There I was... playing wif me Poser and M3 wouldn't behave so... I decided he needed keeping in his place. Trouble was... I couldn't find any decent restraints. So... after a couple of hours trying to model some with no great success... I thought... mmm maybe now is the time to try out all this displacment stuff in P6. Well.. I am well impressed. I have only just scratched the surface, but... am getting some nice results. What I came up with so far took about an hour. The most impressive thing I found... is that instead of having to model something with 1000's of polys... the strappy thing in the pic is just 2 open ended cylinders. Total poly count...? Polys = 48...!! Just thought I would share :-)

Great job. Did you use a noise or cellular or some other node(s) for the leather-looking relief or was it one of your own down home recipies? :-)

Home brewed recipe... just the leather type texture converted to grey scale and plugged into the bump channel at 0.02000 The raised eges and rings were with the displacement map and the holes and front shape done with a transmap :-) The 3 combined look as though they have lots an lots of potential. Why model when you can do it all by painting LOL

displacement is lot's of fun..good to see it being used more!! 48 polys!...you gotta love it. :o) Cheers Stefan

How about a '1' poly wall..? It lost a lot of detail compressing the pic to go on here.

wow!

1 poly!!! unbelievable!!! 8^o pitklad

Wow, point me to them there displacement map Tut's someone!

You guys do realize that Poser still has to create the subdivided poly surface in memory. even though your mesh is just 2 triangles, that displacement map has to be exploded into a subdivided polygonal mesh at some point in the render process. Now poser maybe be creating the mesh on the fly and disposing of it but it does have to keep all expanded polygons around during render time for accurate renders. True the system works great if you can actually render in Fire Fly and not crash. A lot of times I'm stuck in the old poser 4 renderer cause fire fly won't handle the large scenes I create. Video game characters are now using such methods. The mesh is just cylinders but the detail comes from a displacement map. Same thing with environments. I believe City of Heroes takes advantage of this to allow huge cities and then allow you to go right up to a building and see windo sills, bricks, windo frames etc. Now what would be cool is if we could query Poser for the displacement map created mesh and export that. That would make modelling a whole new thing since you could create awesome models with simple shapes and elaborate textures.

" that displacement map has to be exploded into a subdivided polygonal mesh at some point in the render process." it's still a hell of alot quicker than rendering a full polygonal mesh..I generate displacement maps from 5 million poly meshes in Zbrush & they never crash while rendering in Poser...but try rendering 5 milllion polys in Poser & your more likely to crash. Does anyone know if the cloth room works with dsplacement?..if I make a shape that is purely displaced will the cloth drape over it correctly? Stefan

*Does anyone know if the cloth room works with dsplacement?..if I make a shape that is purely displaced will the cloth drape over it correctly? yeah that's another issue. Unless the engine also generates a collision hull to check against then things cannot interact with a displacement mapped object correctly.

"Now poser maybe be creating the mesh on the fly and disposing of it but it does have to keep all expanded polygons around during render time for accurate renders." Only for the ones in the current bucket (=little square that's being rendered). Poser never keeps the complete fine mesh in memory (unlike other programs do when you use "displacement modifiers").

I didn't realise that Poser created a more dense map as it renders. But... I must be lucky 'cos I have had no problems with Firefly since SR1 for P6. I certainly find it faster to render than it would have been if it was fully modelled. I will probably only use this method as a quick form of 'modelling'. But... it is something to consider for peeps who can't model or who don't have other modelling proggies.. Mason and/or StoneMason... if the flat plane was more than just a single 4 sided poly and say subdivided into a denser grid... would the results from displacement mapping be more detailed... squarer edges, etc.....?? ziggie

No, the displacement detail does not increase with mesh density. The displacement detail depends on the shading rate - the lower the shading rate, the smaller the micropolygons.

Just wandered in here looking for air conditioning and a cold beer. You guys are awesome, but I have that "stranger in a strange land" feeling. Talk about advanced! Fetter

Stewer: (unlike other programs do when you use "displacement modifiers"). this is how 3dmax works & it is sooo incredibly slow for displacement (using modifiers) ..& people wonder why I render my displacement in Poser,lol "The displacement detail depends on the shading rate - the lower the shading rate, the smaller the micropolygons" would this have any bearing on the jaggys/stairstepping we get from using 8bit maps?...if we lower the shading rate would it make for a smoother gradient? Cheers Stefan (the other one)

Too bad that displacements are ignored in reflections.