Displacement and Brush Lighting Differences

ignatio

L1: Registered
Mar 13, 2012
3
0
I'm experiencing some strange lighting when using blend textures and brushes with the same base vtf's. Basically I cannot figure out why it's doing this:

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/595841084682247742/6E679F27B479EB2D8822201610479CE957C0AE80/ Dark area is blend texture and lighter area is the same base vtf from the blend on a brush.

I've tried several combinations of blend textures and even custom textures, editing vmt's from WorldVertex lighting to LightmapGeneric and vice versa etc. and nothing has changed this issue. I'm really just interested in the cause of it at this point, nothing I've been able to find on google has been helpful (maybe I'm just not searching with the right keywords? If I knew the cause I could probably fix it). Anyone have any ideas? Is there some other combination of textures I should be using to counteract this? Sorry to first post with a request for assistance. :p Compile log shows no errors in vbsp, vvis or vrad. Thanks in advance, this is really a great community and I've enjoyed lurking thus far.
 

tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
5,102
4,621
Are you absolutely sure those are the same texture and you don't have any overlapping brushes? There are a couple of alpine grass textures that look very similar in Hammer but actually are not.

Could also be your vrad--are you compiling on fast?
 

A Boojum Snark

Toraipoddodezain Mazahabado
aa
Nov 2, 2007
4,775
7,670
Displacements are lit differently though, so you may have a seam anyway. The easiest solution is just to make the rest of the ground a displacement, as is usually done.
 

ignatio

L1: Registered
Mar 13, 2012
3
0
Indeed, making them all displacements did fix everything. Thank you for the quick responses. I wanted to avoid that for selfish reasons but I suppose there's no other choice. Just out of curiosity, why would displacements be lit differently if both a displacement and a brush shared the same VMT which dictates the shader?
 

tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
5,102
4,621
More triangles in a displacement so it gets more complex lighting. Didn't realize one was a brush or I would have told you the same in my original post!
 
T

The Asylum

If it makes you feel any better, Dustbowl 2 has this same problem, and it's very noticeable
 

Draco18s

L9: Fashionable Member
Sep 19, 2009
622
136
I've got a similar issue with my displacements, except instead of lighting it's the blend alpha from two neighboring displacements. In hammer the two control nodes have the same (or nearly the same) alpha and it displays properly, but in-game, the one displacement acts like the alpha at that node is 0.