Haven't tested yet but does displacement in Superfly work similar to subdivision level morphs? That is, in order to get the maps to do their thing the object/figure must be set to unimesh and a subdivision level equivalent to the subdivision that the maps were created upon? I'm working with V4 for this...

I'm making some maps geared to Firefly but it would be nice to have their functionality possible in Superfly.

Thanks

AFAIK, users have complained about the lack of displacement in Superfly, although subdivision seems to boost its intensity. It depends on your displacement map and how its generated. You may have more luck using bump maps unless you are looking to render a portrait or closeup.

The maps are your typical middle grey as 0 (rather than black as 0) math subtract type. The displacements are too extreme for bump. Bone ridges and flesh cords type of things. Monster-y type stuff. Seems that SubD morphs are going to replace maps looks like. It's amazing to dial in a morph that looks like something that prior we could only do via displacement. Really one of Poser's most interesting new developments. I've only created a few HD morphs, but I'm pretty impressed.

Oh well. Maps I think for this one. I need to check how V4 works with unimesh skinning and subd, I've gotten so used to La Femme's bells and whistles that I'm not certain how well "legacy" figs work with SubD.

Thanks hborre.

I am hoping that in the new Poser 12 the updated displacement cycles feature will be included. As it is it isn't as good as it could be.

I have had some luck with boosting the subdivision to the max to get the displacement to work with superfly, but it will severely tax your computer. Unless it's only a small area, my computer will become unresponsive for a long time, sometimes hours. Like Boni, I'm hoping for microdisplacement in poser 12.

I wanted to play around with SSS on an alien plant model I have in my runtime and this is the result using a math node to generate the bump map. Rendered with SuperFly and a subdivision of 2.

Pretty darn good with just bump mapping.

yeah, it'd be nice for this to be updated. Until then I don't use it.

Superfly uses vertex displacement rather than Firefly's micropoly displacement. Good article here. FF is REYES based, SF is a path tracer - as they work completely differently I would actually build stuff differently to play to the strengths and weaknesses of each - for FF, I'd use 32 bit exr displacement maps with less dense geometry, for SF I'd use more geometry plus subD combined with bump/normal maps for the detail.

La Femme was built to take advantage of Poser's multi-res morphs - the mesh topology is more grid-like and doesn't have as many major density changes compared to other figures. Anywhere there are poles or triangles will give localised pinching at higher subD, and poles with 6 or more edges running into them will give shading artefacts at any subD level.

So yeah - displacement in SF does work kind of like subD morphs but as always seems to be the case with 3D there isn't a single 'best' approach, and context matters ;)

IIRC, there's also a 'gotcha' where you may set whatever material displacement you please, but rendered extent is limited by oft-overlooked 'Displacement Bounds' dial in object / figure properties. Releasing that turned my lawn render's 'STILL looks like Astroturf' into 'High as an Elephant's Eye'... Oops... Whatever, I went on to 'displace' a flat base-plate into an awesome volcanic caldera with towering cliffs...

There's a tangential issue that some imports, typically FBX, do not seem to support subdivision levels: Their slider is greyed-out. Reason seems undocumented...