Has anyone tried using Displacement maps in Studio yet? I would, except I've never used them in any other 3D software and I don't exactly know what they're supposed to look like. I tried using a shiny transparency map for the heck of it, and it shifted the pattern on the Egyptian table top (but not very much). :) Hope to see some examples soon (if they work yet, heh)! Thanks, take care. SnowS

Attached Link: http://www.hdm-stuttgart.de/%7Esw19/files/dron_firefly_hi.AVI

I made this one over a year ago - helmet, suit and shoulder pads are displacement maps.

Displacement maps are the same as bump maps (inverted greyscale image), as far as I know - at least that's what I've been using in Poser5. Hope I've been right (it's definitely possible I'm wrong) it causes things to displace in P5 anyway, but it's easy to go overboard and cause huge holes and distortions in the object geometry. I've tried using one in Daz Studio for one of Kromekat's textures, but didn't see any effect - I had it set at 14% so I may need to up that value.

I found you don't have to have grey scale, a normal tex works, at lest in P5. I haven't gotten that far in DS.

"Displacement maps are the same as bump maps (inverted greyscale image)..." This is actually a common misconception. Bump maps (and displacement maps) should not be 'inverted'. On a bump or dis map, white = raised area and black = sunken area. If you look at the back of your hand (or knuckles) and imagined that you have a texture map of it, you can see the the 'raised' areas of the skin texture are lighter than the sunken in (skin pores) areas, so if you greyscaled the texture and then inverted it, you would get the oposite effect of what you're looking for. I'm not sure how this 'invert it' misinformation started, but I have a theory - and that is either from some confusion about Poser 4's broken bump maps (you actually have to invert the green channel of the .bum file for it to be correct from all angles) or from laziness... You see, there are some areas of skin (moles, eyebrows, etc.) that are actually darker than the surrounding skin AND raised higher at the same time. Some people may just invert the entire texture to account for this (messing up the other 99 percent of it in the process), instead of taking the time to separate and invert only those areas. Anyway, try to get this "invert the grayscale to make a bumpmap" idea out of your head - it's just wrong ;).

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=892929

...if anyone's interested, this link is a pretty good read on bump maps and lighter vs darker areas and the P4 .bum file bug.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/freestuff.ez?Form.Contrib=bikermouse&Topsectionid=0

...and, bikermouse has a PC utility "Green Thingie" to fix .bum files in his freestuff (he also has a newer version that let's you invert other channels, but the green channel is the correct one).

These 2 images were shown by Pilolator in the Zbrush forums shoung the upcoming Zbruush displacement tools. In Zbrush you can basically take a low res model and then up the resolution to make it complex. Then Zbrush can take the info and create a displacement map that, when loaded onto the low res model, makes it displace to look like your hi res version at render time. I hope Studio will allow for displacement that is not resolution dependent like Cinema4D, which will only move existing polys. Regards, Anton PS: HURRY ZBRUSH!!!!!!!

another zbrush displacement on a low poly model by Pixolator

Ideally displacement maps create the illusion of new geometry at render time. I think Studio will be able to to this. At least based on this image from the 3Dlight people doing the renderer. If we can we can go back to low rez models and displacement artists will rule the market.

Here is another image from the 3Delight people's site. Ideally bottons, buckles, stitching, holes, etc can be done with displacement and not actually modeled.

Here is another from Pixolator showing the upcoming Zbrush capabilities. This unreleased version was used to make Gollum in LOTR

Well this is all perhaps wishful thinking. Who knows. Every program handles displacement differently. You never know though. Hard to say in an alpha. You never know what is connected and what isn't. Time will tell. The 3Delight images are the most promising.

Yup, 3delight uses sub-pixel displacement so it isn't dependent on mesh resolution. As far as I know this is true of all renderman compliant renderers - Baz

Okay been playing a but and thinking. Dispalcements are a relatively new approach. Being a Poser content creator, Daz may be more ocncerned about making it's bump maps work better. The current Displacement slider seems to be really just a nice bump feature. It may not be possible to take full advatage of the renderer displacement maps with the UI without a custom made shader. Hopefully as the market and Studio evolves the images above from Zbrush will be doable. It is my hope that the final UI will allow for more access to the render's capabilities.

Ok... post edited to avoid being snarky :) Anyone who wants another place to compare this technique might also compare/contrast with the micro-poly displacement in Firefly (P5).

The image on page 78/98 (count/numbering) of the D|S manual seems to show real displacement, rather than bump-mapping.

Okay been checking. Since the 3Delight render and the Zbrush displacement mapping are both renderman compliant it should be doable eventaully.

"Dispalcements are a relatively new approach" Hardly. The REYES algorithm (used in Pixar's PRMan, FireFly, 3Delight and others) was published in 1987, PRMan was publicly available in 1988 and I'm quite confident that there were experiments with displacements before that.

Jeesh. You need a lawyer to write these day. lol

Relatively new apprach in low to mid ranged products widely available to low to mid range consumers. hehe

Attached Link: http://www.dotcsw.com/links.html#renderers

BMRT, a popular freeware raytracing RenderMan implementation was available from 1998 to 2002 (then discontinued after sued by Pixar). It didn't have true displacements from the start, but got them in version 2.5.6. RenderDotC is not as popular as BMRT was (yet it was used in "Matrix"), is a REYES renderer available since 1996 and pricing ranges from $0 (limited in resolution) to $2,995 ("Film edition"), depending on the output resolution limit. Tempest, the renderer also known as FireFly, was born in 2000 and sells with its host app Pixels:3d for $399. The reason why micropolygon displacement is not very popular is 1) raytracers are much easier to implement than REYES renderers 2) micropolygon displacement and raytracing or global illumination don't mix well

well if Ds can render them like the images above I'll take em. Thanks for the info.

I don't know if D|S can, but 3Delight and P5 sure can.

Anton, quit making me salivate... you KNOW I want that new version of Zbrush...

Thank you for all the examples, very interesting stuff. Does anyone happen to have an actual displacement map that they could post as an example of what sort of map gives what sort of result? I've seen a number of examples of what displacement maps can do, but I haven't yet seen one that shows exactly what map is used to make the displaced render. Thanks! :) SnowS

Here you go: Mesh before

displacement map

final render with displacements

that looks cool and fun. Almost bought the Tron game

the difference being in the new version of Zbrush... you can make the displacement maps as well as render them. Most people buy Zbrush for its modelling and texturing tools anyway, and render the results in other apps. its cool that P5 does many things like this, but displacement in P5 does cause holes to appear in the mesh sometimes. Once I get the new version of Zbrush, I'll see how well a Zbrush render compares to a P5 one, using the displacement map created in Zbrush, of course.

Thank you very much stewer, that's exactly what I wanted to see. :) It does seem to work like a bump map then, with the light areas being raised and the dark ones lowered, only with much more strength than a bump map. I can see these being extremely useful to clever DAZ Studio artists in the future. ;) SnowS

I can see these being extremely useful to clever DAZ Studio artists in the future. ;) That's what I thought when P5 came out...and then everyone screamed for P4 compatibility.

I don't think Daz ever had a plan to make P5 dependant content.