[Fernando Tella]

Try this tutorial to make a better map (16bits/channel)
It will probably solve your problems:


http://think.maxwellrender.com/better_bump_maps-56.html

[JesperW]

It will probably solve your problems

No sorry, I did actually try that before. I tried it again now, made a completely new map with 16 bits and large blur, it has perfect grayscale smoothness but still very jagged result.

And as I said before, the jagged polygons are around 10-20 by 10-20 pixels on the map, so there is at least 100 map pixels under each mpdm polygon.

[Fernando Tella]

I'm empty. I don't know what else to suggest.

[JesperW]

Well thanks for all your suggestions! This was my last attempt at solving this before I shell out more money for "That-unmentionable-other-unbiased-render", which handles this situation like a charm, hrm hrm.

I wanted make shure it was a problem in the render and not my mistake.

Thanks for your efforts again!

[Fernando Tella]

Hmm, here your piece of map is rendering nice.

On a 2000cmx2000cm plane subdivided 100x100
Absolute height 15cm,
precision 16
smoothing on

uv mapping: 300x300cm

At least it looks good. Let's get closer...

[EADC]

Had a similar issue a while ago, and could not get it solved. 16 bit png, blurred and all that but it did not help at all. The jaggies only showed under certain angles, not all over. Made a new map later and for some reason the jaggies then didn't show up. very funny. http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/view ... hp?t=29017
(images are gone, will upload them again tomorrow.)

[Bubbaloo]

Jesper, did you try it with a different material? It may be your water material. I have noticed a problem with light reflecting off of smoothed polygon normals with glass-type materials.

[JesperW]

smoothing on

Again, smoothing will lessen (but not completely remove) the problem.
But smoothing also removes the proper surface looks, so it is not a solution in this case.

[Fernando Tella]

Well, if smoothing is not on,... then it's faceted; that's obvious.

Some tests:

Smoothing on



Smoothing off



Smoothing on



I think your base mesh has too long thin polygons and the material needs either smoothing on or a lot more precision.

smoothing also removes the proper surface looks

Why is that? It only smooths.

[JesperW]

Now I get confused. Your middle image looks just the way it should be.
And your material has ND = 1.33 or similar?

Is it because my plane is too big? Very strange, will do more tests tomorrow, need some sleep now

(My polygons are square, by the way )

(The looks of the smoothed surface is too oily, the edges caused by unsmoothed polys look good as waves!)

[flower]

ummm... interesting. Great stuff you're doing there Fernando.

Is that Jespers texture you are using for the displacement? It looks really good. Did you just make it tileable, because I cant see the repeat at that angle, or is that a different texture map?

Regarding Jesper's remark about smoothing making the surface look oily, I think what Jesper means, is that with smoothing on, the peaks of the waves, which in real life when being wind driven they have quite 'sharp' ridges, get rounded off and this makes it look like suddenly there is no wind and the sea is starting to calm down, and the sea start to get a glassy or 'oily' look. Perfectly real, but not the 'look' Jesper is after I believe.

[tom]

with smoothing on, the peaks of the waves, which in real life when being wind driven they have quite 'sharp' ridges, get rounded off and this makes it look like suddenly there is no wind and the sea is starting to calm down, and the sea start to get a glassy or 'oily' look. Perfectly real, but not the 'look' Jesper is after I believe.

In order to have sharp peaks, you should prefer a higher resolution map having quick changes in contrast with higher displacement precision. Turning smoothing off surely won't be a shortcut to do that.

[JesperW]

In order to have sharp peaks, you should prefer a higher resolution map having quick changes in contrast with higher displacement precision. Turning smoothing off surely won't be a shortcut to do that.

Well maybe that's "shurley" to you, but to me it is an excellent shortcut.

Doing it your way would take eons of time when you need a surface that looks good close up and stretches to the horizon. Shurley.

[JesperW]

Well after Fernandos nice looking image I made about 100 more test tihs morning

I get much more jaggies because I use a colormap for the seabottom, which means that there is color variation that shows through the refraction.

With a uniform bottom you dont see it as much. Unfortunatly your sea looks very dull too!

So the conclusion is:

The jaggies are somehow caused by the refraction through the micropolys.

They are more visible when:
- the waves are sharper
- the bottom is not monochrome
- smoothing is turned off
- you look at the surface at more graceing angles.

Unfortunately for me, I need sharp waves with a mapped bottom, looked at from a graceing angle, so I'm off

Cheers!

[Maximus3D]

Last solution i can think of is that you generate a ocean mesh instead of using displacement for this. There are X amounts of ways to do that but here's a nice free plugin for 3dsmax which creates realistic looking oceanwaves.

http://charles.hollemeersch.net/Projects/24/oceanwaves

/ Max