[simmsimaging]

Looks cool Max - but you have to admit it's ironic using a model to create a displacement to avoid modelling

b

[JTB]

Looks cool Max - but you have to admit it's ironic using a model to create a displacement to avoid modelling

b

Exactly!

[Maximus3D]

Hehe, you're correct guys it's ironic. I had a couple of laughs as this was rendering when i thought more about the process and looked at the results on the screen.

This is far from effecient to work with this massive displacement heights and the crazy high precision value this requires to look good. The performance value when rendering was horribly low, like 1 to at most 2 for this so it's obviously very system demanding. But if you only look at the result that the map itself produces then i'm impressed by it.

Btw, perhaps it's time to start producing some real renderings instead of posting in this thread forever. Soon i'll probably get banned for spamming to much here.

/ Max

[Tim Ellis]

Looks cool Max - but you have to admit it's ironic using a model to create a displacement to avoid modelling

b

Exactly!

Although that is the main reason for displacement maps. To be able to render a very high poly object quickly.

A 10 million polygon object with very high detail, will take much longer to render than, a 500 polygon object with the high poly model's displacement map applied.

Man made displacement maps, from photographs or painted textures are the other main displacement method.

That's my understanding.

Tim.

[def4d]

i think you won't get banned as they are great exemples, stay in fever

[Bubbaloo]

A 10 million polygon object with very high detail, will take much longer to render than, a 500 polygon object with the high poly model's displacement map applied.

I don't think this is true. If you have the ram needed to render this, it will be much faster for Maxwell to render the heavy geometry.

[simmsimaging]

I was really joking, but I think it depends on your engine and methods. I think Brian is correct: with Maxwell you would be better off with the geometry in most cases.

b

[JTB]

Looks cool Max - but you have to admit it's ironic using a model to create a displacement to avoid modelling

b

Exactly!

Although that is the main reason for displacement maps. To be able to render a very high poly object quickly.

A 10 million polygon object with very high detail, will take much longer to render than, a 500 polygon object with the high poly model's displacement map applied.

Man made displacement maps, from photographs or painted textures are the other main displacement method.

That's my understanding.

Tim.

Probably you're right but a 10mil object is something that I don't deal with... My renderings are 99% exterior daylight architectural so I guess that's why I find this strange.

[KRZ]

thanks for info max. i enjoy working with genetica and filterforge and mixing and blending theri output in photoshop and repiping it into these tools again and so on. alot is possible and all non-destructive...ah i love it. the other tools you mentioned i havent tried yet.
since more noise types are allways better to have in the arsenal....can you recommend them as additions or would you even say that one of those that i dont use are superiour in some way (like preview-render speed, amount of noise-types).
you made me very curious about those tools so i will try to get some demo versions this weekend. please tell me what tool you prefer to use (maybe i can streamline the testing time this way)

[Maximus3D]

No problem KRZ both Genetica and FilterForge are very good apps, especially FilterForge as it can do so much and with so little effort compared to some of the other i mentioned. One of those apps i talked about, the Texture Maker one is a relative new addition to my workflow now, but it does a great job when it comes to tiling textures, producing procedural textures and extracting textures from photos which are perspective distorted and much more. Also it's nice if you wanna blend multiple textures together into one and create new one's. I used that on some of my recent uploads on the MXM site.

Although MapZone is very good but it has a workflow which is just weird, it's not easy getting your head around how that works, far from as easy as FilterForge is (which is a nobrainer). If you got the brains to work with it then you should look into it, it can create very good looking procedural based tileable textures.

Tools that fit well when i produce these textures are FilterForge (both standalone and via PS), Texture Maker and sometimes Genetica but it's not that often. And ofcourse also Photoshop. But the tools you will like i have no clue about since we're all different. You may instead prefer to work more with programs like MapZone and Genetica.

One more thing you can do, depending on what 3d apps you use is to bake and/or export their procedurals as bitmaps. In C4D this is very useful as it has a good arsenal of powerful procedurals and those you can bake into bitmaps which you then can use when you build other textures for other materials.

The possibilities are so many i would say infinite when you work with these types of procedural generators, you just have to learn to see them and make good use of them. Only then will you be a powerful texture artist like Sabkarim on the MXM site. He knows what he's doing.

I almost forgot to say you can also use Zbrush 3.1 to create tileable displacementmaps and textures, if you got some sculpting and painting talent then that's a good and much more creative alternative.

/ Max

[Mr Whippy]

Displacement is very handy.

Any large flat surface that used a bump map before can now have real displacement, but with the same simple low-polygon mesh and basic UVW mapping.

Ie, the office where I work has an old stone floor. To get a really good finish I had to model each slab pretty much, and that added massively to poly count and general management issues if I wanted to move one part the whole lot had to change.

Now I just have a texture for the whole lot and a normal plane for the whole floor. Loads quicker in the viewport, a raster image to edit/control the whole detail, specular, bump, mixing, diffuse etc, and then thats it.


I'm not sure it's key strengths are been shown with highly complex single models where we have no 'base' for a texture, but repeating complex patterns, like say a zip around a bag or clothing, brickwork, floors, cobbles, all these repeating but rather simple surfaces are a real pain to model/manage in a big scene.

Maxwell will always take an age to render, but saving time when modelling/managing assets is a huge bonus for me anyway

Dave

[Becco_UK]

Not forgetting DarkTree from Darkling Simulations: http://www.darksim.com/

[KurtS]

... far from as easy as FilterForge is (which is a nobrainer). / Max

Filter Forge suits my workflow just fine...
another test using FF maps:

[def4d]

Here is a test i made yesterday, with an .off file downloaded at http://shapes.aim-at-shape.net/viewmodels.php?page=5

I first used the 3dsMax Z-buffer, but it was quite difficult to have the entire width model, so i used a planar gradient in the diffuse to have it more precisely and quickly!
The map was saved as a 4096x .png, and the settings for the mxm are :
Precision=64, Smoothing=on, Filtering=on

I have an aliiased displace as you see (doh!), and just checking the displace map, i think my mistake is to have used a GREYSCALE png one
Could it be the thing?

[Maximus3D]

Whippy: That's the way to use it as you describe, although it should be used where it actually makes a visual difference and not used for every surface just because this feature now exists. Moderation is the keyword

Becco: Doh! i completly forgot about that one, thanks for the reminder yep it's also a nice and useful piece of software.

Kurt: That's good to see you also use FilterForge nice results btw, is that.. hm, how is that done ?! it looks like you mapped both sides of the mesh with the same material so you get a spherical shape.

def4d: I've seen that dino before, it's a good looking model and quite detailed one. Your result looks pretty cool but somehow weird.. not sure exactly why but is it flat ? or no. Try a different method of rendering out the zdepth channel, maybe like the method Tim used for his example and you could extract a better map. I don't know..

Speaking of dinosaurs.. i made this dinosaur skin material which is loosely based on a FilterForge procedural texture, it's then heavily Photoshopped and it has a handpainted colormap which is also tileable.

1x1 tiling example


[Edit] : Added a previewrender below of a soapbubbles material currently in progress



/ Max