Is there a downside to tieing func_detail to a group of steps?

[Robot3x]

The kind of work you're doing here, such geometry is better made out of models, where the shadows will also be automatically assigned to a smoothing group by the model author.

Would Blender work or do I have to get Maya? To download the free version of Maya, they have a questionnaire that asks for everything short of a social security number and a birth certificate. lol

 

[grazr]

Blender should be fine.

As for displacements being lightmapped, Psy, i fought that arguement for the better part of 3 years and i could never actually prove for or against it other than the fact that Valve would use lightmap scales on displacements in HL single player. Everyone else seems to think they're vertex lit so i just went along with that idea. How shadows act ingame certainly implies they are vertex lit, lighting conditions matching the tri-power as opposed to any high-resolution square lightmap grid.

Either way, the fact remains that the world geometry is bleeding light, not the displacements; and that displacements frequently don't sync shadows with world geometry.

 

[Sebi]

As for displacements being lightmapped, Psy, i fought that arguement for the better part of 3 years and i could never actually prove for or against it [...]

To put that question to rest:
I made two materials with

"LightmappedGeneric"
{
	"$basetexture" "Brick/brickwall001"
}

and

"VertexLitGeneric"
{
	"$basetexture" "Brick/brickwall001"
}

and tested them. Here is a screenshot:

The dynamic shadow casted by a model were fine on all four of those pillars. I removed the model and tested it again with a standard brush. The pillars on the right are the ones with the lightmapped material and the ones on the left are those with the vertexlit material. As you can see, the brush does not cast a shadow on a vertexlit pillar. The lightmap scale is set to 4 on everything.
So either we can now say that displacements are not automatically VertexLit or I have gotten the question all wrong

 

[Kill_the_Bug]

fast vis is quick and dirty - just to see if you have major errors - that's all I use it for.

You always need to run full vis before releasing a map to get everything done right.

Expect your computer to be bascially non-functional when doing a full compile - shut down all non-essential programs - then complie and go for a coffee or something - better yet do it overnight if you are sleeping and not needing a machine.

Have been thinking of nems tools but not sure it they work.

As for the post heading - I've been able to turn most of a map into 1 func_detail once - made everything non visable via the vis panel and all I had was world brushes left over - did a select all via edit and tied them to func enity = no problems.

 

[Robot3x]

How serious is this warning?

SERVER: VPhysics Collision detection getting expensive, check for too many convex pieces!

I got it while shooting grenades as a demoman testing the holes in the walls in the photos on the previous page. I put a blockbullets brush over one hole and carved it roughly following the hole pattern to try and reduce how many things the grenades come into contact with. But it didn't help.

I get the warning when the grenades bounce around inside the holes, so I think it has to do with how rapidly it's bouncing around. I'm pretty sure widening the holes or rounding them would fix it, but if the warning isn't that big of a deal, I'd rather not mess with it.

 

[lana]

EDIT: Oh you mean the good carve.

Yeah I'd probably make them not as small.