Quick Question Created 18 years ago2006-02-22 00:46:04 UTC by Guinea Pirate

I just got into the Source mapping and I was wondering what smoothing groups does. I take that it blends the textures you select during compile?

never heard of it, good question ?

Is this in the compile options?

Its in the texture application tool, bottom right of the window.

Well, I've never used it, but iirc, the smoothing groups work in conjuction with the -smooth [*] paramater in RAD. Basically, you can make a set of angled brushes (i.e. a curve) look smoother in-game than it does in Hammer. It does it with a trick of the lighting.

Clicky for more info

I've yet to experiment with them (Rabid has though, and I will be soon), but apparently a good figure to set for the compile is "- smooth 45".

I can't find a tutorial on use of smoothing groups. I definitly want to learn how to use the tool. That page on valve's site isn't really helpful. If anyone has some info or a link share it please.

What exactly didn't you understand of that page?

Basically, smoothing groups decide how the lighting blends over these faces. Sometimes with a rounded corner, they appear sort of flat shaded, where each face has it's own tint of lighting. By putting these into the same smoothing group you let the compiler know to blend the lighting between those faces, resulting in a much rounder look.

I've played with them a little and they're not very intuitive to work with in the editor - there's no fast way to see what faces are in the same smoothing group. However, the Face Edit Sheet contains a Smoothing Group button which opens a panel. Whenever you select a face now, the pressed buttons in this panel show to what Smoothing Group(s) this face belongs. To throw a face out of a group simply unpress that groups button.

I thought it was used for touching up displacement or brushes to use blending textures? Im pretty sure im right. Check Valve developer WIKI

Got it thanks

@Xyos: Lightmaps are essentially (generated) textures, so seen from that point of view your kinda right. Sortof. Yeah. Whatever.

I've yet to experiment with them (Rabid has though, and I will be soon), but apparently a good figure to set for the compile is "- smooth 45".

-smooth 45 is an override for all smoothing groups in the map.

I find it a pain in the ass to manually do it on all surfaces, so I just run -smooth 45 and forget about dealing with it. Pretty much that combined with lower lightmaps on curved surfaces will result in even things like 3-sided curves to look very smooth.

Displacements are only handled through the displacement tab, nothing else. Blending textures is handled through the Paint Alpha function.