TG3 questions

[j meyer]

So without much ado:
What is sorting bias supposed to be/do?
Does that mesh displacement thing already work?

[dorianvan]

I could be wrong, but I think sorting bias has to do with the order for things to be rendered; like for a lake if you put a big minus number (-5000000) or something, that will be the last to render.

[Oshyan]

Dorian is correct on the sorting bias. Mesh displacement does work as well.

- Oshyan

[j meyer]

Thanks guys!

If mesh displacement works I must be doing something wrong.
Let's say I connect a PF to the mesh displ input of an object it just gets
a bit wavy or some parts get a bit thicker or thinner,but no matter what
parameter I change in the PF nothing happens.Same with connected functions
or PF with displ shader.
Is that what is supposed to happen?
Or is that a case for the support forum?

[RArcher]

The preview does not currently update when you change settings when working with the mesh displacement.  Disconnect the powerfractal and then reconnect and it will update with your changes.

[j meyer]

A good tip,thanks Ryan,but after changing parameters I rendered to have a look,
so nothing to do with the preview I'm afraid.

[reck]

Mr Meyer I noticed this as well.

I loaded a park bench object in and attempted to add some small scale displacement to prevent the wood from looking so smooth. All I could get was a distorted wavey object, no matter how small I made the displacement.

Also there does seem to be a bug with the displacement and preview window. Also a related bug is with the little separate object preview window you can open, I can only get it to update in there if I hit the render button, the refresh button doesn't do anything. Hopefully these bugs will get squashed soon.

I guess we both need some help from someone who knows how to use it.

[j meyer]

One mo' time

...
If mesh displacement works I must be doing something wrong.
Let's say I connect a PF to the mesh displ input of an object it just gets
a bit wavy or some parts get a bit thicker or thinner,but no matter what
parameter I change in the PF nothing happens.Same with connected functions
or PF with displ shader.
Is that what is supposed to happen?
Or is that a case for the support forum?

I know you guys are busy,but nonetheless an answer would be appreciated. :)Really.

[Dune]

I think it's not what Planetside eventually wants, real displacement in RT, but call it a slightly better bump. I also think it depends on the number of vertices whether you can get 'real' displacement. But who am I? That's just my notion.

[Matt]

Mesh displacement moves the vertices in the object. It does not subdivide the mesh or provide any extra detail (although the built-in Rock object has separate options to subdivide the mesh). Displacing the vertices allows you to deform the object quite dramatically. One possible use of this is to animate wind effects, without needing to use an OBJ sequence with deformation baked in using another program. If you have an object with very small polygons (e.g. heavily subdivided) then you'll be able to get some detailed displacement using this feature.

It affects the actual model in memory. In a population you'll find that all instances have the same deformation applied because they all use the same object in memory. We might provide options in future to allow variations in a population but this would end up using more memory if we don't have some kind of dynamic calculation of the displacement.

With the Rock object you can use it to make interesting procedural rocks, especially when combined with the mesh subdivision options, but be careful not to go very high with the subdivision level because it can use a lot of memory. Level 5 is pretty high. You may run into problems at level 6 if you're using it in a population because of the "unique variations" feature.

Matt

[j meyer]

Thanks Ulco.

Thank you Matt for explaining this feature.Will do some more tests now.
There is still one question remaining though: Should I see a difference when changing
a parameter of the Power Fractal that's connected to the mesh displ input of an object
(imported or TGs rock object) or not? Usually there is some difference visible when
a parameter is changed,like switching to another seed or changing the size or using
another noise flavour.So far I don't notice any difference at all when I change a
parameter of a node that's connected to the mesh displ input of an object.
Thanks again,J.

[reck]

OK I completely misunderstood what this did. I thought it was a way to add some small scale displacements to ray traced objects. I guess we'll have to wait until proper support for displacement for ray traced objects is added.

From your description though it sounds like it has some other completely different uses though.

[Oshyan]

j meyer, currently it doesn't update the display properly unless you disconnect/reconnect the mesh displacer. This is a bug that should be fixed in the future.

- Oshyan

[j meyer]

Thanks Oshyan,after some more tests yesterday I (finally) noticed that,too.
So now that I got it working I think it's a very promising new feature.