Ok, so the front of the building I'm making is kinda high poly so I'm making some hedges in the driveway to cover some of the view. I was wondering, can I use a hedge with transparency at the top of the texture to obscure view. Will HL then only draw the things behind the pransparency or everything behind that face using that texture?

Entity brushes don't block vis, only world brushes. Your hedges will have to be a func_wall, which is an entity brush.

You'll probably want to read up on vis blocking and reducing r_speeds. There's some links to great articles in ender's post in the Mapping FAQ (http://www.dayofdefeat.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=100) (You'll have to scroll down a bit ;) )

You could always make a solid hedge with a normal texture and then just a small { texture to top it off. Or take a { texture where the top only has blue, then split it into two, the top being a func_illusionary/wall and the bottom being a solid.

Make a normal solid brush with either the SKY or NULL texture then around that brush make your foliage and tie the foliage to a func_illusionary

Make adjustments that are needed so the player never sees the H.O.M.

Only the brush covered in the null or sky texture will do the occluding in this case

Go with SKY texture, NULL will probably create HOM effects unless you make it just small part on top of other brushes.

Originally posted by Craftos
Go with SKY texture, NULL will probably create HOM effects unless you make it just small part on top of other brushes.

General missunderstanding, as far as I know, nullbrushes never gives a hall of mirror effect if there are something behind it. Only if your nullbrush is a part of "the world wall/edge" then there will be a hall of mirror since there is nothing left behind to draw....

Originally posted by Kehldon
General missunderstanding, as far as I know, nullbrushes never gives a hall of mirror effect if there are something behind it. Only if your nullbrush is a part of "the world wall/edge" then there will be a hall of mirror since there is nothing left behind to draw....

True you will not get a hom in most cases

You will see the sky through the null brush

Originally posted by Kehldon
General missunderstanding
Exactly, but not mine.

Only if your nullbrush is a part of "the world wall/edge" then there will be a hall of mirror since there is nothing left behind to draw....
Which is obviously the case here since he wants to use this to visblock. This brush is supposed to touch the sky. So it will be world brush "at the edge" like you've said.

Originally posted by Bic-B@ll
Or take a { texture where the top only has blue, then split it into two, the top being a func_illusionary/wall and the bottom being a solid.

I think that sounds easiest...

The other stuff was fairly confusing for a stupid newb like me. :D

Originally posted by Pinhead
I think that sounds easiest...

The other stuff was fairly confusing for a stupid newb like me. :D This sounds like brush entity which won't help you in visblocking. You have to use world brushes only, all the way from ground to ceiling/sky.

Eventually this idea could work if you would set some vertical and horizontal HINT brushes but it would be the hardest way, no recommended.