Hi,

Over the course of making the jumper I was working on, I decaled on some cables and made bump maps. These looked flattish still, so I changed them to displacement and suddenly they looked raised like they should. Even in shaded view, though sometimes they flatten out until I do a final render, but that's okay because I know they are there. So I have this stone wall with a procedural texture, then the "eroded" plug-in, then the original texture changed in attribute surface colour values and a bump percent, like I've done with lots of other things. I changed the bump % to a displacement % in the hopes that it would make it look "craggier" but there's almost no change with the regular bump.

The application sequence is:

1. Stone texture
2. Eroded
3. Stone bump material

If I take off the bump % and put in a displacement % that should do it, right. I tried putting the bump material second, no appreciable change. I might try taking off eroded next render.

I know they are different things, but the cable decals displaced so well.

The stone texture is mostly a cell turb. Maybe it's just the way the light is hitting it. It looks okay, but I was hoping to add more depth via displacement.

S.

This might make sense if your cables have many patches, your stone wall has very few patches (let's say 4 patches for 4 walls?) AND you have version 12 or less.

If you have the latest version 13 with pixel displacement, then I'm at a loss.

The cables were decals with alpha going over a surface that wasn't a super high patch count, but they worked. I'll check the outerwall again, are you saying more resolution will help?

And, yes, I only have v.12. I should have said that. Sorry and thanks for your suggestions. So v. 13 is way more advanced with displacement?

S.

Way, way more advanced.

Under v12, the accuracy of the displacement map depends on your patch density. Under v13, it doesn't.

I suspected that might be the difference. The walls are low patch, so I'll add more resolution and try a test, if that increases render time too much, I will try a tileable stone texture and do a patch decal. That works well for me now, except if I have a 5 point patch it lays the decal over in many small instances, like a crazy quilt. But I should be able to do the wall in four point patches pretty easily.

I wasn't going to switch to 13 in the middle of a project. I was going to finish this one in 12, then do the next one in 13.

thanks,
S.