Displacement shatters planes

[Psychoscorpic]

Hi, all...

 

Does anyone know of a way (aside from V-Ray, since i can't get the purse holders to spring for it yet) to prevent a Displacement map from blasting the faces of a box (wall) apart at the seams?

 

I am trying to use displacement since bump-mapping is not convincing enough for a rough-hewn stone wall (edges too sharp, shadows too flat).

the wall is too long & visible to manually crumple the mesh & try map to it.

Besides, the crumpling and map will never match up.

 

Any ideas?

 

Geoff

[JamesTaylor]

you could try manually crumpling the mesh and then use the UnwrappUVW tool to create a texture that fits properly - depend on which version of viz your using tho.

[Psychoscorpic]

Thanks, James.

 

I have managed, though.

My mistake was to use a *Displace Approx modifier and a displacment map in the Material Map slot, instead of a raw Displace modifier.

 

By raising the base Box subdivisions, adding a Subdivide modifer (for extra control & a more random complexity) topped with Displace set at strength 25, it provides a fairly convincing rock.

At that level, it does not really matter that the rock & mortar of the map don't match the displaced mesh, since it is random enough to fit the gnarled faces well enough.

 

Downside: it adds a few hundred thousand extra faces. Optimise rather ruins the effect, so I'll put up with the render time hit.

 

Geoff

[AJLynn]

What version of Viz is it? If you can't pay for VRay, newer Vizes have mental ray, which does displacement...

[Psychoscorpic]

Won't pay for upgrade from VIZ-4 either.

 

Upside is, I installed the Piranesi demo, and that seems to have gotten them excited.

Me too - the Displaced rock renders stunningly in Piranesi, and it takes less than an hour to generate a pretty good rendering instead of the hours & hours of texturing, Radiosity etc for VIZ.

Problem with photo-realism is it HAS to be perfectly photo-real, or the clients start commenting on the grass instead of the building!

 

Of course it's not exactly apples with apples, though, is it!

But once you factor in hourly rate, the time savings pay for it in 1 or 2 projects. The money men like that.