I'm getting heavy amounts of smoke coming out of my ears after playing around with the SDK and detail props for the past 6 hours now.

I can't get detail props to show in my 3d skybox, no matter what I do. They show up just right in the playable area, but fail to show in the skybox.

I used every single bit of knowledge I had on them. Made custom blends...no go. Used custom .vbsp files....no go. Used different valve made textures....no go. Inverted the alpha texturing more times than I can remember...no go.

There is this commonly shared problem with Argentan textures that fail to work properly, so I originally thought that was it. But like I said, the details show up in the playable area (same texture as the ground on Argentan) but fail in the 3d skybox (with any other ground blend textures that have detail props).

I'm at my wits end, so if someone knows anymore about this, please enlighten me (and the rest of us so I'm the only one wasting that much time on such a ridiculous thing)

I should also specify that I only compiled with fast settings and using the cordon compiling tool, though I really fail to see why on earth that should have an impact on the end result.

try reversing the alphas? (either on the displacement itself, or swap the two materials in the skybox texture blend .vmt)

yeah i did, but i didn't try inverting the textures in the vmt.

EDIT: I didn't think it would help, and it didn't...

How do you fix the problem of the Argentan detail props not showing up? I forgot how...

the only issues i had are like you said in the argentan textures
and all the default hl2 ones in the details.vsp dont work either
is it those your trying to use ?

I've used every single texture available. First with the help of Jake, we were able to see it wasn't a config problem on my end.

When using the exact same texture for the ground in my map and the ground in the 3d skybox, the details show in the playable area, and not in the skybox. Loading up other maps including a test i made 3 weeks ago, the details show up. This time they don't.

I also tried with and without the cordon tools and that's not it either.

As far as fixing the argentan textures, I don't really know. I thought extracting the details.vbsp worked, but I since then deleted it and those work fine on my map

That's it, I just found what's causing it.

The displacement brushes generated by the terrain generator that was posted about just recently are not compatible.

I made a simple brush over the ones I imported from the terrain generator, and this time I'm having props from this one.

Problem solved (well kinda, it's gonna suck to have to make all the terrain...)

oh come come now, theres nothing like fine hand-made displacement work :D

how bizarre, i wonder what the deal is

Probably is during the export process. I wonder how much of the code to export to vmf format was interpreted.....

Originally posted by JakeParlay
oh come come now, theres nothing like fine hand-made displacement work :D

Dammed right :D One verticy at a time too.

oh come come now, theres nothing like fine hand-made displacement work
Says the King of Terrain, Mr. Highlander. :D When are you going to share your displacement talent in a tutorial for us plebes?

I made my 3d skybox today. Talk about a pain in the butt. Try having a 10,000 x 10,000 (approx) 3d skybox made of 20 brushes that should look like a proper valley..... Thank God my map is heavy on fog, that helps sell the idea a lot....