LMcLean opened this issue on Sep 19, 2009 · 42 posts
ShawnDriscoll posted Mon, 21 September 2009 at 7:10 AM
Carrara and Hexagon require hi-res meshes for displacement sculpting to look any good on them. So does modo. And it looks like Vue does, too.
The "purpose" of displacement in better applications (better as in non-hobby software) is to convert a lo-res model to a hi-res one at render time. The object is still lo-res while working with it in your scene. This is to save RAM and not slow down your computer while you are creating a scene.
Video games use normal mapping because they can't afford a render hit doing displacement rendering.
You can import a lo-res model from ZBrush into Vue and apply its displacement map so that it renders in hi-res. Displacement maps are never as good as the original hi-res mesh they come from. Displacement maps have seams that need hiding. A cube has twelve seams. And they are sharp edge seams. So it is hard to hide them.
The more polygons your model has, the better the displacement map can sculpt it.
You can take a CPU hit moving around a huge poly-count model around in your scene. But the CPU won't take a hit doing a render pre-processing to create a hi-res mesh. So that is good.
A lo-res mesh won't do much to the CPU while it's dragged around in a scene, but the CPU does take a hit during displacement rendering the moment the render bucket contacts a polygon on the object.
So it's a trade-off in CPU speed in both situations.
I personally wouldn't bother with displacement or sculpting in Vue unless I had a camera up close to show its detail. It's good for a tree trunk. But not for every tree trunk behind it. Precise displacement requires UV mapping. And that is when unwanted seams show up.