Displacment Maps...hmmmm

[SidewinderX]

Well, we all know that you can use displacement maps to alter terrain (te first e3 video where the ground suddently changes).

Do you guys thnk we cna use a displacment mapto make terrain? ie, instaed of mapping all the terrain, jsut make a displacment map and bam, there ya go!


thoughts?

 

[The Dark Elf]

Well, we all know that you can use displacement maps to alter terrain (te first e3 video where the ground suddently changes).

Do you guys thnk we cna use a displacment mapto make terrain? ie, instaed of mapping all the terrain, jsut make a displacment map and bam, there ya go!


thoughts?

It's possible, but not directly inside Hammer.. You'll need another program to generate the displacement map then convert it to a .map format Hammer can use then import and texture it inside hammer.

Reminds me of most people poopooing my hunting down of a converter to do it months ago, saying there's no point in it and they'd never need it. :E


Anyhoo here's an old test map I did for my mod, all done by hand. But simplified so not to give away some secrets on how I'd get all that to work correctly

 

[phantomdesign]

Nice displacment map. Here's one I made.

I reduced the number of polys on the ground place to about 40% withut loosing much definition.

 

[SidewinderX]

well i wa sthinking about using something like terragen....

 

[The Dark Elf]

well i wa sthinking about using something like terragen....

That should work, but I think you'll need to extra software to convert to .map, unless it can do it on its own now.

 

[Emon]

It's likely the game supports it directly. Many games do, you just give them a height map and some other shader junk and it makes the terrain on the fly.

I'm guessing what they did in the E3 video was take one displacement map, and then linearly interpolate the vertices to that of another.

 

[qckbeam]

I remember reading somewhere that if you used a displacement map on terrain, physics collisions would only work properly on the terrain after it had undergone the displacement. I believe the interview started out with the interviewer asking about whether or not it would be possible for the terrain to change dynamically while the player was on it (for racing mods and the like) and the person being interviewed said that it was, in fact, not possible.

As for using a displacement map to actually create the terrain, UT 2003 does this and it would serve HL2 well to support it as well. I know in UT 2003 you just give it the grayscale height-map, and it models the terrain from it. No conversion at all, the only requirement is that the map must be grayscale.

 

[Santa]

I don't know why it wouldn't serve HL2 well. I know that many games with an outdoor feel use displacment maps.

It would work great for dynamic LOD, and you could have an immense level of detail, and an entire map displayed in 3000polys (at a time)or less.

 

[OCybrManO]

You could still do that by using brushes with displacement maps applied to them... but I hope they do allow us to create terrain straight from a heightmap.

 

[IchI]

yes displacment mapping can be used to make terrain its also good for caves. It has a sub division took as well. Lets just say my m8 spock told me

 

[Monkeyget]

You can do that for half-life(1) with terrain generator available here http://countermap.counter-strike.net/Nemesis/index.php?p=8 . With tg you can open a image and it creates the terrain.