Pathing in Hammer

[Motik7]

I am a very new mapper (I am working on my first TF2 map, though I have general game dev knowledge) and one of the things I noticed in pretty much any quality community map (using the pro versions of Valve maps as reference) is that there seem to be paths built into the texture similar to what you see here in Sawmill. Aesthetically wise, my map is pretty similar to Sawmill (it uses the exact same environmental lighting and I use nature/blendgroundtograss008 which I think is the same), but whenever I use that blended texture, I just get the dirt part and that's it, and I don't know how to make the patchy grass areas to lead the player through certain areas. A screenshot of what I'm referring to is this (it's a gyazo link but even if you don't click it I feel I described what I'm talking about well enough). Anyway point being how do I do this pathing? I can't seem to find anything about it anywhere and I thought the texture being a blend and all it would be a bit more intuitive.

 

[Muddy]

It needs to be a displacement first. Convert that brush face to a displacement and then you can use Paint Geometry and left/right click to paint with each texture.

 

[Motik7]

It needs to be a displacement first. Convert that brush face to a displacement and then you can use Paint Geometry and left/right click to paint with each texture.

How do you do the painting in the paint geometry? In that tab all I see is the raise lower options used for stuff like ditches and hills etc. I don't see anywhere that I can paint.

 

[XEnderFaceX]

You paint in the Paint Alpha Setting, and those Dirttracks seen on Sawmill are Overlays that connect to eachother

 

[Motik7]

You paint in the Paint Alpha Setting, and those Dirttracks seen on Sawmill are Overlays that connect to eachother

Yeah I know the tracks are overlays. This maybe should be its own question but when I did the paint alpha, it worked as expected but it also just decided to have this weird render thing. From the top, everything renders perfectly, but from the bottom it just becomes completely invisible. It can still be collided against, but it can't be seen. The thickness is still 16 (according to the relevant cameras), but I'm not sure that's true. Also some of it does still render, I have two groups of objects both of which have painting on them, but one renders on all sides with proper thickness while the other does not. You can see it on the very left close to the bottom edge of the second picture. How do I fix this?

Also how do I create a displacement on a wedge, whenever I do it at any power, the wedge just dissapears until I destroy the displacement.

I am very confused how this all works lmao.

 

[Muddy]

When you use displacements, only the displaced faces will be visible. To show the flat faces too, toggle this option:

Also, displacements only work on brush faces that have four sides - so only a square or rectangle. Anything else - 3 sides, 5 sides (six is right out!) doesn't support displacements, so you'll have to find creative ways around that.

The Developer Wiki has a page on displacements, including a basic tutorial on how to create and use them.

 

[Motik7]

When you use displacements, only the displaced faces will be visible. To show the flat faces too, toggle this option:

The option seems to fix the problem in hammer, but not actually in the game. For some reason some of it works, but not others. Both the rail texture and the dev texture have painted grass on top of them. At first I just thought it didn't work because I put a different texture on a different face, but when trying the dev texture, it worked just fine so now I'm even more confused.

Also the console reports

 Material NATURE/BLENDGROUNDTOGRASS008 uses unknown detail object type tf_forest_grass!

a bunch of times which might be related idk and interlopers says it might be an issue but the actual paths seem to be rendering fine so I assume I can just ignore it?

 

[Tiftid]

When you make a face of a brush into a displacement, the game ignores any other faces of the brush.
If you want the other faces to show up, you have to either make them into a displacement along with the top face, or create another brush intersecting the displacement with a nodraw surface on the top and normal textures on the sides and bottom.

Also the console reports Material NATURE/BLENDGROUNDTOGRASS008 uses unknown detail object type tf_forest_grass! a bunch of times which might be related idk and interlopers says it might be an issue but the actual paths seem to be rendering fine so I assume I can just ignore it?

That error doesn't have anything to do with the paths, it has to do with the little grass sprites that should be rendering in-game on the grassy parts of your displacement.

To fix this, you'll want to go to Map Properties and alter these settings:

(screenshot taken on koth_sawmill)

The .vbsp File controls what textures the sprites will appear on, and the Material File controls what the sprites look like.
If you use the default "detail.vbsp" file, it won't know to put detail sprites on the grass, because the grass uses a different %detailtype (tf_forest_grass) that isn't in detail.vbsp, but IS in detail_trainyard.vbsp and detail_sawmill.vbsp.