Basic Terrain Creation

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Basic Terrain Creation

Postby Tutorial on Sun Mar 06, 2005 11:32 pm

category
General Half-Life 2/Architecture

description
Runs you through creating basic terrain.

keywords
terrain, basic, basic terrain, displacement, displacements.

To create realistic terrain you first need a flat brush with the texture you would like to have on it. I have just used a simple grass texture as shown below.

Image

Image


Now choose which face you would like to edit and select it. I am using the top face in this example. Select the Texture Application tool (texapp.jpeg), click on the "Displacement" tab and then click on "Create". The dialog box show below will appear. Set the "Power" to 3 and click ok.

Image


Click the "Paint Geometry" button. Doing this will bring up another dialog box shown below.

Image

Don't bother changing any values. You will notice that when you hold your cursor over the camera view, you will see a half sphere. If you left click, the terrain under this will move up, and if you right click, it will move down. If you raise and lower the parts you want to, you will end up with something similar to this.

Image

Experiment with the different settings until you get it how you like it.

Test map:

Related:
Example Map

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Postby mad_ferrit on Thu Mar 17, 2005 12:52 am

Perhaps should have mentioned more about the essential sewing feature and the fact that displacement brushes do not seal your map and are pretty much just decoration.

So much more to be said about displacements but it's a nice introduction to get started. Cheers :)
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Postby BaRRaKID on Thu Mar 17, 2005 11:38 am

mad_ferrit wrote:Perhaps should have mentioned more about the essential sewing feature and the fact that displacement brushes do not seal your map and are pretty much just decoration.

So much more to be said about displacements but it's a nice introduction to get started. Cheers :)


and this tut was writen, hl2 wasn't out yet, just cs_source :P and it seems that there is a way for displacements to seel leaks
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Postby zombie@computer on Thu Mar 17, 2005 11:45 am

BaRRaKID wrote:and it seems that there is a way for displacements to seel leaks
yes, in your mind
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Postby BaRRaKID on Thu Mar 17, 2005 11:47 am

zombie@computer wrote:
BaRRaKID wrote:and it seems that there is a way for displacements to seel leaks
yes, in your mind


*cough* http://forum.interlopers.net/viewtopic.php?t=1712 *cough*

now why would i make that up?
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Postby zombie@computer on Thu Mar 17, 2005 11:52 am

but then the displacement isnt stopping the leak, the brush the displacement is on is stopping the leak :)
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Postby BaRRaKID on Thu Mar 17, 2005 11:54 am

zombie@computer wrote:but then the displacement isnt stopping the leak, the brush the displacement is on is stopping the leak :)


it's the same dam thing :evil:
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Postby smeerkat on Sun Apr 03, 2005 6:36 pm

I'm not sure I understand the distinction between "the displacement" and "the brush the displacement is on". ??
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Postby jam13 on Fri May 06, 2005 9:55 am

hi I'm new here there is one question I gotta ask ,how do you make a sort of displacement hole like the one in using paint alpha tutorial?
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Postby Grim Reaper on Sun May 15, 2005 7:59 am

thats all nice but how can i make my hills smooth on top, like rounded, mine are sharp and pointy.
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Postby zombie@computer on Sun May 15, 2005 8:05 am

Grim Reaper wrote:thats all nice but how can i make my hills smooth on top, like rounded, mine are sharp and pointy.
subdivide i belive it is called, rounds the displacements. alternatively, you could make a rough hill out of brushses and then smooth them out with displacements
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Postby Grim Reaper on Sun May 15, 2005 8:06 am

looks like im gonna have to find a tutorial on subdivide and displacements then... because i have no idea what they are... thanks...
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Postby Grim Reaper on Tue May 17, 2005 5:01 pm

help me out please, i cant find the way to smooth the hill down.
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Postby Spartan on Tue May 17, 2005 6:52 pm

help me out please, i cant find the way to smooth the hill down.

Use the smooth option. Make sure that your terrain isn't too jagged. The smooth option brings two vertices that are adjacent closer together in the y-axis. If they are too far apart then they will actually be spaced farther apart when smoothing.
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Postby Morchaiel on Tue May 24, 2005 11:22 pm

Ok, here's a question:
I made a map using displacement terrain to create a hillside. Looks good in Hammer, no errors found, compiling goes smooth... However, when I try to runthe map... I get this error:

MaterialSystem_Interface_t::AllocateLightmap::lightmap (516x66) too big to fit in page (512x256)

And then an error saying HL2 has crashed. I tried adjusting the Lightmapscale. Doesn't work... I'm going nuts here, can someone PLEASE HELP ME?? :shock: :shock: :shock: :cry:
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