Displacement Map Test (of course) :p

[Continuumx]

Nice test! It reminds me of some impasto/sculpture additive piece. Very nice!

Love the lighting and materials!

[williamsburroughs]

Thanks. I guess all those years of studio art payed off. :) And to think my Studio Art Professors turned their noses up when I said I was going into the Design Program. :)

Makes me chuckle every day doing what I love. :) I posted a much larger render of it on the 3D Attack site in the WIP section if you want to see the 1024x768 version.

Cheers.

[danb]

Very nice job. Very convincing. What was your method of doing this?

[Hilt]

Damn, that's one sweet-looking what-ever-it-is.
I bet it's wood. Bumps to Displacement is good method to get quality to BP-works.

.mjt

[williamsburroughs]

It was more of a test to see if I could pull off painted displacements in BP using just he Bump Map it generated.

After some loving tweaks and exposure adjustments, I ended up with something I thought was a good solution.

I started with a 1024 map and just went crazy painting on tiled bump textures...I didn't have any real intent in mind other than to see if I could get the bump map to hold up as a displacement map.

I need to experiment some more...but for now, it does look promising.

Cheers!

[Glyptic]

Anybody working with displacement maps would enjoy Jenna. The "displaceView",
lets you see the displacement in real time without rendering. And it can be baked for prototyping.
Just be sure not to select "Scene" as it will lock up. Set to "Always" for real time views as you mess with all the settings.

[williamsburroughs]

Anybody working with displacement maps would enjoy Jenna. The "displaceView",
lets you see the displacement in real time without rendering. And it can be baked for prototyping.
Just be sure not to select "Scene" as it will lock up. Set to "Always" for real time views as you mess with all the settings.

Yep...use it quite a bit, but if we could have a real time previewer when working on displacement maps...boy howdy...wouldn't that be fun.

[Glyptic]

Working with my jewelry I've noticed the displacement maps become much more "accurate" the finer the mesh. I often use 500,000 to 4 million polys to get a smooth physical model of my stuff.
As for preview, I don't know when I would see it. I'm getting instananeous views as it is. Any changes I make are *blink* there. Preview would seem to only add steps.
Preview, Look, OK, Apply?
As it is now, I just change the settings and its there.
L

[Continuumx]

Working with my jewelry I've noticed the displacement maps become much more "accurate" the finer the mesh. I often use 500,000 to 4 million polys to get a smooth physical model of my stuff.
As for preview, I don't know when I would see it. I'm getting instananeous views as it is. Any changes I make are *blink* there. Preview would seem to only add steps.
Preview, Look, OK, Apply?
As it is now, I just change the settings and its there.
L

I keep forgetting that this is a good way to turn displacement map into real geometry with Jenna's Displayview- it is a shame that this is not a feature of Bodypaint.

[JIII]

Why do you need all that subdivision? i thought that with SPD it would work with a low-poly map... isn't that the purpose ??

-JIII

[Glyptic]

For renders that may be true. I am outputting an STL file for rapid prototyping.
The way I get my poly count that high is through subdivisions. Sometimes HN's.
I just look at the smoothness of the texture, and stop when it looks right. If it too rough, I just sub-d again.
One thing I discovered that helps dealing with such a high poly model, is to switch Jenna off, whenever you want to move, rotate, scale, zoom, etc. If you leave Jenna engaged, everything gets v e r y s l o w. Unusably slow.
Make all your changes, then click Jenna back in gear and take a look.
A small price to pay for being able to output displacement maps on my jewelry.
L

[Hilt]

I just cant get my eyes off from this image.
You better stop posting renders like that, people are trying to work here :D

.mjt

[JoelOtron]

Why do you need all that subdivision? i thought that with SPD it would work with a low-poly map... isn't that the purpose ??

-JIII

One example would be an SPD landscape. The landscape itself may look good, but you wouldnt be able to place objects such as buildings or vegetation on it unless it were real geometry.

BTW--great image there williamsburroughs!

[artemesia66]

Why do you need all that subdivision? i thought that with SPD it would work with a low-poly map... isn't that the purpose ??

-JIII
Jenna doesn't work with SPD, so if you need to see displacement in the editor, you need to create a high poly mesh. I haven't tried it, but i think that you could then bake that map, and then re-apply it to a lower density mesh as an SPD displacement map.

[AdamT]

I think Larry is exporting his meshes to .stl so they can be made into jewelry. Customers probably wouldn't be too happy if he told them, "you just need to turn on SPD and it'll look great!" :)

[Glyptic]

You're right, Adam.
All my models are either milled or prototyped (3D wax printing or Perfactory), so I have to export as a "Stereolithography", .STL file type. For one small object they can be in the 50-250 MB range.
But I render the native C4D files.
None of my customers have any notion of the details involved in this kind of work. If its not an earring, cuff link or necklace pendant, its outside of their frame of reference.

By they way if anybody needs to send 100 meg files, check out www.dropload.com
Very handy. You send it to them, they email your recipient, who then picks it up.
And you get confirmation when its picked up.

[dennishmiller]

Could you post a test scene? I have never been able to get this to work.
Thanks very much.
Dennis

Anybody working with displacement maps would enjoy Jenna. The "displaceView",
lets you see the displacement in real time without rendering. And it can be baked for prototyping.
Just be sure not to select "Scene" as it will lock up. Set to "Always" for real time views as you mess with all the settings.

[Glyptic]

Hi, Dennis,
Here are two.
A drop earring cap with a tree bark texrture applied to the lower part, and a cylinder bead with snake skin applied. Both textures are b/w jpgs. Color works also.
The texture is brought in through the "Displacement" channel of the material manager (gold in this case). The default is 100% at 5mm. I usually knock this down to 10-30%, and 1-2mm.
Also, if your mesh is not sufficiently dense, you will not see anything. And sometimes when Projection is set to UVW Mapping (the default), nothing will show up. Change the Projection to Spherical or Cylindrical and see what happens. You may also need to change Scale, if still no luck. Scale it down to make the texture denser. Default is 100mm. I'm often between 10mm and 50mm.
Once you think you may have something (you can always do a quickie render to see), then bring in the "displaceView" under your object. Set Auto Update to "Always".
If your mesh gets so dense movement of your model is getting sluggish, click Jenna off (Green check to red "X") and make your moves, scaling, etc. Then kick Jenna back on.
Good luck.
larry

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.