Having problems with the Old Aperture Science cliffwall.

Posted Jun 01, 2011

Basically, as you can see in this picture

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4379567/oldscie ... ce0009.jpg
the texture looks rather fugly. I don't get how Valve have managed to make it look so good in the game. So I could do with a bit of help figuring out how to make it look nicer.

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4,141 Posts
Admin
Posted Jun 01, 2011
Replied 4 minutes later
They used displacements, which are an art and science in and of themselves.
Posted Jun 01, 2011
Replied 1 hour later
...Yes, but even displaced it looks ugly.
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4,141 Posts
Admin
Posted Jun 01, 2011
Replied 1 minute later
Have you tried actually painting the displacement, or did you just turn it into a displacement and expect it to magically look like a natural rock face?
Posted Jun 01, 2011
Replied 31 minutes later
By painting you mean making it ridgey etc, right?

Still looked ugly as sin.

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417 Posts
Posted Jun 01, 2011
Replied 6 minutes later
Displacements are one of the hardest geometry things to do in Hammer IMO, and it takes a long time to get them to look right. I still can't.
Posted Jun 01, 2011
Replied 4 minutes later

Jetamo wrote:
By painting you mean making it ridgey etc, right?

Still looked ugly as sin.

No. Sometimes displacement textures have 1 or more(?) "blends". The "Paint Alpha" mode of the displacement editor will blend the texture into its secondary texture.

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4,141 Posts
Admin
Posted Jun 01, 2011
Replied 1 minutes later
I did mean paint the geometry to make it look like "ridgey".

Did you make the entire wall one giant displacement? Don't do that. Split it up into sections. The more brush faces, the more detailed it can get.

Like Idolon said, it's not something that you are going to make look beautiful after 3 minutes.

Posted Jun 01, 2011
Replied 19 minutes later

http://vimeo.com/11341062

Posted Jun 02, 2011
Replied 11 hours later
Look, I'm not a newbie to hammer, what I mean to say is the texture itself is ugly as sin.
Posted Jun 02, 2011
Replied 35 minutes later
Which texture is that, and where was it used in the game?
Posted Jun 02, 2011
Replied 3 hours later
blend rockdirt, and I've taken it from sp_a3_transition
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4,141 Posts
Admin
Posted Jun 02, 2011
Replied 3 hours later
Maybe invert the texture alpha mask, it might be using the wrong of the two textures. But if it's the same texture used in the fall part itself and you still think it's ugly, I'm not sure what to say.
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Posted Jun 02, 2011
Replied 48 minutes later
Hammer renders displacement textures rainbow, ignore it.