A Plethora of Questions!

ParanoidDrone

L3: Member
Feb 19, 2009
147
11
I'll stop asking so many questions eventually, I promise.

Right now, I'm slightly concerned with the lighting in my map. The floor is sufficiently bright, and where it's not I can just add more, but in keeping with Valve's style I've been using solely light_spot entities. This makes the ceiling rather dark, even when I crank up the brightness to 750-1000. Here are a few pictures to show what I mean:

ctf_multiplex0000.jpg

ctf_multiplex0001.jpg

ctf_multiplex0002.jpg

ctf_multiplex0003.jpg


With that out of the way, I've been brushing up on displacements in preparation for doing outdoor maps. I have the paint geometry pretty down pat, but the paint alpha stumps me. I've checked the tutorials here and none of them really detail it, and the Valve Developer's Wiki isn't much better. My problem is that clicking on the paint alpha button then on the displacement does nothing and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. The texture I tried to apply the alpha with was nature/blendgroundtogravel001 and the displacement texture is nature/dirtground001, if it matters. (Which it probably does.)

On a final note, would it be kosher to wait until the final stages of a map to actually displace everything that's supposed to be displaced, or is it standard to apply displacements as one goes along? I ask only because I imagine it would be a bigger pain to edit displacements than to edit brushes when I inevitably decide to change the geometry.
 

A Boojum Snark

Toraipoddodezain Mazahabado
aa
Nov 2, 2007
4,775
7,669
Larger outer cone values help with dark ceilings (though they should rightly be a little darker).

Alpha painting only works when you are using a blend material. That means that texture is actually ON the face. You don't paint another texture onto it, which I think is what you were trying to do. Blend materials are two textures in one, and alpha painting adjusts which shows and how much.

You are right, it's a good idea to leave things undisplaced in early dev, unless of course it's a significant object that should be.
 

ParanoidDrone

L3: Member
Feb 19, 2009
147
11
Yeah, the ceilings should obviously be darker than the floor, but I was unsure if what I have pictured was sufficiently dark or too far in one direction or the other. I take it it's fine? (FYI, the cones are 45/60 inner/outer.)

And If I'm understanding you right, I texture the displacement with nature/blendgroundtogravel001 (or whatever), which is effectively two textures in one, and then use the alpha to bring the two out in varying amounts? (EDIT: Just tested this out, and it works like a charm. Thanks.)
 
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