Cliff displacement - black checkers on alpha

[l3eeron]

Well, I have no idea why this is happening.

Am I using a bad texture?

Is it a cubemap/lighting issue?


As you can see, it's on the parts where I painted alpha....

 

[MrAlBobo]

that happened to my entire map once...but with purple not white
all i did was close hammer and reopen the map, that fixed it

 

[l3eeron]

:laugh:

I just noticed that pointy corner sticking way out in the first image...

from using the subdivide tool.

 

[DJive]

i believe its from using a texture that does not have an alpha channel.

 

[l3eeron]

I figured it might be a broken texture, or something on my end.

Forgot to add that Im using nature/blendrockgroundwall004. So it should have alpha since it's a blend texture..... right?

 

[Scotland Tom]

Not right. I tried using that texture and had the exact same problem. The various blended textures are notorious for not having alpha channels attached. It'll take some trial and error to find one that works for you.

Why Valve released the textures when they A) didn't use them in-game and B) didn't include alpha channels is beyond me.

 

[l3eeron]

ahhhhh.....

damn, it was looking so good too. Thanks for the help guys. Ill hunt for a different solution.

 

[YM]

ahhhhh.....

damn, it was looking so good too. Thanks for the help guys. Ill hunt for a different solution.

what are you talking about! it STILL looks good!

 

[Butter]

Hey guys. Im having the same problem. But with my control points. They show up purple/black checkered ingame. Very odd. Any solution for this?

 

[YM]

butter - that is actually a completely differnt problem. There are things called cubemaps in source maps, they provide reflections. what you need to do to get rid of the checkers is:
-place at least one env_cubemap entity in your map (put them in contrasting locations at roughtly head height)
-compile the map
-put in the following into the console: (assuming you have HDR turned on full to start with)
mat_specular 0
buildcubemaps
disconnect
mat_hdr_level 0
map <mapname>
buildcubemaps
disconnect
mat_specular 1
mat_hdr_level 2
-Now when you load up the map again you will have working reflections and no more pink checkers

this process takes quite a while so you will probably end up only doing this when you release a version of your map to the public.

 

[Butter]

Ah like that. So the cubemaps provide the reflections for the designated area? That's pretty odd and a uncomfortable way of working Thanks for the solution though

 

[YM]

They are pretty odd, quite outdated technology, and yes, they are very uncomfortable to work with, but thats the way its done

 

[Open Blade]

I actually like the looks of the squares you got there. Kinda neat looking.

 

[Lord Ned]

Actually the Cubemaps are quite an advanced area. Sure it's a hell of a drag to make them for general use, but you can get some truly spectacular reflections with Sources Cubemap's. (Seeeing as you can change the size too. )

Anyways, find that material name, open TF2 Materials.gcf (steam/steamapps) and browse to it.

(Might be like blend/groundgravel01 or something)

Open the .vmt, and you should get something like this:

"WorldVertexTransition"
{
"" "nature/dirtwall001a"
"" "nature/grassfloor002a"
}

(The Nature/blah was stolen from Hl2's)

Change your second texture ($BaseTexture2) to a new texture.
Do NOT use a blend for the second one, it causes problems. So use like dirt/dirt01

Save your new VMT to USERNAME/Team Fortress 2/tf2/materials/WHEREVERYOUGOTITINTHEGCF.

Any more questions and I can fix that. Or post the texture name, and when I get home i'll fix it up for you.


More on cubemaps is: They are placed how they are for the lights. Basically one places one in the center of a "Light" area, and in the center of your shadows. Thisway when you build cubemaps it reads the dark faces around it, and makes your gun reflect DARK and not LIGHT.