displacement real time

[tachy0n]

AFAIK it's not possible in XSI, at least not in the same sense as LW. In LW the displacement map is used to move the vertices of the mesh itself, which is why you can see the displacement in the viewports. The equivalent of this in XSI would be the push paint tool.

The displacement in XSI, on the other hand, works at the micro polygon level, and is applied only at render time. This is why you can set Geom Approx. of the displacement different from that of the surface / subdivision. In fact you can take a single-polygon grid and get ultra detailed displacement on it.

What the script does is mimic the behavior of LW by reading a map and moving vertices, based on the pixel value.

[belly80naz]

Yes, I know it, but the script can't use more function that there aren't in xsi, so I think that the procedure that the script do I can to do by hand, or no?

[tachy0n]

See the problem is that XSI doesn't allow you to change the values of weight maps from the rendertree. You can read in the values using a map_lookup_color node but there's no way to actually plug a texture into a weight map, or at least none that i know of.

What the script seems to be doing is creating a high poly grid, an empty weight map, and then copying the pixel values of the selected image clip into it, one pixel at a time. The weight map is then used in a push deformer to get the displacement like effect.

It's the copying of the pixels that can't be done without a script... the rest can be done by hand.

[belly80naz]

Oh, thanks 1000, now I've understand. But for curiosity, are you the creator of this script or are you a programmer that understand it?

[tachy0n]

No it's not my script, but i'm trying to learn some scripting under XSI... still a beginner at it though :)

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