Looks like a model to me. Unless they went trough the trouble of getting Source to do tesselation. They've made their own lighting and put that into Source, so it's not entirely unlikely that they just said eff it and put tesselation into Source.Reminds me of Dear Esther. The money-cost rerelease, not the original mod. I am curious how they pulled off all those rocks. Did they somehow patch tessellation into Source, or is it all just a big model?
I've seen examples of tessellation where it made flat surfaces (or at least smooth terrain) into 3D versions of the textures on them — cobblestone, etc. I have no idea how it works, but it looked awesome.I thought tesselation made stuff look smoother by adding more polygons? To me, it looks like either a prop, or self-shadowing bump maps on displacements.
I've seen examples of tessellation where it made flat surfaces (or at least smooth terrain) into 3D versions of the textures on them — cobblestone, etc. I have no idea how it works, but it looked awesome.
Is @Fr0Z3nR still a mapper with the BM team? Maybe he could answer if it's tessalation or clever usage of props.
Is @Fr0Z3nR still a mapper with the BM team? Maybe he could answer if it's tessalation or clever usage of props.
On the Black Mesa forum one of the lead devs themselves said this was one of the less alien looking parts of Xen. Probably was full-on alien mode before the Black Mesa team (as in, in-game Black Mesa team, not the game devs) decided it was needed for human exploration of the alien world. Apparently there is way more alien stuff before the map they showcased here, but that would spoil the surprise of the actual Xen levels so they went with this instead. More Xen will be posted in the coming months up to its release, so we'll see.Doesn't really look or feel like an alien planet anymore...especially with that ramp. But maybe it's a certain area I don't recall that should look like that.