I'm making a semi junglish map and the entire ground is displacement mapped. I've done it horribly so going to redo from scratch but two questions;

-What is the best size for displacement maps? Should I make squares of 512 units or 256 units to put my map together; 1 large displacement map is out of the question I'm sure.

-In order to sew, the brushes that are used to create the displacement map must be of same size and directly next to each other; my map has a tilt to it and the displacement origins, if all on the same Z plane, will get further and further away from the displacement map as the map rises. Does this matter?

Thanks for any help guys
-Soup

Originally posted by Ca-Chicken-Soup
[B]I'm making a semi junglish map and the entire ground is displacement mapped. I've done it horribly so going to redo from scratch but two questions;

-What is the best size for displacement maps? Should I make squares of 512 units or 256 units to put my map together; 1 large displacement map is out of the question I'm sure.

That would depend on what size you want the polys in the displacement(smaller=more detail).Cutting a bigger displacement will result in smaller polys than making a smaller one from scratch. I dont think there is a "perfect size" other than what the mapper needs to build the map, in other words, the enging does not care.

-In order to sew, the brushes that are used to create the displacement map must be of same size and directly next to each other; my map has a tilt to it and the displacement origins, if all on the same Z plane, will get further and further away from the displacement map as the map rises. Does this matter?

I believe it does not matter if the displacement goes "out of the brush bounds".I do try to keep them inside(except for in the up direction) just because it looks cleaner in Hammer to me.I have looked at a few maps and seen some REALLY messed up looking displacement brushes,things I would never think would work ingame, and they seem to run fine.

Use 512 unit square displacements, set it to either 2 or 3 depending on how nice you want the terrain to look. I use 512 square set to 3 and my terrain comes out nice, doesn't matter of the displacements are angled upward they'll still sew most of the time, though the sew functions dodgy sometimes anyway.

OT, but Soup:


I had used that same poster for a sig awhile back, except mine said:

"How many facist pigs did YOU kill today?"

and down at the bottom it read, "...SEVEN!"

It was funnier in my head... anyways...

please continue your discussion. :PARROT:

It's not really meant to be funny; more informative :P

Thanks I will use 512 squares and angle them; I didn't think of that tinfoil

While we are on the subject; I can never get nem's terrian generator to create a good size to start with, it's hard to know how many triangles to use and what size to have them

Ok how do you stich 2 displacements together?

Originally posted by 3eamus
Ok how do you stich 2 displacements together?

1. Make sure the vertices of the 2 displacement brushes are lined up.

2. Open texture tool, select the surfaces that are to be sewn.

3. In the displacement tools, click the "sew" button.

:)

Ok, one thing that I screwed myself on in the past... too much x and y displacement (I did it to prevent texture stretching). Its not possible to do overlays on x and y displaced surfaces. So I pretty much struggled very much to make craters and stuff like that work. Same goes with sewing right?

Realistically, if I start another map soon I'm going to be making each part - part by part... it is so hard to see the map as a huge flat plain and get sizes right... and most of the time there is no reason to have a big plain... yaknow with paths... rocks... just.. stuff that divides it up into seperate brushes.