As I understand the Firefly Render supports subdivision rendering for smoothing objects. Do people here use this feature? I understand that it might be useful for organic objects, but when you have some furniture there or other architural mesh, the smoothing just blows these objects up. Is this the same with other render engines, that support subdivision rendering? One way to get sharp edges is to split the vertices, which can easily be done with UVMapper. When I applied a displacement map once, the object just fell apart. Putting the vertices together blew up the edges again. Do I need smoothing activated to be able use a displacement map? I'm so confused now. Can anyone help?

Smoothing can be disabled via the properties of the prop/character, so you can switch it off for everything that shouldn't inflate.

P6 handles smoothing and edges a bit better. You now have the options of smoothing groups and crease angles to further define sharp edges and flat surfaces within Poser. The default global crease-angle value of about 80 will give you sharp edges and prevent unintentional inflating on most items, although it still occasionally occurs on a few things. So beveling or splitting vertices is no longer completely necessary, except in earlier versions of Poser. And no, you don't need to activate smoothing to use displacement. Displacement does its own subdivision separately.

"When I applied a displacement map once, the object just fell apart. Putting the vertices together blew up the edges again." Yup. It would. Displacement works along polygon normals. In order for the polys to remain connected the displacement needs to be at 0 along the edges... Cheers, Diolma

diolma wrote:

Yup. It would.
Displacement works along polygon normals. In order for the polys to remain connected the displacement needs to be at 0 along the edges...

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Even when they are not split? I'm still not sure how the displacement works. Do the polygons keep their exact size, or do the polygon vertices just move according to their normal vector?

Thanks for your reply so far. You really helped me in understanding this much better.

Message edited on: 11/19/2005 17:13

Even when they are not split? If the vertices are welded, they'll hold together when displaced. For things with sharp angles, it won't necessarily look good (especially with extreme displacement), but the faces shouldn't detach. Welded things shouldn't leave a gap. >> Do the polygons keep their exact size, or do the polygon vertices just move according to their normal vector? Everything gets moved outward (or inward, for negative displacement) along the normal vectors. This can result in expansion or compression of the displaced mesh. Yes, for all extents and purposes, the polygons effectively change size. The polygons are also subdivided, as necessary, to accommodate additional geometric detail as defined by the displacement map.

Recent displacement experiment, as long as we're on the subject ....

Thanks little dragon. That's what I wanted to know and the main reason, why I hesitate to split vertices on edges. Have to experiment now, but I got the idea of displacement sorted out now. Thanks to you all - Singular3D