Wavy/corrupt displacement map

[sandulea]

I'm having a weird problem when rendering a material. I set up a cube to create materials for my latest project, and I noticed a weird rippling effect in the displacement map. The strange thing is that the effect is strongest when rengering at 1024x768. Any higher or lower resolution and it progressively disappears. At 640x480, my standard testing res, it doesn't show any problems.

 

I'm somewhat new to Max, I only use it for materials and rendering, and do the rest in Revit and Photoshop. I'm still learning, but this doesn't look like a screw up on my part (though I'd like it to be, it would mean there is an easy fix possible:D).

[sandulea]

Well nothing beats finding out yourself. Since it was dependent on resolution, I remembered reading in the Help manual about the global displacement settings, and the Edge Length setting that was dependent on the output resolution of the rendering. And indeed, that was the problem. Mine was at 2, and lowering it increased the effect. Now at 3 it renders fine from 640 to 1024. I'm currently testing higher resolutions.

[EnterR]

So this setting affects the output regardless of the renderer? And does it matter if it's a displacement modifier or a material displacement? Would be nice to know before I run into that problem myself

 

I think it's good you elaborated how you fixed it, so this thread may help others.

[sandulea]

So this setting affects the output regardless of the renderer? And does it matter if it's a displacement modifier or a material displacement? Would be nice to know before I run into that problem myself

 

I think it's good you elaborated how you fixed it, so this thread may help others.

 

Well I realized a bit later it's quite a simple fix. I just have to untick the "view" box. When ticked this one locks the minimum edge length to subdivide to a multiple of a pixel in the output image. This way, the further away a displaced image is from the camera, the more it reduces rendered detail for the displacement.. If you untick the View box, you specify the edge length in project units instead of pixels. This increases rendering time, because it renders the full displacement detail no matter how far it is, but eliminates the wavy artifact.

[Blake182]

I just have to untick the "view" box. .

 

Hey Buddy, Im having the same problem and for the life of me can't work out where the 'view box' option is???? Is it in the displace modifier or Material options?

 

cheers

[sandulea]

I'm just in the process of reinstalling everything so I don't have Max installed yet and I don't remember exactly, but I managed to find an image on Autodesk's site:

[Blake182]

ahhhhh sweet thanks heaps sandulea