Walls, Buildings, General Structures [SOURCE]

[Odin 28]

Open question to the room.

How are you guys constructing buildings and the general structures that define your map? More specifically are you using brushes, displacements, premade models or a combination of things to define your structures?

I've worked with two schools of thought. With HL2 era source titles we made things with brushes and then decorated them with func_details and prop models. With current era CSGO it seems the way to go is to build your walls, roofs, floors, and such with with displacements, adding props and details and then to build an "underlayment" with nodraw to define the visleafs. The older method seems faster and easier to work with while the displacement method opens up the option of blending and adding subtle displacement details not available with brushes but feels far slower to work with, much slower to compile, and has that added complexity of still needing to block out the insides of everything with nodraw.

I find that the easier thing to do is to develop a map with the older method and then go through it slowly at a later date and update to the displacement method of construction, much like most of the stock CSGO maps that have gotten HR remakes.

What do you think? 

[JorisCeoen 244]

If you will be designing a blockout, it's my belief that it's better to keep everything brushes and func_details with grey dev-textures until you're ready to start developing all art of the map. In this case, you'd be blocking out your greybox and keep finetuning (and even adding little brush-details representing potential props or other stuff for art later on), keep playtesting and adjusting the layout based on feedback.

Only then once you've got the core of your map solid and ready, start the actual art with today's techniques such as displacements for nice blending and melting everything together in a nice overall theme. Under no circumstances will the older method allow you to add as much detail as any of the more recent maps, at all. It's just not possible, not even with decals (or you would need a particularly exceptional amount of patience, resources and probably adding a ton of additional mb's to your BSP for no reason).

Edited January 2 by JorisCeoen

[Serialmapper 612]

Depending on the map's theme you can use the both methods. Especially with modern urban and industrial themes, using displacements on the walls it is not necessary in most of the cases. 

[blackdog 4,413]

I imagine you can use lots of instances, using displacement brushes/surfaces there, keeping as much complexity away from your layout as possible(?).

Or you partner up with an artist that relieves you of this problems

[Odin 28]

So what @Serialmapper said is kinda what I was thinking. The blended wear/damage or paint splotch look works really well for older buildings and so displacements are necessary, unless you want to make a bunch of custom textures or decals but there are limits to this.  I'm more or less baffled when I see a surface that has been turned into a displacement but uses a lightmapped generic texture and no geometry painting, like this could have just been a bsp plane. I follow a rule that if it isnt going to take advantage of displacement features, it aint gonna be a displacement. 

[ThunderKeil 66]

4 hours ago, Odin said:

I follow a rule that if it isnt going to take advantage of displacement features, it aint gonna be a displacement. 

I'm a little different on that - I quite dislike creating ( very thin ) blocks to only use one of its faces, it clutters up the editor and I don't like to be surprised by face culling shenanigans after a full compile

I'd much prefer if there was an option to just create a single face rather than a block, but a displacement serves alright in lieu of it