Iray: Displacement .... does it take maps?
Scavenger
Posts: 2,674
in The Commons
I'm working on an outfit and trying to have some displacement on elements.
I've made two maps so far to try it..one with evertyihing that shouldn't be moved colored black, one with them at 50% grey... neither work and the whole outfit is displacing.
This worked fine in 3Delight, but Iray, so far, no.....does Iray ignore displacement maps?
(even as I type it, it does't make sense it wouldn't, so I'm clearly doing something wrong).
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In IRAY, you need to crank up the SubD to get displacement to work best. I would go with a normal map instead.
The normal ma isn't giving me the height I want...should I push it beyond "1" or regenerate the map to get a higher effect?
(I'm using that normal map maker web page..should "flat" be black or 50% when making it?)
You should add at least 3 Subd Displacement Levels as well.
For Iray 50% gray is flat. Black digs in, white bumps out.
Laurie
SubD isn't an option for me in this, so I'll play with normals.
I'm finding some map channels take actual maps (like a 1:1 template of the dress so you can do designs) and some ignore that. I had a 1:1 map in Glossy Color, and it gave smaller versions of the map, as if my titling was set to 4x4. Guess it just wants a solid square of texture. Not sure what takes what kind though...I wish it was consistent.
Glossy Color is not the place to put a specular map if that's what you mean. Rather, those types of maps go in the "weight" slots....Top Coat Weight, Glossy Weight, Refraction Weight, Translucency Weight, etc. A specular map would go in Glossy Weight rather than Color (anything with "color" in the name is for a color map, not black and white like a specular map, transparency, etc.). I do see a lot of even commercial vendors who put spec maps in the color slot rather than weight tho, so it's a common mistake ;).
If you think your map is tiling....go to the bottom of the shader stack and look at the vertical and horizontal tiles. If there is any value in there other than 1.00, then it's tiling if it's greater than one and making it larger if it's less than one.
I hope that made sense ;).
Laurie
Its the SubD Displacement Level in the surfaces tab you need to set.
Well, i have various maps..Opacity, disp, bump, etc, based on the template like below. (img 1)
But they only work in some slots. Some, like glossy color (I only want it showing up in spots) are showing up as the mutliple tiles..(img 2)
I know the tile settings are set right, because otherwise the Opacity would mess up.
AH! That helps a lot!
Another way is to subdivide your figure's geometry instead of increasing the surface's displacement subdivision, and be aware that if your figure has a high Render Subdivision, then that will multiply the surface's displacement subdivision.
The level of division on the mesh will be the maximum of the Render SubD value and all the Displacement SubD levels. The difference between the two is that Render SubD is true SubD that smoothes the emsh as it divides while Dispalcement SubD is purely a tesselation algorithm with no smoothing (also, at least in the past, Displacement SubD was less memory-efficient).
I think that's pretty much what I said? If the mesh is subdivided at Render level, and then each of those subbdivided polys are further subdivided by the iray subdivision, then that's an overall multiplication. Generally, I have my figure at Viewport subdiv level 1, Render subdiv level 3 or 4, and displacement subdiv at 1, which to my eye gives a better and more efficient result than the former being at 1 and the displacement subdiv at 3 or 4, which tallies with the rest of your reply.
@Scavanger, I have a hunch, and I could be wrong about this, that some of your parameters might have tiling set in the Image Editor. Click on the image in the surfaces tab, third option down is Image Editior, and you get a box like this one.
This lets you tile each image seperately.
!!! This IS the problem... I do see tiling settings there.. I never knew or noticed this ability before!!! Thanks DG!
Cool! Happy to help.
My other peice of free advice is that whatever value is in the image editor box will multiply with the overall tile value. In my example above the image editor tile value is 6, so if you have the overall tile at 2, that map will actually be tiled 12 times over the surface. Gosh, I hope that makes sense.