Displacement vs Prop? (mountain side setting)

[kinggambit]

Does anyone know when to use displacements versus prop models if you're making things like mountains? (assuming they have roughly the same level of detail)

 

I'm watching a nice tutorial on how to model a mountainside but most of the maps I've decompiled use displacements i.e. De_cobble's staircases outside are all displacements.

[PogoP]

You can get a lot more definition with models, that's for sure. Displacements are trickier to work with, but if you have no modelling experience then go for displacements

 

I think Cobble's 3d skybox mountains are a unique model. Looks like they were created in World Machine, maybe.

[PogoP]

Or do you mean a mountain that you can walk on in-game? If so, then displacements is probably easier.

[Warby]

unlike props displacements can get lightmapped!

 

... that is still the case right ?

[kinggambit]

@PogoP For de_cbble, I meant the outside staircases (sorry I don't have screen cap, using laptop right now) but all the steps were just displacements sewn together (quite impressively).

 

@Warby Yup. I'm guessing props might not light that well?

 

Ehhh, I'll try a rough displacement map first. My experience with displacements is pretty basic (I want the level of detail like this map: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=208579464 but I've seen the amount of displacements and the amount of sewn brushes is ridiculous!)

 

I think I'll still model out the mountains as props. Hopefully, there won't be weird visleaf issues. Need the practice anyway.

 

I'll post results when I can.

[spence]

Yes, displacements still get lightmapping. Props use lighting per-vertex in Source provided you compile with -staticproplighting AND their materials are diffuse/envmap only (if they have a normal map they still receive lighting at their origin). If you want to walk around terrain its probably best to make it out of displacements but if you want a mountain in the skybox or something you could probably model it and it would look fine. You might run into issues getting normal mapped props/meshes to blend in seamlessly with displacements without any lighting artifacts, but you might be able to cover this up in other ways depending on how your map is lit and designed. 

Displacements are cheap, cheaper than regular BSP, and you can have a lot of them in any given map, so go wild with them! Its faster to block in some displacements in Hammer quickly and tweak them to order than it is to worry about compiling and exporting unique meshes for your terrain

Edited March 6, 2014 by spence

[Vilham]

keep in mind that displacements won't effect vis and thus if you don't block behind them with no draw your performance will be shit.