Putting no draw brushes inside displacements?

S.W.A.T.Y

Banned
Sep 28, 2008
315
116
Would putting no draw brushes inside displacements increase your fps in game? I have seen a lot of Valve's map that have no draw brushes inside their displacements so i wonder why they do that.
 

Armadillo of Doom

Group Founder, Lover of Pie
aa
Oct 25, 2007
949
1,228
This is done to optimize the map and improve visibility. Displacement do not block vis, the editor will act as though you can see right through to the other side. Say you have a large hill separating the map. If it's just displacement, everything on both sides will be rendered, regardless of what you can see. Obviously, not so great if there's a lot of props and stuff on each end. So you stick a nodraw brush in the middle, which blocks vis. Now the editor thinks "I can't see from end to the other, I don't have to render everything". :D
 

Sgt Frag

L14: Epic Member
May 20, 2008
1,443
710
It's hard to say which ones you are talking about also without some pics for reference.

Sometimes like Immortal-D said it could be good.

In other cases you could be making one simple v-vis 'cube' into a bunch of small ones with a badly placed nodraw brush. in which case there are more leafs that serve no purpose. That would be bad.
For example. If you are in a displacement canyon shaped like a U, but maybe has a ledge along one side.
The no draw under the whole canyon could just be 3 brushes to seal the void. There would be a large gap of nothing under the ledge, but putting nodraw there just to fill in that gap would split the leaf of the canyon up but you'd always see the whole canyone anyway. So why split the leaf?