displacement vs nodraw

This isnt a real problem its more of a question of optimzing a map and which method is better to create terrain for HL2.

Here is the scenario:

I have an outdoors type map with alot of terrain. As it stands right now I have a road (currently a world brush)...which of course is flat and some dirt (currently a displacement due to the reason of using a blended texture)on the sides and will be creating some rocky edges with cliff and all that jazz to kind of inclose the area and if it more of a good feel.

Now that you have the scenario (not the greatest discription but hey I dont want to give my map ideas away) What is the best way, preformance wise, to create the outdoors areas?

big displacements are fine for big outdoor places iv made a rally map witch is 1/4 of the hole mapping grid out of 2 displacements useing paint Geometry for the cliffs and train with no fps lag bear in mind its hard do sew cliff if thers mor than 2 face ... hope this helps a bit ;p

Well its more of a performance issue that I am worried about for later in the map... cause this map is going to be loaded with alot of thing in it... secret areas.. traps and puzzles to get through the map... so I want to make sure I do things right the first time... I mean I realize that displacements area "cheap" to render. But like I said earlier I hate using them and using the paint geometry with them so if I dont have to use them I wont...but in anycase if I have to use them then maybe what I can do is make my world brushes into displacements AFTER creating the world brushes and placement of the brushes.... hmmm good idea ....thanks for the help...

But if an advanced user could tell me FOR SURE if this is the right track to go on it would be much appreciated!!

not to be snotty but i should think this is the way to go as for the trap and thing make shor you cap off the room/door with a hit or portals brushes this will help lots in fps becouse it will not draw the out side world when in and the trap and the trap/room when out /to see if this is working proply im map use the mat_wireframe 1-2 in the console

Im not sure what the hell you are talking about? Displacement vs
Nodraw? But for an out door map its ALWAYS better to use displacements
(think about it what other alternative is there?), with nodraw brushes
behind the displacements to control VIS and to seal the map. Please
explain more.

You say you dont know how to use the paint tool.....whats not to know?
its easy, just read the tutorial here on it, and just experiment with
it. But here is a rundown of the paint geometry tool:

effect- really the only thing you need to worry about is raise lower,
this will make the displacement areas move on and out of the axis.

axis- This is the direction the displacement will move, either up and
down or left and right, or foward and backward. Look at the direction
the arrow is pointing, this will tell you what axis you are on. You
left click the mouse button to make it move in the direction of the
arrow, and you right click to make it move in the oppostite direction
of the arrow.

radius- this is how big of the area of the displacement will be
effected, you can move the bar over to 256 (although you can enter
larger numbers to make a larger sphere...helpful for you I think)

distance-this is how far the displacement will travel, once again you
can change the values to a highter number, but with lower settings
(5-12) you gain more control over the displacement (better for you I
think).

Thats all you need to worry about, the otehr options I have no clue how to work, or they just dont matter.

You can turn multiple faces of a brush into a displacement, just select all faces, then create as one.

I dont know how else to help you, if you can't handle the displacement tool, then maybe you shouldnt make a out door map.

edit: check out the sample sp SDK maps to see how they did the displacements. Don't be lazy.

RgR That ;p

RgR That ;p

Im sorry I don't speak 1337 or leet or the crap awful language you youngsters use, please translate.

Thanks for the info (kinda Omega) What I meant about the nodraw situation was creating a world brush and leaving it as a world brush with nodraw on all sides except for the top of course where my terrain texture would of been.... sorry I wasnt clear enough on that... mind was going in several places at once... as for the displacement stuff... I just spent the last hour playing around with what it does how it works and all that jazz... and for the most part I am getting the hang of it!!!

Noise works great for cliffs and stuff and i figured out the paint geometry tool.(not all that well yet and the sew works good but dont like that you have to be lined up prefect with a different displacement brush for it to work correctly but as long as I know that now I am sure I will do ok.

So in any case thanks Omega for the bit of info... I guess this was a bit of a stupid question considering I kind of knew the answer for it already but I wasnt sure on some of the methods for optimizing maps. So I figured it was better to ask something then just guess about the answer!!!

You can do it that way, but then it would look flat (not very
realistic), but to do a displacement you apply nodraw to all sides that
are not going to have a displacement on them (although its not necicery
since its automaticly cut out anyways). In order to sew the two
displacement brushes have to match up, meaning their sides (that you
want to sew) have to be the same lenghth, and match up on the same
axis, just read the sew tut here to find out more.

heheh youngster ;p RgR = roger