Lighting problem with texture displacements

[Diddly]

I'm in the process of creating a CP map (cp_xfire). The spawn points are underground so I've used displacements to produce the entrance/exit to the spawn point and the lighting of this is not matching the surrounding textures (see image). I've tried env_cubemaps to no avail. Can anyone suggest a way to fix this?

 

[ZargonX]

Did you try adding them to the same smoothing group?

 

[YM]

What even IS a smoothing group, can someone do a little write up so we can all understand what the hell they are...

 

[Diddly]

ditto not heard of those, but they sound V useful ;-)

 

[Scotland Tom]

Check the Valve Developer Wiki:

Advanced Lighting (Scroll down to see smoothing groups and their visual impact.)
Smoothing Groups

Enjoy!

 

[dirtyminuth]

Things to check, in order:

1. Do the faces used for the displacements share a common edge? (I.e. can you sew the displacements together)

2. Are the lightmaps aligned? You can view lightmaps by changing the 3D view option. Align them as you would regular textures (use the texture application tool, Shift-A).

3. Is the lightmap scale used on the displacements small enough so that one luxel will fit completely? Solution is to reduce lightmap scale (also in the texture application tool).

4. Try adding "-LargeDispSampleRadius" to your VRAD compile options. Last ditch shot.

Let us know how you resolve this issue.

/\/\/\ ScotlandTom, you're from Michigan too?

 

[Earl]

For the ramp, did you accidentally create displacements on all sides of the base brush? That screwed up the lighting for me once.

 

[Diddly]

Smoothing groups - no effect (assuming I'm using them correctly). lightmap - no effect. I tried reducing the units per luxel from 25 to 10 (is this the right way?) and the neighbouring blocks were the same colour in the 3d lightmap view. haven't tried the switch for vrad yet. I'm not holding out much hope really. I only displaced the top surface, to be sure I tried it on a neighbouring block - top only and got the same effect a darkening at the egdes of the block.

Right now I'm thinking of ditching the whole displacement way of doing it, and using a wedge block instead.

 

[PandaN]

My question would be did you sew the displacements together? That looks like the engine thinks its separate to the surrounding areas to me

 

[Diddly]

no you're right, I didn't sew them together. I've got rid of the ramp, but I need to look this up anyway for the overall floor displacements I want to do, thanks.

EDIT: I tried checking the auto-sew box, but it complained that I didn't have enough surfaces! Is there another way?