Displacement in the visual

[loky]

Serious problem. I apply a displacement map to a 40x40 NURBS plane, and that's ok, when I render, it works. But it would be a great thing if I could see the displacement deformations in OGL. Animating stuff through canyons would become much easier. Like in Lightwave. Ideas? Would Artisan maps help?

[jtk77]

I think you can turn the displacement into a polygon representation somewhere under the shading menue I thought....but your geometry will no loger be NURBS of course.

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[loky]

No, I don't really need that. Let's say I've found a solution, it's not very practical, but at least something. I duplicated the nurbs plane and moved it a bit up, and applied to it's color channel the same map I used before for displacement. I've made it 50% transparent, so I can see the other one under. That way at least I see the displacement map in the visual...bah...good old Lightwave had this thing in v4.0 (displ. in the visual).

[jtk77]

Good old lightwave uses polys , you could get a reperesentation if you went to polys like I stated earlier. But that solution sounds funky , I'll have to try it.

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[fredc]

Loky,
If lightwave is showing a displacement map in the "visual" or viewport, then they would have to create a temporary mesh anyway. OpenGL does not support displacement mapping. It doesn't even support standard bump mapping because it is too intense for current hardware.

Therefore, I would just make a polymesh copy like Jtk77 suggested, it's what lightwave is doing anyway.

Hope this helps,
Urp

[loky]

Yea, a temporary mesh probably. But it's automatic, so if I change everytime something in photoshop I only update the image, and he does the rest, same with procedural textures, on the fly. Both polys and nurbs are based on points, and displacement is effecting points. C'mon, they could have done that in Maya... (I'm not bitching, I love Maya) I think I saw that once in MAX, nurbs plane deformed by a displacement map in OGL (temporary mesh, whatever, not real time)...

[carmine-1]

use the grayscale map as a cluster weight map. You should get the same "results" as you do in Max since Max is displacing only the existing polygons as well (I assume), then apply the image as a displacement map. Yes, No, Maybe so?

[jtk77]

couldn;t you try out your different maps until you find the one you want...I would think you won't want to just keep changing the displacment after you start your animation, so why do you need it real time? Jsut use IPR if you want to see it update ...or does it not do displacement maps ? can't remember....

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[carmine-1]

Personally...i wouldn't want to go all out CG tech geek and try to make a landscape from a flat plane. I'd make a lowres model to approximate the landscape, then add a smaller displacement to it rather than waste time guestimating where that plane will be when rendered.

[jtk77]

makes sense.

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