Maxwell Render | Official public forum

Hi everybody!

I just intalled the 1.7....looks quite nice.

I am working on some furnitures garden with a wooden floor.

First, I wanted to use the physical sky. But it really looks difficult with all those new parameter to set. It looks like with have to a professionnal in meteo or something just to make a sky. And finally, my rendering with my materials weren't realistic at all. Too bad!

Second I wanted to try the displacemeent to make my floor. To make it little bit more realistic. My god! I spend all day long to work on it and to get a diform floor. I used a displacemenet map in 16bites. But Nothing change; So finally I download some materials pretty interesting on the maxwell librairy to use them on my rendering, just to see what's going on.
Surprise: same probleme.

Now, I really don't know how to make the deplacement working. Maybe it's my surface...but I really don't know how solve this problem.

Anybody has an idea?

Thanks

Pascal

Hi Pascal,

To help, we would really need some information about how your displacement isn't working. Some images would be good.

Regarding the sky parameters, you can:

- consult the 'what's_new_in1.7_guid.pdf' file in your Maxwell\manual directory
- in Scene Manager > Environment Settings toolbar, toggle on the help icon. This will show some help when you select the different sky parameters
- also in Scene Manager > Environment Settings toolbar, there is a button you can use to load a .sky file. There are several preset .sky files located in your Maxwell\skies folder

JD

hi JD,

For the displacement, I usually create a surface and after I apply my material. Quite basic in fact.

The point is when I apply a material with a displacement effect , either it's not working at all. I just have a mapping of my images without displacement at all or I have something completly disform by the displacement effect.

I ask a friend of mine who told me to use the bump effect, but with the bump, I have no effect of deepness of a wooden floor.

I read again the manual of 1.7, but I still doesn,t understand how does it works. I saw some amazing materials with displacement; even I havent a clue who explain me how to do my own materials.

It said on the manual that it need an objet with UVs, but I try, nothing new happened. The offset parameter, same.

I am totally lost with this. I used to do it long time ago with 3ds, it was really easy and efficient but here, whooaaa, it's like I discover the software. And I use maxwell since the alpha version.

I will try tomorrow to post some image of my stuff to show you

Thanks
Pascal

Mapping a displacement like that on a normal plane in Rhino will probably not end up in a good looking result because Rhino will not generate lots of polys for the mesh plane and that will in turn make your displacement look all weird and incorrect. A denser triangulated mesh will help Maxwell output a better looking displacement once rendered.

/ Max

Try checking on your materials -----> Displacement>Surface>Precision>Adaptative

For a normal (relatively even) wooden floor I'd say a bump map is the better bet. It renders much faster and gives a great illusion of relief.

The result of the displacement is indeed dependant of the underlying mesh. Try to set the rendermesh to a even spacing. For this simple plane you can set the aspect ratio to 1:1. This should give you a perfect quad mesh as a basis for your displacement-experiments.

I would rather bypass the Rhino mesher entirely and use a mesh plane (i.e. command: MeshPlane) for the surface which will be displaced - then you can directly decide how dense the mesh will be.

Thanks for you answers...

I try one more time this morning to figure how does it work. Nothing new.
So I made several screenshot to show what's going on when I use displacement or bum function.

Here it is try with a material I downloaded:



Pretty strange!!

Here, I try with just a bump effect...nothing. I try after with displacement, same result with my material.



The setting of material (wooden teck floor):



I still doesn't understand very well how "height" and "offset" works. Same for offset X and Y. Basically, except tp map a picture without deepness effect, I never get a bump or displacement effect since I use rhino and maxwell. Sure, I do something wrong, but no idea what.

I did what you suggest JDHill, using MeshPlane command. I put X:50 and Y:50. Nothing change.
The size of the floor is arround 4mx8m. It's just a try actually, I will definitly set up the right dimension after understand the displacement and bump effect.

Here I found this on rhino, not a clue how does it work:



And this, after read an help about rhino and maxwell:



And same, not a clue to know how does it works.


So basically, I am a real beginner for mapping on rhino-maxwell. I hope this will help you to understand my problem.

Thanks for you help.
Pascal

Have you tried with "adaptative" already?

OK, After several test, here is the result:

I created a surface 3000x3000 with MeshPlane and X:200 by Y:200

Test 01:

With displacement:
Height: 20 with Abs. (cm)
Offset: 0.5




Test 02:

With displacement:
Height: 7 with Abs. (cm)
Offset: 0




Test 03:

With displacement:
Height: 7 with Abs. (cm)
Offset: 1




Test 04:

With displacement:
Height: 7 with Abs. (cm)
Offset: 1
Contrast map: 100 (to make the make really darker)




Test 05:

With displacement:
Height: 7 with Abs. (cm)
Offset: 1
Contrast map: 100 (to make the make really darker)
Precision: 128




Test 06:

No displacement
Just the bump at 50




Test 07:

With displacement:
Height: 7 with Abs. (cm)
Offset: 1
Contrast map: 100 (to make the make really darker)
Precision: 128
Adaptive: On




So as you can, when I use the displacement, the offset goes on both direction (up and down). I don't know how to push it to go only down.
The result is not really nice, even with the setting Precision at 128.
And the bump, no effect at all.

I have no more idea now....

Pascal

Hi Pascal,

I think you'd like to check this scene:
http://www.divshare.com/download/4999801-71b


*This is an APNG image. View it animated on Mozilla Firefox!

- Always use realistic heights. In your example, an absolute height of 20 or 7 cm is extremely high.
- Use offset 0 for keeping the object surface at a certain position. Meanwhile, know that only absolute blacks in your texture will make no elevation.
- Turn on both Filtering for displacement texture and Smoothing on the displacement panel.

Hi Tom,

Thanks for you scene...
I didn't have time to reply to your post before today.

I tried your scene, pretty amazing. Really helpfull!

But in fact I realize, based on your scene and your material, what was wrong with my materials: the map.
In fact you have a really good map for your wooden floor. And I dont have this kind of map, so of course, I cannot achieve the same result. Specially, I wanted a wooden boat deck effect. And I didn't have a good map, so finally I made in 3D the floor and just put a basic wood texture.

Anyway, thanks a lot for your help. I understand better the displacement now!

Now, I have to focus more on how to improve my outdoor rendering with a physical sky.

thanks again

Pascal

Happy to hear that