Any advice on sculpting/geometry painting displacements?

Here's a tutorial I found handy for learning to make cliffs with displacements.

General advice about them:

• Stick to a power of 3, anything higher or lower seems to mess with collisions a lot more

• Be sure there is something under them, remember they do not seal the world

• Displacements are handy for adding small details that you normally couldn't do with brushes such as peeling wallpaper or curtains. They won't look as good as a model but if you don't have the time for learning how to make them it's handy.

• If you are going to have a displacement touching another displacement be sure each side of them is the same power of 2 in length and that they match up. If this means having to use four displacements in an area one of which you only see a few units of do it anyway it's worth it when it comes to making sure everything aligns.

If you are making a Cave (like the Antlion Caves in Episode 2 or the Mines in Half-Life 2), Subdivision is your friend.

For making terrain or cliff sides, you should try to sculpt the entire displacement equally much (so don't let the middle stand out far more than the borders), sort of like this. As you can see in the top left one, there is that lip between cliff and terrain that looks completely unnatural, while in the bottom right one there is no lip (you should use sewing most of the time, but not when connecting terrain to cliffs, as that will create such a lip).

The sculpting tool can sometimes be used to make corners less sharp, but I would just use the subdivision tool instead and then make it look a little more realistic afterwards (example).

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Those are just my methods to make displacements look better, but there may be easier or better ways.

Please take a look at this fantastic tutorial on Displacements!

http://www.tophattwaffle.com/hammer-tutorial-v2-series-9-displacements/