Displacement Maps don't work - Vray

#1

Hi,

My displacement maps do not work in Vray + Maya and I have no idea why.

Tried V-ray 2.2 and 2.4. No difference between mudbox, zbrush

Using 32-bit open exr.

I’ve read every single resource I could find on the internet and none have the answer. Really getting stuck here.

It has nothing to do with gamma, allow negative colors, displacement amount or shift, … or anything, really. There is no logical reason why my displacement maps come out with a lack of detail in areas. And I’ve read almost every thread here, all of them just say to allow negative colors and the thread concludes, but that does not work.

I’ll just upload the scene, probably easiest way to get help, hopefully someone can figure this out.

My guess is it’s a combination of things that are working against me in tandem and I need to get specific settings right. But I’ve done a lot of tutorials on it without luck.

I trimmed the project (a lot); file is 11mb: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3p2nmrc7cidrtzp/projectNeedHelp.zip

Thanks people.

#2

Can you provide the texture? I plugged in a Maya checker and the displacement does show up.

#3

They have no texture yet, unless you mean the displacement, which is in that zip file linked in the original post.

:slight_smile:

#4

Ah ok, it’s in the source image. Silly me.

It seems to do displacement just fine here. Increased displacement amount to 10 and it’s very obvious.

#5

:surprised Why on earth would mine not work then?

Can you upload a picture of your render?

#6

This is on Maya 2013, Vray stable build.
Removed the Shave Haircut MEL call back because I don’t have it. Directional light, no GI.
Didn’t change anything else.

edit - just in case, try rename your folder so there’s no space?

#7

Well I’m just plain confused.

For one thing, why do you need to set the displacement amount to 10? How can you accurately make characters, is there a way to calculate the exact amount you need?

Another thing is even with 2013 etc it still looks like its losing detail, even with displacement amount to 10.

Any ideas?

EDIT: May work with 10 displacement, seems like my sculpt just lacked detail for this particular example. My concern is still a character as the displacement has to be perfectly accurate :confused:

#8

I usually eye-balled displacement amount. For this one I only set it to 10 so its easier to see.

I did a little check and found out your displacement only has values in R channel. You’ll need to tick the “alpha is luminance” check box in your texture node in this case. 2013 has it checked by default I think

#9

I’m still having issues. That one wall came out fine but everything else I do is still missing critical details.

I don’t get it at all. Why wont they work I know I’m doing it right :banghead:

Here’s a new scene file where they do not work right either. Could you or someone give this a render and see if it works? If it works it means something might be wrong with my installs or something. I know it’s not my prefs.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/todo8qe2rsbv813/huntress_help.zip

This is what it should look like. Works fine in mental ray so the maps are fine.

Thanks to anyone who can help :slight_smile:

#10

I’m losing lots details in this one as well.

#11

That’s my issue with every displacement map it seems.

Mental ray loses no detail so map should be fine
Happens with both zbrush and mudbox

I can’t realistically send you my zbrush file to have a go at exporting it because it’s too large.

Where should I start looking for a solution to the problem? Technically I’d think the map was exporting funny but the map looks fine in photoshop and it occurs regardless of software exporting it.

#12

Think I found it!

I need to export from zbrush with smooth UVs on, then enable smooth UVs in vray attributes on the mesh.

Thanks very very much for your help, will update if it falls through.

#13

Not sure if you resolved this or not but I know there was a known bug with the VrayDisplacement node where you would actually have to drag and drop the texture into the node rather than hitting the little checker button in the attribute editor.

#14

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