Decent displacement on 3d model?

[Jack]

Hey

What is the best way to go about getting decent displacement on 3d objects im meaning a brick wall with protruding bricks via a displacemnt map i can never seem to get the to work (the map produces spiky artifacts).
cheers jak.

[mhaze]

If I'm using an image map I desaturate that and use it for displacements.

Mick

[Dune]

I found that if I use the same texture map into the displacement input, I get displacement alright, but only to the front. The sides (of a tree) always remain straight somehow. So I tried another PF (displacement checked) under the default shader (no color, or one color). This added displacement, but if flat areas - such as a plane - also gave strange darkened triangles. I have to experiment more, and look more carefully what happens.

---Dune

[Jack]

cool i will have a look into this i do what mhaze said but as you are saying the sides of the tree do not seem to look right which is odd?

[tempaccount]

Displacement on 3d objects does not work very well I'm afraid. Without Ray Trace Objects the bigger displacements have a tendency to explode the object geometry. Your best bet is to create the displacement in the object itself.

If you want small scale displacement, you can fake it very well with using Ray Trace Objects and having a displacement map in an object. This will not displace the model as such, but it will create bump information for the renderer.

[inkydigit]

with RTO on there is no actual displacement, only 'bump' with RTO off, too high a displacement will often break the model.

[Henry Blewer]

It's better to model the object with the displacement built in. If RayTrace Objects is turned off, the displacement images will work, but keep them small. This may be improved in a future version? It would be nice.
Bump maps will work fine if the light is right. It will shine across the image map, looking bumpy.

[mhaze]

I should add that the image maps are UV to the model but I shall have to check lateral displacement

[Dune]

Good idea. You might need a compute normals, though. It might break the geometry. Tell us what your findings are.

[TheBlackHole]

@wetbanana
Displace the bricks BEFORE importing it into TG2. I suggest bringing it into Anim8or and saving as .an8. Then open it in Terranim8or (both Anim8or and Terranim8or are freeware) and displace it there. Save and put it back into Anim8or. Finally, export as lwo or obj/mtl (you'll need the latest beta to do it properly) and put the model in TG2.