Question about displacements and custom models

Joey

L1: Registered
Nov 17, 2014
26
38
Hey, so I have been working on a project that I would like to be my first released map. (I've been through about 3-4 map projects that I've abandoned, but hey, im a hell of a lot better than I was on my first one.) I can never seem to get displacements looking nice, its a snowy map so there are a lot of displacements. But like, I have a lot of trouble making them look nice mostly due to having wonky shaped brushes that are the base for the displacement, and some of them wont sew together because of that. I see a lot of tutorials about litterally HOW to work with displacements, but not how to make them in a good/professional/efficient way if you catch my drift. Any help on how to prepare beforehand to make displacement sculpting easier would be greatly appreciated.

rGxEDDD.png

Heres what I mean by them not sewing btw

My other question would be if I were to make a prop in blender, how would I convert hammer units to blender units? or are they the same? The reason being is I would like to make pipes that go along the roof and conform with it. Or if it would be possible to sort of turn the bsp brushes of my map into a model file to look at in blender? Any help on either of these topics is greatly appreciated.
 

Seba

DR. BIG FUCKER, PHD
aa
Jun 9, 2009
2,364
2,728
I like to make ground that'll be displaced out of 256x256 brushes; then I'll convert the top faces to power-2 displacements and edit that. It's okay to have displacements go under buildings; if you don't want to do that, however, make sure to keep your disps as square and as uniform in size as possible - the vertex tool is your friend here.

fsGKZsb.png


Notice that the displacements on the right more or less block out a shape, and the odd brush in the middle can have its three visible faces displaced without looking awkwardly (there's a wooden, nondisplaced floor in front of that small cliff thing). The larger brushes on the lower left are exactly 4 times as big as the smaller brushes and so will be power 3.

Making brushes that'll displace nicely is all about being able to divide your area into even-sized squares imo.