Displacement

[chris723]

Hey Guys,

 

Really quick question, im using 3ds max 2011 and mental ray and cant seem to get any displacement to show, no matter what map i use, or template/material type. It works fine with the scanline render in the material editor but as soon as i change the render over, it goes.

 

im sure its something simple but i cant find what it is?

 

Thanks for any help.

[amer abidi]

It can be anything really, but it usually boils down to two things: Scale and subdivisions.

 

Fortunately, with mental ray, you can control both from the render setup window - pick the renderer tab, and scroll down to Shadows & Displacement; there, you can see the global displacement settings. Make sure your max displacement measurement is big enough to be seen (according to the scale and measurement units you use); and the maximum subdivision are high enough (usually 16k is sufficient for most cases).

[chris723]

Thats great thanks, got it working. Although i can only get displacement to work with standard materials and not the arch & design ones, and also its not viewable in the material editor, as it is with scaneline and vray, is this normall?

[nelpiper]

How are you doing your displacement? The way to go is to use the displacement channel on the mental ray connection rollout at the bottom of the A&D material. Just click on the little padlock and choose 3d displacement from the shader list. The you can place your map. It won´t show in the viewport anyway because this effect is done by a shader, therefore is calculated at render time. If you want to see your displacement in the viewport, you can use a displacement modifier but your geometry must be very(very) high poly count. Hope it helps. Good luck.