually becoming a fairly quick process now, and the burden it puts on time isn't really all that bad. I just don't like DispEd, as it currently stands, as it's not terribly intuitive and I find it difficult to get what I want out of it. I'm sure the author of the program is very adept at creating lots of cool displacements with the program, but I think it still needs quite a bit of work.

Whatever works best for you, though.

Nevertheless, you should at least mention it. And no, I didn't go wrong - the problem was with texture alignment on the edges, something that DispEd's solution didn't manage either!

I mentioned the DispEd program in the comments of this tutorial, and I did so after I noticed the program myself.

I only assumed you went wrong somewhere in the process of making the displacement because of what you said in your first reply.

Great tutorial. I was just asking about this in the FF IRC room, I guess I should have looked first, eh? Great tutorial Jesse.