Three Dimensional Rock Texture.

[HaZe89]

I've seen in some screenshot and movies (Pi's Tech Demo for example) the textures look three dimensional because of the lighting. Now I know how to do this with the arch tool but that arches the cliff which I don't want plus whenever I add the displacment it makes some of the sides disappear. And how do they align the grass on top of the rocks so perfectly? :flame:

 

[WAR_Nuker]

when you go to make a displacement you arent limited to just turning 1 side of the brush into a displacement. you can make all 6 sides a displacement if you wanted to. i dunno if you knew that or not. otherwise, i really dont know what youre talking about.

 

[HaZe89]

Yes, I know that. I was talking about selecting the side and top of the brush to smoothen out the 90 degree angle that was there.

 

[WAR_Nuker]

ah....you need to use sew. paint the top displacement with the z axis and paint the side displacement with whatever axis corresponds to that face. when you are done....multiselect both faces and click sew a few times. should do the trick.

Edit: there are some sewing tutorials around here somewhere. they talk about when sewing can or cannot be done. i cant really explain it without screenshots. google it and see what you find.

 

[HaZe89]

I know how to smoothen the angles. I'm talking about something else.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

Open the coast sample map from the SDK and look at Valve's cliffs. That's how I did it for the techdemo.

 

[HaZe89]

Alright but I still can't figure out how they got the three dimensional look without using the arch tool. See if I use the arch tool and put a displacment on the brush it effs it up. Pissing me off.

 

[Limpet]

Remeber to use a normal mapped texture? That might help

 

[swiss_cheese9797]

it 'F's up most likely due to the possibility that you are selecting all sides of the arch segments. Hammer thinks you wanna include the panels that are facing eachother where the segments meet. you need to simply make only the VISIBLE panels into displanement maps. hope that helps.

 

[Unvision]

Plus, you don't want sew to get rid of that 90 degree angle, you want subdivide. Subdivide, noise, then a bit of custom geometry painting from there. Make sure you have all the visible faces selected.

 

[HaZe89]

Alright, I know how to smoothen the 90 degree angle. I'm not talking about that (not trying to sound rude). What I'm talking about is this. Rocks like those. Is there anyway I can make the three dimensional looking rocks without the arch tool?

 

[Unvision]

I think what's throwing people off is you keep talking about an arch tool when I can't think of anything in that screenshot that requires its use except for the stairs around the outside. You are asking for "3D rocks", but I can't think of any way the arch tool could be used for that. Because I can't figure out what your thinking is, it's really hard to help. If you could explain the process you think you have to go through, we might better understand what it is you're trying to do rather than just saying you want to create "3D rocks". In the mean time:

If you mean the individual rocks on the cliffs you make should stick out, you need a normalmapped texture and lighting that isn't perpendicular to the normal vector of the displacement map's face - light_environment will work for this as long as you change it's angle to something besides 0 or -90.

If you mean you want the cliffs themselves to curve like they do in that screenshot (which I think is just confusing me even more), it's just artistic use of displacement maps. I assume the map author only used 5 or so on the part we can see, and he would have done it with blocks, not the arch tool. If I were doing it, I would have created a block and then cut in angles so I had a face for each major part of the cliffs. Then I would select them all and subdivide and sew them to the displacement that makes up the floor. Finally, I would shift the X and Y vertices around so that where they joined was less of a perfect curve and so the geometry was more natural looking.

 

[HaZe89]

When I make a brush with the arch tool it looks like the rocks in the link I gave. I don't like using the arch tool however as I want the brush to have the same dimensions as before I created it. Sorry about the confusion but I hope this clears things up.

 

[Unvision]

Imageshack is back up, so hopefully we can finally get this resolved (pictures make everything easier!) Unfortunately, I didn't know how to take screenshots in Hammer, so these are all photoshopped grids and stuff...

Yeah, the arch tool can be a bit confusing when trying to get the dimensions right. This is totally unrelated, but here's a few tips:
No matter how many degrees you enter for the arch, the box that you originally draw (before you actually create it) will define the arch as though you used the full 360 degrees. Like this: (I didn't bother to draw in all the segments)
If you draw this box:

You will get the arch on the left if you use 360 degrees, or the arch on the right if you go 270.

If you used an ellipse, the same rule applies (this is what confused me though: if you use an ellipse, it wil scale the "width" of the arch with the same proportions you used for the ellipse itself. This is really hard to explain and can be seen in Hammer. I didn't draw this effect here.)
The original bounding box:

The results (360 and 180 this time):

Now, for the displacements question, and why you can but shouldn't use the arch tool.
The arch tool will create the curve you want (to reference the images above, you'd be looking at the inside faces of an arch with 270+ degrees, and the visible faces would be textured with a a normal-mapped "blend" texture.)
HOWEVER, there are some problems with this. First, using the arch tool will create a lot of different brushes, which (even as displacements) isn't such a good thing. Second, you can get the same effect by subdividing two perpendicular faces or two faces that meet at an (in this case, obtuse) angle. Third, (and this segues into our solution), even if you get their basic shape by using an arch tool, you will still need to use displacements to make the cliffs slightly irregular (more "natural" looking). The issue here is that displacements are defined by the X- and Y- displacement value from where the vertex started, and you paint geometry in terms of these coordinates as well. Therefore, if you have a displacement where the original face was at an angle, to move the vertices on the face around will require moving it in an X direction AND a Y direction rather than just one to get it to move forward or backward from the face.

I'm sure that was extremely confusing, but it'll make sense if you ever try to do it in Hammer.

So, instead of using the arch tool, we just use a couple blocks for displacements and then move certain vertices really far and sew/subdivide so they match up.

For example, here are some blocks in a top view (fewer original brush sides, fewer odd angles and fewer seperate faces than would be created with an arch.)

Move into your 3D viewport and select the faces that are highlighted purple-ish here and convert them into displacements. Subdivide them all so they join more smoothly (see, it already looks sorta like an arch). Now just paint geometry. As long as you keep them all selected, moving vertices at the side of one displacement will move the requisite vertices of the adjacent displacement.

You will notice I used some angled displacements. You have to balance the difficulty of manipulating them (to move a point on the face of one, you'll have to move it X and Y) with the alternative: moving the vertices of two perpendicular subdivided brushes so that the subdivision between them acts like another face of the cliff.

If this doesn't make sense, I'll make another post with more pictures or maybe just give up. Hammer isn't the most intuitive thing to use, and I'm terrible at explaining things. Good luck.

 

[HaZe89]

But whenever I make a brush using the arch tool it seems to automatically looks like the rocks in the image I posted in a previous post. I don't even have to add displacments. I'm trying to get that effect but without the arch. I don't think whoever made that map used paint geometry to get that effect.

 

[Unvision]

Okay, if you really don't want displacements, you can technically do it with just the arch tool. The arch tool (especially one like that, which would be such a large chunk of the scene) should really be made a func_detail for performance reasons.

Reasons why I still think you should use displacements:
1) Displacements sorta act like func_details automatically (and it gets rid of 5 of the 6 faces too).
2) The effect you are trying to copy WAS done with geometry painting. If you look at the other screenshots you can see that the cliffs are not all exactly the same.
Screenshot
See how it curves in at the bottom and curves back at the top where it turns to grass? You won't be able to make it curve back at the top or have subtle irregularities like this map does. I guarantee you that mapper used displacements.
3) Speaking of the grass, you won't be able to do that without displacements since you need to be able to "paint alpha" which is done on displacements. Remember how in your original question you were asking how they align the grass so perfectly? It isn't aligned - it's alpha-painted directly onto the displacement.

So, to answer your original question line by line:
I've seen in some screenshot and movies (Pi's Tech Demo for example) the textures look three dimensional because of the lighting. Now I know how to do this with the arch tool but that arches the cliff which I don't want...
I still don't know what you mean here. It seems like if you use the arch tool to create a cliff, you would expect the cliff to arch.
...plus whenever I add the displacment it makes some of the sides disappear.
Yes, but you won't see those sides if you do it right. If the original edges of your displacements line up (they would if you use an arch OR if you use my method and the one I suspect that mapper used) you can use "sew" and "subdivide" to make them match up perfectly.
And how do they align the grass on top of the rocks so perfectly?
See above - it's alpha painted, so it's part of the same face. No alignment required.

 

[HaZe89]

I see. I knew the mapper used displacments for the all the curves of the cliffs and all, I just mean the rocks. Maybe we can talk about this over aim later? abvim10823 is my s/n

 

[Dead-Inside]

What rocks, the ones in the wall there or ones on the ground (Like, rocks lying around)?