I am experimenting with displacement mapping in P5 and got some weird shading problems. The picture shows the standard poser cube with a simple displacement map (I post the material setup in the next message). There is a blue light from the upper left and a red one form the upper right. The displaced geometry is shaded wrong, the shading is as if the displacement is inwards, but it is outwards. Do I miss something, or is this a bug? Has anybody else encountered a similar problem?

Stefan

The material setup

I know there is a bug in the way that P4 handled bumps on a windows machine and that may be a related thing but I can't help past that. Dont have a PC or Poser 5

Just wanted to say, that I tried the same setup and got exactly the same result.. I know its not much help :( but at least you know you arent alone... Barrie.

I have seen this before. There seems to be a bug in P5's displacement that makes the shadows point the wrong way (Like they are above) Not sure if there is a way around it.

Ok, its seems I have to file a bug report to Curious Labs. Thats unfortunate, because I was going to make heavy use of displacement in a new project. Stefan

If you used a negative of your displacment map, would that give the desired result? Or am I missing something?

I did play around with that and no it doesnt all you get are the faces of your cube being exploded and the spots going in rather than out, BUT you still get the same shadow (and colour) problem.. I wouldnt mind betting all displacements are screwed but people just dont notice because the lighting isnt so obvious (surely there wouldnt be such a major problem). Barrie.

Negative displacement strength just gives you the effect the other way round: The displacement goes inwards, but is shaded as if it was going outwards. I discovered the problem when I tried to use displacement to add details to a lowres model: The details appear raised if you see them on the outline of the object (because the geometry is displaced correctly) but lowered if you see them frontally, because the shading is wrong. Stefan

OK, I see the problem now. Thanks for explaining further.