[GUIDE] Youme's guide to displacement cliffs

[Youme]

Due to demand, this is basically me comentating how I would make a cliff, since I don't have fraps or a good quality mic its not in video form.
So I'm gunna brush off my English accent and get started...


So here is the cliff shape we want, well, roughly anyway. I've put in two corners and a tunnel, just to cram pack this with info :D
http://img301.imageshack.us/my.php?image=001zq1.jpg


One thing we have to sort out pretty early on is how your brushes join. Since we are only using the 'front' face of the brush thats the only one we need, this is important because of the way displacements join together.
http://img155.imageshack.us/my.php?image=002dl4.jpg


Either get out your clipping tool and clip the corners off or use the vertex tool to the same effect, personally I prefer the vertex tool
http://img155.imageshack.us/my.php?image=003fg1.jpg


Because displacements need to match up properly any cuts you make for holes need to run through the whole displacement. See how the yellow lines run right round the corners.
http://img155.imageshack.us/my.php?image=004fj7.jpg


Next we need to texture the whole thing in the nodraw texture, then select the front faces and pick a nice cliff texture. I'm using rockwall006. In this picture its at x scale 0.25 and y scale 0.25. see how it repeats notisably every 256 units.
http://img155.imageshack.us/my.php?image=005wm1.jpg


What we really need to do is stretch it a bit so the repeat is less obvious. I've kept the x scale as 0.25 and upped the y scale to 0.5, if you really want you can go for something higher like 0.75
http://img155.imageshack.us/my.php?image=006iq2.jpg


Next comes aligning the texture, if you keep your brushes neatly on the scale you should only need to adjust the x shift by multiples of 128 (sometimes negative)
http://img155.imageshack.us/my.php?image=007vt5.jpg


Select the front faces only of all the brushes and open the displacement tab create the displacement, I start with power 2 and upres to 4 or 4 if I need.
http://img155.imageshack.us/my.php?image=008ap9.jpg


So now I've actually started the displacement and I start by making the corners neat, one axis only
http://img155.imageshack.us/my.php?image=009la5.jpg


Now I repeat the process almost exactly for the other axis.
http://img155.imageshack.us/my.php?image=010je2.jpg


Now comes the main displacement, I select the whole lot together so that I don't get any mismatches. The cliffs i've been doing come in waves, each bit that comes out a lot is sandwiched by a bit that goes in a lot. As a general rule of theumb, the top of the cliff should retreat behind the main section, the bit just under it should come forwards, the very botom should also come out and the lower middle bit should be behind the plane of the original brush. Make sense? hope so, heres another pic (only one axis)
http://img155.imageshack.us/my.php?image=011ow6.jpg


Repeated process for the other axis, you may have noticed by now I tend to work one axis at a time.
http://img165.imageshack.us/my.php?image=012uk3.jpg


Now I start on the tunnel, sides first. I have the whole thing selected to stop missalignments. The top and bottom come in slightly and the middle goes out slightly
http://img165.imageshack.us/my.php?image=013jz9.jpg


With the z axis now, middle go up and down (top and bottom displacement respectively) and the sides come down and up respectively
http://img165.imageshack.us/my.php?image=014js3.jpg


Now I crunch the front displacement into where the tunnel ends and I crunch the second set of points in the tunnel forwards. Once they are close to each other I select the whole lot and hit that handy 'sew' button
http://img165.imageshack.us/my.php?image=015ub6.jpg


A few last tweaks before sealing the areawith nodraw brushes behind the displacements and skybox brushes elsewhere. You might want to note that displacements don't block vvis so that means you will have to put nodraw brushes behind it to prevent leaks.
http://img151.imageshack.us/my.php?image=016li8.jpg


And here is the final thing in-game.
http://img151.imageshack.us/my.php?image=017fd9.jpg


Hope this helped, Its now 00:45am so if anything is missing/majorly wrong then I'll ammend it later.


ADDITION(S): The .VMF and .BSP files from this tutorial are here (http://tf2maps.net/downloads.php?do=file&id=134) for you to download and examine, I was going to upload these originally, but didn't think people needed them, but it can't hurt for you to have them available.

The Subdivide button:
Sometimes I feel the urge to use this button, its quite intersting but I rarely keep its results. I select all the faces I want to subdivide and hit CTRL+S (Save) then hit the subdivide button. What it does is it smoothes all your corners out to what it thinks is right, sometimes it gets it spot on, some times it looks horrible. If its horrible I just hit CTRL+Z and shudder before using the normal brush tool. When I made the arch in the earlier screenshot the dubdivide tool was very usefull, I selected all the faces and subdivided them, it did almost all of the work for me. I then only had to go make it a more natural looking shape and tweak the edges.
NB: This button is not for beginners!

[Snipergen]

You are awesome. And I read this at 1:58 in the morning lol.

I am so gonna use this since I hate displacements in hammer ^^

[DJive]

A++ and Rep. its great to have a TF2 displacement tutorial. I cant wait to try this when i get home.

edit: Question though, and maybe explained in a part 2 to this..

How do you get realistic looking top parts of the cliff. I always start off with a box.. in the end it looks like a cliff..but in the shape of a box, i can never get the top to look "round"

[Narkissus]

I love you!

[ZargonX]

Excellent write up!

[Milktoast]

Very well done! It's really great that you've taken your time to do this!

Next we need to texture the whole thing in the nodraw texture, then select the front faces and pick a nice cliff texture. I'm using rockwall006. In this picture its at x scale 0.25 and y scale 0.25. see how it repeats notisably every 256 units.



One very minor simplification: you don't have to texture everything with nodraw first. According to the Valve wiki at http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Displacement:

Additionally, if a brush solid contains any displacement surfaces, all of the non-displacement sides are discarded when the map is compiled and run in the engine.



Since it doesn't matter what texture they have, you can skip the extra step of texturing the original brushes with nodraw... just texture everything with your rock texture.

[A Boojum Snark]

Hmm, your brush construction technique is totally different from what I've always done. I don't miter corners as overlaps don't matter since non-disp faces are trashed, and I usually make hole openings with trapezoidal faces.

[Irksome]

Excellent tutorial.

[timberghost_paintball]

Great Tutorial
I converted it to word and pdf files for easy clean printing if its cool with Youme I'll post them in a zip in the download section

[Youme]

Oh nice, good idea :D

[MacNetron]

Great Tutorial
I converted it to word and pdf files for easy clean printing if its cool with Youme I'll post them in a zip in the download section
lol, I started the same process, because I figured out I don't want to go to imageshack all the time, but when pasting all pics in the doc, imageshack beated me back by not showing me the picures anymore. So you beat me to it, timberghost_paintball :P

Advantage is I now only have to download the doc/pdf instead of cut and paste and aligning text, aligning picture, add line break, realign text, ... :)

[timberghost_paintball]

The file is 1.6 megs and the downloads section is capped at 97k for zips in the tutorial section so I can't post it for now. PM me if you want the file and I'll e-mail it to you.

*edit problem resolved follow link in post below

[Youme]

could you not find some free file hosting site? there are many out there.

[timberghost_paintball]

Good idea here's a link
http://www.mediafire.com/?8dmhdxijxny

Note: i did scale down the photos quite a bit to make it more printer friendly, sorry if this bothers people. I can still read it but it may be confusing to some.

[VelvetFistIronGlove]

Youme, this made so much sense. Thanks a million and a half for posting it. I'd been approaching displacements in my map more or less individually, but the idea of focusing on the whole cliffside (or whatever), one axis at a time makes so much sense from a practical perspective, without hindering the implementation of the design.

[MacNetron]

Good idea here's a link
http://www.mediafire.com/?8dmhdxijxny

Note: i did scale down the photos quite a bit to make it more printer friendly, sorry if this bothers people. I can still read it but it may be confusing to some.
Nice job. But I have a nice printer at work I can abuse :)
So I made a 9 page pdf. Scaled the pictures down so 2 fit one page.
youme's guide to displacement cliffs.zip (http://83.81.118.36/misc/youme's%20guide%20to%20displacement%20cliffs.zip) (1,71 MB zip, 2,33 MB pdf).

Youme, I took the liberty to let OpenOffice correct some typos. If you take offensive to all this duplicating of your work, please let us/me know. Taking it offline is even faster then putting it up :)

[Youme]

nah its all ok, I'm, suprised at how many people think its good. After all its only one type of cliff that I made and it wasn't exactly complex.

Perhaps I'll do a tut for one of these arches:
http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/5937/cpbloodstaineda40006bd6.jpg

[DJive]

nah its all ok, I'm, suprised at how many people think its good. After all its only one type of cliff that I made and it wasn't exactly complex.

Its awesome. Plus i believe its really the only one out regarding TF2 displacements. The Half Life one that everyone knows is well.. for half life looking cliffs, while it gives you a general idea, it doesnt break it down piece by piece TF2 style which is whats great about yours.

[Scotland Tom]

It's an excellent guide, Youme. It took me quite some time to actually figure out this very process on my own. I wish I would've had this tutorial to start with.

Further tutorials for more advanced formations would be excellent. That archway would be a good one, along with anything else you could think of. Many displacement tutorials out there really only go over the basics and it would be nice to see some that delve more deeply into other cool things that can be done with displacements.

[MacNetron]

Biggest advantage of your tutorial Youme, is that the contest is partly about mines. Most of us probably need an entrance...

So: Good timing! :thumbsup:

[Youme]

lol, if anyone beats me in the competition because they 'used my tutorial' I shan't be happy =P

Writing tutorials really helps you reflect and improve your own technique, more people should try it, even if you don't think you are that good at mapping.

[Youme]

Added .vmf and .bsp files for extra help should anyone need them.

[VelvetFistIronGlove]

Youme, how do you get your cliffs so smooth? Whenever I'm trying to paint geometry, I tend to end up with lots of individual vertices sticking out, which either makes it really rough, or I have to go tweak them individually with a tiny brush size.

[Youme]

I actually use a small brush most of the time, It seems scary and long winded to begin with but its actually easier, faster and produces better results.

I said to start with a large brush size and then get smaller, thats what I do, I pick a brush size that lets me move 5-10 points at once then after the disp is roughly right I almost instantly downsize to 1 point brush size.

As a rule of thumb I never ever touch the smooth tool. It just doesn't work and if you try to smooth on a non perpendicular axis it really F***s your displacement.

The Subdivide button:
Sometimes I feel the urge to use this button, its quite intersting but I rarely keep its results. I select all the faces I want to subdivide and hit CTRL+S (Save) then hit the subdivide button. What it does is it smoothes all your corners out to what it thinks is right, sometimes it gets it spot on, some times it looks horrible. If its horrible I just hit CTRL+Z and shudder before using the normal brush tool. When I made the arch in the earlier screenshot the dubdivide tool was very usefull, I selected all the faces and subdivided them, it did almost all of the work for me. I then only had to go make it a more natural looking shape and tweak the edges.
NB: This button is not for beginners!

[phatal]

Great tutorial Youme. Could you add this last bit to the first part? I know others have made pdf's and such but could you redo the original tutorial? Use attachments or something to add in the pictures or maybe get with spaceweasle and see how he does his with the pictures added in that way.

+rep

[Juice]

Youme, the tutorials pictures are red x's. Could you fix it please?

[Youme]

oh dear, I tried to change them to images to save people the bother of clicking on the links

fixing now

EDIT: FIXED

[l3eeron]

Nice one Youme, wish I had this tut about a couple years ago!

+rep

Its posts like this that keep the community full of fresh guys and ideas

[Vander]

I think...now don't hold me to this...but I think I understand displacements ALOT better now. Thanks Youme!

[Youme]

I only really covered two axis on each surface, I've now gone round bloodstained (where I got all ther "nice displacements!" comments) and messed about with the Z axis on all my cliffs, it looks much better and less uniform now :D

[Koei]

What exactly does the subdivide button do? The valve wiki isn't really clear. Could you explain it in more simple terms? Maybe an example?

[Youme]

The subdivide tool is a wholey different thing, probably should have it's own tutorial, but not from me.

Basically it smoothes out joins where displacements meet. If a displacement edge is not touching any other displacement then the subdivide tool leaves that edge where it started.

if you make a cube brush and make all the faces displacements, then select all of them then hit subdivide you will get an almost sphere. if you select all the faces but one you will get a nicely rounded top (opposite side to the non selected face) and the nicely rounded top will progress into a square cross section where it joins the non selected side.

So if you have a displacement that goes round a corner that you want to smooth nicely, you need to make two new copies of it, one above and one below (sew them together) Then select all 6 (thats 3 one one side then 3 at an angle to those ones) then hit subdivide, then delete the top and bottom ones.
What adding the top and bottom ones does is it stops the top of the corner and the bottom of the corner staying where they are when it is subdivided.

I think this is a more comlicated explanation but then the subdivide tool is quite complicated and definatly NOT FOR N00BS.
If you intend to use the subdivide tool learn how it works my experimenting in a new map so that you can't mess anything up.

[Koei]

So let's see if I got it right. If I would create a tunnel with width=height. So a square passageway. And I would make the inner part displacements (floor, 2 walls and ceiling) and subdivide those parts I would get a round tunnel? (might have to chop of the start and end of the tunnel, if I interpret your corner story the right way).

edit:
tested it:


Seems I was right :). Used only 1 tunnelpart. But if I would have used 3 (of which 2 temporany ones) I would have gotten a real tunnel.
http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/5492/clipboard01mf1.th.png (http://img231.imageshack.us/my.php?image=clipboard01mf1.png)

[Youme]

Yes you've got it right. It's better to make copies of the tunnel than chop the ends off and stretch it but to doesn't make a huge amount of difference.
Thats one of the most simple uses of the subdivide tool, there are many more that are far more exciting.

-NB- The tunnel will be Almost circular in cross section. it doesn't quite make it completely circular, for this reason I find it better to use an archway tool based tunnel.

[Koei]

I can see the potential of this. Going to toy around a bit :)

[Youme]

Has anyone ever tried making a nicely rounded displacement? like the huge dish in Hydro? I imagine the best way to do it is to use the 'raise to' feature in the paint geometry in connection with some cylinder brushes used as a guide.

[Koei]

I think I have fallen in love with subdivide :). Very useful tool for making a basis from which to add detail

@ Youme, something like this? I subdived it. It's not perfect, but a good place to start I guess.
http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/9974/subdivsk8.png (http://imageshack.us)

[Youme]

Got a PM today, and I thought it would do better in a publicly viewable area, so here it is

Hi there,

I was reading your tutorial today on making a cliff face with displacement. This is truly noob'sh of me, but it's my first day of really playing with the texture ability (shift-a) and you make it seem so easy. I have a very tall and long wall and with rockwall6 it tiles both up/down as well as left/right. I tried to stretch it, but it doesn't look all that believable. Do you know of a tutorial that might help me get used to all the options of texturing better? Thanks.

I'll add a screenshot of my new wall, as its my first map I did it all in orange and gray. Now want to go back and add some custom textures as such.
http://www.landsofdraknor.net/tf2/images/ss1.jpg
Personally I think the stretching you've got on it is fine and once you've made it a displacement it will look quite nice.

[Aarchane]

Thanks, I thought I would also make a suggestion for the tutorial. Another step that included the instruction of connecting the two blocks with the Vertex Tool would be nice. I have never played with it, but can easily see the potential. I am not sure how to angle the two edges to fit as you did. That step would be a nice addition to a wonderful tutorial.

[Youme]

Unless you have really complicated brush shapes (IE: not all edges are paralell to the grid) you can just use the clipping tool to the same effect.

Vertex tool (http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Vertex_tool)

Clipping tool (http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Hammer_Clipping_Tool)

[Amun-Ra]

Tip newbies like me: Hold down the shift button to go back and forth in each dimension when you're painting your geometry.

[grazr]

It's a bit late, and a bit irrelavent regarding displacements directly. But it is nice to see someone encouraging people to align their textures at wall corners. It makes a hell of a difference on displacements, so it is good to see you included this for people to read, so that they don't miss out one something that makes their maps that little bit more neat and proffesionally finished.

[thunderdraco]

how exactly did he make the opening for the tunnel? Clip tool or something? Also, if you were to continue creating a map using that design, and made the tunnel lead to the other side of that cliff, would you have to put brushes on the other side? Because it looks like the back of the cliff was pushed in when you were playing with it.

[Youme]

I used the clip tool, two vertical clips and one horizontal, then deleted the brush that was in the 'entrance' to the tunnel.
If you want to make a cliff on the other side with the tunnel coming out of it just do exactly the same but mirror it.

[thunderdraco]

yeah i get it now. Thanks :D.

[cruizer]

Wjhat i want to know is how to do the top and two sides with an exterior corner. Everytime I do it, the seams come apart, and it won't allow me to sew them

[Youme]

I've heard lots about people's seams coming apart, I've never actually had this problem so I can't imagine what causes it.
Descriptions of displacements really suck so unfortunatly I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to do, there is the sample .vmf I posted here (http://forums.tf2maps.net/downloads.php?do=file&id=134) which has most joins that you'd want to do, feel free to cut bits out of it and use it in your own map, Its not like its a highly super awesome thing I made that I want exculsivity over, its just a cliff...

[Lord Ned]

What surprised me, is looking at valve maps.

I always thought their cliffs were made out of one block, and they just picked each side to make, etc.

But actually each "block" is 6 different brushes, that overlap at the edges. I guess it's so if they vertex manip it doesn't mess up?

[phatal]

What surprised me, is looking at valve maps.

I always thought their cliffs were made out of one block, and they just picked each side to make, etc.

But actually each "block" is 6 different brushes, that overlap at the edges. I guess it's so if they vertex manip it doesn't mess up?

No... it's because displacements are best made with individual brushes not solid cubes.

[Youme]

No... it's because displacements are best made with individual brushes not solid cubes.

Do you actually have any proof of that? It based on anything?

I almost always make them out of the individual brushes as standard practice but I've never actually thought about why I do.

[Lord Ned]

It gets confusing in the 2d view when you have things overlaping. :w00t:


_
|


End result is that, but you have it more like this in the editor:

____
__|_|
| |
| |


Though I forgot that you can slant the corners on the VERTICAL axis too. (I always cut the corners and made them fit like you have it for the walls, but never for where the top meets the walls.

[cruizer]

Maybe because when you do displacements, the only side that shows is the side you pick. All the other sides of the brush become invisible. Perhaps because of that they can overlap brushes, the graphics engine isn't trying to draw them that way.

[grazr]

I think it's more a case of it's no longer a "brush". It doesn't block vis and confuse the hell out of the compiler trying to form leaf nodes.

EDIT:Do you actually have any proof of that? It based on anything?

I almost always make them out of the individual brushes as standard practice but I've never actually thought about why I do.

I do both, depends how i feel :P but if i mess up a displacement that is part of a number of disaplacement sides of the same brush, i have to destroy the whole brush to reset it if i can't undo it. So it's probably good practice to do it individually.

Also the decompilers around seem to not recognise displacements as whole objects (if they are at all) so it'll seperate all the faces making it hard to tell what's actually happening in the design process. It looked like in DoD they used several faces to a single brush on some displacements, but i didn't care to take notice of it in tf2, nor did i care to research into it propely, i just got some interesting decompile errors that made it appear that way.

[VeryBad]

First, I loved this tutorial! After reading the tutorial alone, I loaded up hammer and made a quick study map. Then I did some things that, well, in later replies you say were no-no's. When I made my cliffs, I started with the power of 2, and ended up with some fugly looking jagged edges. So I bumped up to the power of 4, subdivided and well had a smooth yet oddly shaped fugly cliff. So my bright idea was, "let's see if I can't smooth out these fugly bits. Of course it was before I read this;
As a rule of thumb I never ever touch the smooth tool. It just doesn't work and if you try to smooth on a non perpendicular axis it really F***s your displacement.
Well I played with it for a sec and yes it did some odd things. Then I messed with the options. Trying different Axis' didn’t get me much progress, but I was sure that it had to work somehow. So I un-clicked the "Spatial" box, selected Axis Subdiv Normal and bingo it smoothed out the fugly points I was having problems with. After some more play time I found no significant difference between Axis Subdiv and Face Normal. Not to say there is not one, I just didn't see one. I also didn't try x, y, or z. They just didn't seem like the options I needed. Also I later tried playing with this tool on an inclined (non-ortho) displacement, and it did make it smooth. Maybe a bit too smooth, like flat. So I’d stick to making my displacements Ortho only for now, possibly rotating them later but seems like asking for headaches. I am kind of glad I played around before reading all the replies in the 6 pages first though. Other wise I might not have tried making smooth work. Anyhow, this is a great tutorial, thanks Youme.

[Juice]

Good thing I re-read this, I was making displacements and never cut through all the dispacements, no wonder I kept getting splits!

[Youme]

VeryBad - you can uncheck spatial as you say to smooth but I find that it smooths stuff way too much and I like to have full control over everything anyway so 90% of my displacements are done point by point, radius set to 1
I'll agree that making displacements where they aren't perpendicular to any of the three axis is 'tricky'.

[94Sniper]

I feel like the biggest noob on earth asking this, but how do you select only one side of a face at a time?

[Laz]

use the texture tool. with the texture tool active, you select faces instead of brushes

[MungoKing]

And just make sure you have the mode to lift + select also. I accidentally had it on apply (textures + values) and was wondering why it wasn't working :rolleyes:. Simple mistake, but easily overlooked, hehe.

[Wigs]

I've heard lots about people's seams coming apart, I've never actually had this problem so I can't imagine what causes it.
Descriptions of displacements really suck so unfortunatly I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to do, there is the sample .vmf I posted here (http://forums.tf2maps.net/downloads.php?do=file&id=134) which has most joins that you'd want to do, feel free to cut bits out of it and use it in your own map, Its not like its a highly super awesome thing I made that I want exculsivity over, its just a cliff...

not sure if it's relavent now but i had this same problem when following the tutorial i decided to start over and realized that you have to clip off the edges of the tunnel entrance just like you did on the corners. its an easy detail to miss but basically treat the tunnel entrance just like the corner in the screenshot clip all the edges