Script to generate zdepth for displacement

[yp]

Hi,

 

anybody knows a script to generate a zdepth pass (along with other selected render elements, vray) from a selection of objects to use it as as displaced texture for quicker rendertimes and better scene handling?

 

Kind of a one click solution for the common task:

 

eg. set up a plane with scattered elements (eg. gravel), position a camera orthogonal to this plan, render out a zdepth pass with closest boundary to fit the objects. Then applied to a plane with vraydisplacement mod gives quite close results (except from looking to close and low angle)

 

Setting this scene up manually is a little time consuming, may not be perfectly 90°, needs to be adjusted and is more or less limited to a vertical projection.

 

A script could ease this process by maybe just selecting the objects and the script takes care of setting up camera and parameters - and could even simply place the camera orthogonal to the objects even if they are not horizontal only...

 

I hope this explanation wasnt too confusing and even more I hope there IS some script like this out there and that someone can point me to it.

 

Thanks in advance

[notamondayfan]

You could set-up 1 camera / scene / zdepth, and then drop in the new objects to be rendered.

 

All I would do is make sure the height of the new objects is within the zdepth range (scale Z if needed), and it should render fine. No need for scripting really to be honest.

 

Dean

[yp]

Hi Dean,

 

thanks for your response.

Yes, your're definitely right, don't know why I didn't think of this myself.

Actually you need to set up the whole scene properly to have a correct diffuse lighting to get a correct and evenly lit diffuse texture along with the displacement!

 

So even if it would be nice to just select a bunch of objects and run a script which generates a z-depth map and maybe even applies it properly after (corresponding displacement hight and so on..) this would / could be a problem.

 

Anyway, to create some "displacement-texture" your advise works fine.

 

 

Niko