I couldn't remember whether displacement maps go indent an object or if they were just extruded, so opened the cube primitive and threw a map on it to see what happens and adjusted the displacement map to a strength of 5. I did learn that white extrudes while black intrudes. I didn't expect the box to explode. How do I stop that from happening? Is there a "zero" gray value that does not pop the sides of the box apart or does something else have to be done to stop this from happening? The other thing I didn't expect was that the smooth airbrushed bump developed ridges. I seem to recall that it's due to the limited number of gray values that Poser accepts won't allow smooth transitions. Is there a way to create smoother transitions? I'm trying to improve the realism of a texture that tries to simulate a complex wall solely by the texture. It looks good from a distance, but doesn't maintain realism at closer distances. Is displacement the way to go or would a bump map be better?

Maybe your grey wasn't exactly (128,128,128). But the concentric ridges on the smooth bump are probably caused by jpeg banding, an artifact of turning a smooth gradient into a compressed jpeg image.

The exploding box problem is (if I understand it correctly) due to the way Poser likes its displacement maps. Other 3D software usually takes 50% gray as the midpoint - i.e. no displacement - with black indenting and white extruding. Poser, on the other hand, takes black as the no displacement point and any lighter colour will therefore extrude - so, the exploding box. To get round this, plug your displacement map into the value_1 input of a math_function node set to subtract, with value_2 set to 0.5. (This assumes the background of your map is 50% gray - you may need to tweak this value slightly.) This will subtract 0.5 from each value input from the map, and means that black now has a negative value and will indent, and white will still extrude (although it has a lower value).

I wish there was a way to force the edges to remain joined. It's all very well to be be able to alter your greyscale so that 50% (or whatever) is no displacement, but that only works if every edge on your shape is flat. What if you want a ridge that runs around four sides of the cube?

The exploding is also caused by the vertices being split on the cube (to stop poser smoothing it). If you use a cube with a slight bevel, it won't explode no matter how much displacement you throw at it. Also, poser can only use 8-bit tiffs, although I believe there's a trick posted somewhere to get around this. DS uses 16-bit tiffs, which will give much smoother results, (and 50% gray is neutral). Here's a carpet done in DS with a simple noise map. I used a jpeg since I didn't need a subtle effect. mac

You can simply put a color_math node set to subtract in between, like in this screenshot. Then you can set the color_2 of that node to whatever color you want to be the neutral color (=no displacement) - anything brighter than that will push out, anything darker than that will push in.

Thanks for the info! I'm still playing around with settings, but it doesn't look as if the displacement is going to offset the fact that the texture doesn't look very realistic close-up. I'll have to play around with other things to see what can be done to improve how it looks. It's so irritating how useless the Poser manual is for the Material Room. There isn't even any mention that black is zero displacement.

I must say, Macclean's carpet image is one of the most realistic scenes I've seen coming from DAZ Studio (not just the carpet, but the floor and walls). I'm very impressed! Do you mind telling us what model you used for the room (floor, walls and blinds), MacClean?

Thanks for the kind words. Without breaking into a commercial, the scene is my own product, called Home One Apartment at DAZ. It's a 5-room apartment and that's the living room. The render was done with the default lighting. I just moved one of the lights to shine on the carpet. The carpet is one of 50 props/figures in an upcoming expansion pack for the apartment (living-room contents), although the pack can be used with any house at all. Probably the reason it looks good is that I've been making separate poser and DS versions of my products for the last year. So, if you use DS, you don't need to tweak anything. Get the DS version and it's all set up and ready to render. mac

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