[weetie]

What's the basic procedure for using maxwell materials that have displacement?
Do I need to put a displacement modifier on my object & subdivide it until its surface is detailed enough to work with the bitmap? Is there some other way of doing this that's less poly-intensive? I'm thinking especially of the Ubergrass material I got from the THINK website. Seems like you could never have enough polys to adequately model the grass blades.
I thought that Maxwell handled all this between the MXM settings in the material editor, & the renderer settings, but I can't find anything that seems to create the displacement. My material just looks like the reflectance map is wallpapered on without having any bump to it.

[JTB]

What's the basic procedure for using maxwell materials that have displacement?
Do I need to put a displacement modifier on my object & subdivide it until its surface is detailed enough to work with the bitmap? Is there some other way of doing this that's less poly-intensive? I'm thinking especially of the Ubergrass material I got from the THINK website. Seems like you could never have enough polys to adequately model the grass blades.
I thought that Maxwell handled all this between the MXM settings in the material editor, & the renderer settings, but I can't find anything that seems to create the displacement. My material just looks like the reflectance map is wallpapered on without having any bump to it.

A displacement modifier is not needed. just be sure you subdivide your model enough so that you can have decent results...There is no easier way, but if you really want to use grass inside MAX and rendered with Maxwell, I would use instances, using the crowd command. Also, if you often need such things, you can use a wonderful plugin from www.itoosoft.com called forestpack. There is a lite version, free to use that does the work for simple grounds... I own a copy of ForestPack Pro, I use it all the time.... The last version is a major upgrade and a big time saver. You got to take a look at this.... The other easy solution is crowd command.

[Bubbaloo]

In the Maxwell material editor, in the layer area, right click-add displacement.

[LesliePere]

You can also use GroundWiz planter/terrain map from Gugila. It's not only a vedry robust scatter modifier with all the bangs and whistles, but includes a procedural terrain map creator simulating grounds similar to what Terragen does. It has a free and a paid version also.

[JTB]

You can also use GroundWiz planter/terrain map from Gugila. It's not only a vedry robust scatter modifier with all the bangs and whistles, but includes a procedural terrain map creator simulating grounds similar to what Terragen does. It has a free and a paid version also.

Great link!!!!! Thanks a lot !