displacement/bump maps vs. modelling

[jeb]

well for me displace comes handy if i need stuff like a cube with lots of tiny bumpy spheres that cast shadow and stuff that would be too hard and tedious to model or too high poly.

also things like pimples come very easy with displace.

[Nicool]

There is another amazing method :
http://www.drone.org/tutorials/displacement_maps.html

Adapt it to your 3d package:bounce:

[Lunatique]

Hehe, you guys didn't answer my questions though. I'm asking, WHERE should you draw the line between using a displacement map and modelling? Like, I'm modelling the hands of a character right now, and I'm asking myself, should I actually model all the wrinkles in the knuckles and in the palm, or should I just paint a displacement map for that?

[holosynthetic]

I would say more defined wrinckles like in the palm of the hand or on the joints of the fingers could be modeled, but the fine wrinckles in the skin would be great for a displacement

[phoenix2k]

i think it depends on the size of the wrinkle... if the wrikle should be visible when seeing the hand in the side view, then model it... if its a small wrikle use a bumpmap...

for veins i generally use bumpmaps, although i could imagine largeones being modeled for more realsim (with old people or bodybuilders it should be modeled in my opinion, as they are very defined in this case)

[SEL]

Hey Lunatique,

I dont know what platform you are using but im sure they are all the same for I use MAYA for my bumps and displacements. One thing we try to stay away from is displacement maps, the rendering time is crazy because it adds geometry to your object during rendering making it very heavy, secondly it is very bad for animation if the displacement you are using is too heavy. There are methods though where you can delete the displacement history to keep its form on the model without rendering it. We use displacements mainly on land masses, snow, or rock formations. Keep them away from characters, trust me on this. With your hands you said your working on, I always model the little wrinkles between joints, modeling always takes presidence over bumps, just dont over due it, otherwise it gets heavy. Secondly what you need to do is create a double bump using the World Inverse matrix. Have one bump go in for pores or anything drastic, and the other going out for pimples or moles or veins. if you decide to skip double bump, use the regular bump method of painting dark and light maps to map it in the bump section. One thing to remember that a ton of people forget is put your bump value very high, place your map texture in and render, its going to look disgusting, but you will be able to get the extremes using bumps, then take your texture back to photoshop and almost grey scale everything causing there to be little bump happening and the rest, like veins and wrinkles will have very strong bumps. I dont know if I made sense or answered your question, but maybe you can use something I said.

SEL

[Lunatique]

Ahh, the answers I was looking for!

Ya, I'm using Maya, and displacement would be a problem--but there's a high chance I might render with PRman, so that might not be a problem after all.

I guess I just wanted to know which method was more data-heavy and "expensive" to deal with.

Thanks for the help guys. :)

[Lukashi]

Hey Lunatique, i use xsi, and displacement mapping is quite nice and fast, i use it to make small indentations, but i try to model as much as possible before i use displacement

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