realism

[bobbystahr]

Big change for the positive, with a nice texture like that you may get away with just a bump mapped and ray traced. I've stayed away from the Displace option except for one unsatisfactory test.

[WAS]

Here's a small crop, I decided to change tree models (still the chestnut though) seems to have helped with the weird shadows. I could probably get away with upping the displacement a bit.

Maybe its just my phone but the tree trunk sure looks nice now. The tree colours don't seem so hard anymore either.

[DocCharly65]

The cropped one ist already a big improvement! Great!

[Cocateho]

So I think I've got the hang of the color variation, did this test do I could work faster, used a merge shader so I could have 3 colors instead of just two  pretty happy with the result. Thanks guys! Now to put it in the actual scene...

[Cocateho]

Side by side view of ray trace vs force displacement.

Ray trace to me looks much nicer, the texture quality is way better... So I tinkered a bit with no luck, but I was wondering if there was some way to possibly overlay a PF or some sort of displacement so it sat on the object or specifically the bark so that it could add displacement without actually being rendered as part of the object, and that way be able to get both ray tracing and displacement on the same object?

[Oshyan]

I can't think of an easy way to do what you're suggesting because the Power Fractal (or other displacing shader) would have to be applied to something the same shape as the tree (and hence an object), and then you run into the same issue of Raytrace vs. Displacement. However you can at least increase the quality of non-raytraced objects, in a population make sure that the rendering quality is set to high (in the population node itself), or if it's a single object, you just increase Detail. You could consider rendering an image of just this one tree in the scene, with all else turned off (besides atmosphere and lighting), at high detail, then render everything else, minus this tree, with raytracing enabled, and composite them together. But that's a lot of work to get a slightly different result.

Another option which may not be available to you but is worth considering would be to add actual geometry displacement to the trunk in another application (Zbrush for example), then reimport the model into TG. It can handle pretty high resolution geometry, so even though the tree would end up several million polygons, it should be OK if you have a decent amount of memory and aren't using them in a population.

- Oshyan

[WAS]

Side by side view of ray trace vs force displacement.

Ray trace definitely looks cleaner and smoother. The new tree colour variation is nice as well.

[Cocateho]

I can't think of an easy way to do what you're suggesting because the Power Fractal (or other displacing shader) would have to be applied to something the same shape as the tree (and hence an object), and then you run into the same issue of Raytrace vs. Displacement. However you can at least increase the quality of non-raytraced objects, in a population make sure that the rendering quality is set to high (in the population node itself), or if it's a single object, you just increase Detail. You could consider rendering an image of just this one tree in the scene, with all else turned off (besides atmosphere and lighting), at high detail, then render everything else, minus this tree, with raytracing enabled, and composite them together. But that's a lot of work to get a slightly different result.

Another option which may not be available to you but is worth considering would be to add actual geometry displacement to the trunk in another application (Zbrush for example), then reimport the model into TG. It can handle pretty high resolution geometry, so even though the tree would end up several million polygons, it should be OK if you have a decent amount of memory and aren't using them in a population.

- Oshyan

Well... dang haha. I'm guessing Zbrush isn't free, either?

[DocCharly65]

Side by side view of ray trace vs force displacement.

Ray trace to me looks much nicer, too! It seems to have more natural looking shadows in my eyes.

[Hannes]

I haven't read each posting here, but I assume you're looking for a way to use raytrace and displacement inside one object. It can be done by cheating a little bit.
Let's say you have a population of trees and you want the bark to be really displaced and the rest raytraced. Copy the whole population, so that you have two identical ones. Use "force displacement" for the first pop and give every shader except the bark an opacity of 0, so the leaves won't appear anymore in this pop.
Use default or force raytrace for the second pop and give only the bark shaders an opacity of 0. Like this you have a really displaced bark and raytraced leaves.

[bobbystahr]

I haven't read each posting here, but I assume you're looking for a way to use raytrace and displacement inside one object. It can be done by cheating a little bit.
Let's say you have a population of trees and you want the bark to be really displaced and the rest raytraced. Copy the whole population, so that you have two identical ones. Use "force displacement" for the first pop and give every shader except the bark an opacity of 0, so the leaves won't appear anymore in this pop.
Use default or force raytrace for the second pop and give only the bark shaders an opacity of 0. Like this you have a really displaced bark and raytraced leaves.

D'uh...now why the heck didn't I suss that out...sounds like something I'd do...good one Hannes

[Cocateho]

I think we have a winner! 

Thanks for the idea Hannes, it worked pretty well I think. A few more tweaks and I think this scene should be good to go.

[Hannes]

Here we go! I'm glad I could be of help.

[bobbystahr]

Man o man do I love this forum...it's like my early years on Amiga playing with Imagine3D....happy to have a new home here

[AP]

That worked.