displacement mapping

[Tim Saunders]

i always hear about people using displacement mapping for their grass. it usually looks great when they do it. anyone know how to do it in straight viz/max (no rendering plugin besides radiosity)? i've gone over the help files and i end up with just wavey grass. here's my test scene.

[JamesTaylor]

try posting your settings, it'll help people give you suggestions!

[Tommy L]

you need a much smaller noise map i think.

[Tim Saunders]

here's what i'm doing so far. the 4th image is the displacement map, and as you can see i even have it tiled a ton, but again, i've never done this before.

[JamesTaylor]

what is your uvwMap settings?,

 

i'd guess you'd be better off having the tiling values set as 1 and the uvw set as box 100,100,100

[Tim Saunders]

here's the result from that

[JamesTaylor]

its made the effect more promient, anyway! still not right tho?

 

may be try uvw@ 100,100,100 and put the tiling back to 25?

 

unfortately, i don't use the method in default max so not too sure about it.

[Tommy L]

Get the diplacement map as the bitmap veiwed on the model on screen and then play with the tiling realtime.

[rcase]

You must use Mental Ray to get the displacement mapping to work. When you're looking at your material in the material editor, add the noise map to the displacement map slot for that material. You'll have to play with the settings a little to adjust the length of grass, depending on your scene.

[Tim Saunders]

so it doesn't work with scanline? i can barely figure out the settings in scanline, i don't think i'm ready to switch renderers. listen to me. what a baby.

[rcase]

No, you can't achive the proper displacement with scanline. Experiment with Mental Ray a little, you'll get the hang of it.

[ecastillor]

I prefer ray, as it is easier to learn....displacement works great with it.....

 

there are free versions in their site, and believe me, you can spend more time trying to master scanline, than it takes to learn vray.

[Tim Saunders]

that's what i hear. i've had this topic on my mind for quite some time now. i guess one thing that really holds me back is, viz has pretty good help files to describe how scanline's features work. i deffinately have seen a higher volume of high quality renderings produced with vray, rather than stock renderers. how easy is it to get the help you need? will i have to ready every book on vray out there? does it come with help files of it's own?

[ecastillor]

try this

 

http://vray.info/

 

its easier than it sounds

[Tim Saunders]

how suportive is vray to home-made or mixed materials? when i use radiosity, i have to tweek the materials i mix quite a bit to get the result i want. when using vray, do you need to adjust reflectance and transmittance levels? that is one of the most time consuming parts about radiosity. one of the main reasons i would consider changing renderers is to save all that wasted time.

[ecastillor]

nope, you just adjust the objects properties in case you need more or less bleeding..

[Tim Saunders]

hope you see this edward. i spent the night last night playing with vray free, and i was pretty impressed to how well it rendered with not much effort. i didn't notice in the object properties where i can adjust color bleeding. another thing; the one thing i do like about radiosity/logorithmic exposure control is that i can have a slight preview in the viewport that shows how bright the scene will be. i'm working on an exterior night scene with tons of artificial lighting. those lights will be the primary light source. it takes for ever to render with all those lights. my question is, is there a way to see in my viewport how bright the scene will be when rendered? right now i havce to wait an hour to get a low rez rendering to see if my spot (moon) light is way to bright or not.

[ecastillor]

You re right about the preview illumination...vray lacks that....

 

to setup the color bleeding, go to renderer, vray system,object settings.

 

dont know if vray free has this, though...good luck!