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Vector displacement


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Carrara 5 supports 16 bit rgb tiffs. I tested for displacement and it works.Carrara 6, another user of the upgraded version would have to check for you on that version. I having to dust off my lightwave hat and dig back into doing displacement better in it. Carrara works so well with displacement and normal mapping(baker plug-in for normal mapping) that I seldom use lightwave for displacemen

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I know only 3 rendering enghines that support vector displacement :

Mental Ray,

Modo

and Renderman.

That's a few, but a think that vector displacement will be more and more important in the future.

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As far as Modo goes these are all of the 2d image formats that Modo accepts so i would imagine 16bit color applies to the .TIFF, .PNG, .HDR and .EXR.

.BMP .JPG .JPEG .PNG .ICO .IFF .JNG .JIF .LBM .MNG .PCX .PBM .PGM .PPM .RAS .TGA .TIFF .TIF .XBM .XPM .WBMP .HDR .GIF Adobe PhotoShop .PSD EUlumDat .LDT .IES OpenEXR .EXR

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Of course, displacement along normal is what is working well even now. But I mean not normal displacement but vector displacement that contains not only grayscale, but also XYZ (RGB). How is it supported by LW, Carrara... Does it accepts tif RGB 16 as a source of vector displacement.

I don't know how vector displacements works, but I think some really math driven node freaks can make a nodetree that makes vector displacement possible in LW. LW supports both 16bit and 32 bit tiff, hdr and open-exr file formats.

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I believe Modo only uses OpenEXR file for vector displacement. Hopefully Andrew will support it in the future so i can take my vector displacement back and forth between Modo and 3DC :D

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I just found out that there's a free plugin that makes it possible to do vector displacements in LightWave. So any file format LW can read can be used for vector displacement, so that includes both 16/32 bit tiff and openExr formats.

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I got some tips from the plugin creator, which said that it's compatible with vector maps from modo, so for it to work with 3DCoat the vector displacement should work a bit like modo. Here's some tips he gave me. I hope it make some sense to you Andrew as I don't really understand a thing of this.

I think that it should work in tangent space (texture space),

it should measure the displacement delta vector (difference of position),

this can be rescaled by a user factor (Default = 1),

since it is coded in color like a normal map but should

works with negative displacements it need also a shift/rescale,

so a null displacement will be coded as a medium gray.

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Andrew, i am so glad to hear that you started to work in this direction, Vector displacement its a way to go, i am sure, it is a future. All users of hi-end apps with MentalRay (integrated or stand alone), such as Max, Maya and XSI will be happy with this feature, and even renderers that does not have ability to use vector displacement now will get it in the near future i think, also i am sure this feature will make 3DC more attractive for new users looking for 3d sculpt\paint sw, because it is rare on the today's market. I am till not used vector displacement in MR, but in modo it make sense, great feature.

I believe Modo only uses OpenEXR file for vector displacement. Hopefully Andrew will support it in the future so i can take my vector displacement back and forth between Modo and 3DC :D

Yes, its would be great. BTW, i started to use modo a few weeks ago, and i should tell that i am just loving this program. Max still my main sw and i still like it and i think that Max with all its plugins its a most powerful "generalist" tool in the market, especially if you have no R&D department working for you to make custom tools as you need them, but many things is just so much easier and faster to do in modo :rolleyes:

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Does Modo/LW accepts word space or tangent space normalmaps?

World space is more easy to do because tangent space calculation metods are different.

LW prefer tangent space and it also works better for animation as tangent space normal maps also works with deforming objects when animating. World space normal maps is the worst as you can't rotate or animate object as the lighting will not appear correctly.

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Does Modo/LW accepts word space or tangent space normalmaps?

World space is more easy to do because tangent space calculation metods are different.

Yes, accepts. I'd agree with Ztreem, object-space normals maps are no-go, we need tangent space maps.

Andrew, i am not LW user, but i seen it in modo forum, might be interesting for you (plugin that adds vector displacement node to LW9):

http://pagesperso-orange.fr/dpont/plugins/...al_Nodes_2.html

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I have made vector displacement import/export. Please test it because I have no application that can use it. I have trial of Modo 302 but I can't substitite map there (I never used Modo). The link is below:

<a href="http://www.3d-coat.com/files/3d-Coat-209B3B-en.exe" target="_blank">http://www.3d-coat.com/files/3d-Coat-209B3B-en.exe</a>

I cant belive how fast you are... :blink: I'll try it now in modo, downloading.

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I have a question to LW users: I have imported object into Layout (sphere.obj) but I can't apply subdivision on it on render level (and on view level also). It looks rough and faced anyway. How should I do?

How to convert mesh to subpatches in Layout?

There should be a button called G-Toggle Subpatch under the modeler tools tab that would make it to subpatches. If that doesn't work you have to load the object in modeler and press the 'Tab' key then save the object and load it into layout.

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Fantastic :=)

I did a quick test

I exported a vector displacement map from Modo in Exr Format, then converted it in float Tif format, imported this map in 3d Coat.

It worked fine.

There are currently 2 issues :

Modo can't create or read float tif format, that's why i had to convert it back and forth to .exr format.

3D coat dosen't handle vector displacement sculpting yet. that's why the display between the 2 apps is different.

Actually, when you want to sculpt a model in Modo, you'll have to create first (or load) a file that set the sculpting mode :

a greyscale 16 bit map to sculpt in Normal mode, or a floating point map to sculpt in vector mode. There are more file format, like 8 bits or 16 bits vector pics, but they are clamped, stepped....

Only Modo actually export vector displacement maps.

Modo, Zbrush and Xsi use maps that centered at 0.5 0.5 0.5, but Mudbox use floating point maps centered at 0 0 0 (They are harder to touch up, without changing the luminance, or the gamma value, if anyone konws a tip... he's welcome)

More tests to come in the next few days.

post-476-1210100038_thumb.jpg

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Andrew, as rimasson noted there is formats problem. It would be great if you can implement EXR into 3db, it is an open and well documented format afaik, developed by ILM.

Edit:

I followed rimasson's comment & converted modo's output into floating point tif and imported it into 3dc, i also got strange results, its noway match modo's viewport.

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Plugin for using vector displacement in XSI (quote from modo forums):

I wrote an XSI addon which will generate and render vector displacement maps in XSI ( you can download it here: http://www.shaders.moederogall.com toward the bottom of the page ). The rendering part of it mainly just exposes the vector displacement capability which is already in Mental Ray. The addon also accepts a tangent property lookup input because you're generally going to want to use a tangent space vector map so you can deform your object and still have the displacement work correctly ( it's completely analogous to tangent space normal maps).

Modo's vector displacement maps are centered at 0.5, 0.5, 0.5 by default. This would need to be shifted to 0,0,0 which is what I used. Also there would probably need to be a scaling factor included. This could all be done in the XSI rendertree. Where it gets even more complicated though, is the fact that there are a number of ways to define tangent space. This really isn't standardized. If Luxology wants to say what tangent space method they are using, I'd be happy to try to code an XSI shader to make it render correctly.

Ben

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There are currently 2 issues :

Modo can't create or read float tif format, that's why i had to convert it back and forth to .exr format.

3D coat dosen't handle vector displacement sculpting yet. that's why the display between the 2 apps is different.

More tests to come in the next few days.

actually, by default when your painting "depth" that is vector displacement. 3DC and Modo are alot alike. Both have mesh base sculpting and vector displacement sculpting. 3DC just lacks the sculpting tools only accessible in mesh base sculpting aka "sculpt mode" in its vector displacement mode. Native support for OpenEXR in 3DC would be the answer.

Andrew, as rimasson noted there is formats problem. It would be great if you can implement EXR into 3db, it is an open and well documented format afaik, developed by ILM.

Edit:

I followed rimasson's comment & converted modo's output into floating point tif and imported it into 3dc, i also got strange results, its noway match modo's viewport.

ic, well Andrew should just implement OpenEXR into 3DC then, it would make it easier to exchange vector displacement files between LW/Modo/3DC.

http://www.openexr.com/

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actually, by default when your painting "depth" that is vector displacement. 3DC and Modo are alot alike. Both have mesh base sculpting and vector displacement sculpting. 3DC just lacks the sculpting tools only accessible in mesh base sculpting aka "sculpt mode" in its vector displacement mode.

That's not true. Vector displacement makes it possible to sculpt in 3D not only in normal direction. What you refer as vector displacement is normal map displacement or what you now should call it. It's a trick to make it possible to paint displacement on a higher reolution than possible to show. Zbrush does this as well with its pixols technology, people like to think they are sculptinig billions of polygons in realtime, but they're not, because it's not possible with raw computer power. They all use tricks to make it look like you're sculpting at very hires. Zbrush has solved it the best then mudbox comes after that. 3DCoat and modo does this with normal maps and does a nice job, but not in the same league as Zbrush and Mudbox.

The cool thing though is that Zbrush doesn't have vector displacement yet only modo does.

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There is absolutely no problem to make vector painting on pixel level. But pixel displacement is usulayy snall enough. I can make something like that:

- select displacement direction during painting - X,Y,Z,normal,ScreenSpace,something else and all painting will me performed in given direction. If you need it, I can make.

Just now vector displacement is most applicable to get correct result from sculpting, because normal displacement is not enough to describe it.

btw, thanks for advice about subpatches, now I can apply displacement. But it seems that vector displacement is very strange in LW because I can't change scale of effect ( I use DP_Kit->Displacement->Vector Map) How Vector displacement can be used in LW correctly?

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There is absolutely no problem to make vector painting on pixel level. But pixel displacement is usulayy snall enough. I can make something like that:

- select displacement direction during painting - X,Y,Z,normal,ScreenSpace,something else and all painting will me performed in given direction. It is absilutely easy. If you need it, I can make.

Just now vector displacement is most applicable to get correct result from sculpting, because normal displacement is not enough to describe it.

btw, thanks for advice about subpatches, now I can apply displacement. But it seems that vector displacement is very strange in LW because I can't change scale of effect ( I use DP_Kit->Displacement->Vector Map) How Vector displacement can be used in LW correctly?

Sound great if we could sculpt in more directions then normal, thats what I thought was the benefit with vectordisplacement. That you could sculpt a mushroom with undercuts and save that out as a texturemap.

I have not used the vectormap node my self yet, but it has a scale option, that doesn't work? maybe you can add a math-vector node to change the scale. I did a screen shot, I hope it helps.

post-464-1210165472_thumb.jpg

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