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displacement map looks as if the mesh is faceted-unlonted lines,3ds max

polycounter lvl 14
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disanski polycounter lvl 14
Hello guys,
I am having a little problem here that I have been trying to solve for a while and nothing is fixing it.
I made a quick low poly mesh with Zrmesher and exported that and the high poly to max for baking. Normal map bakes perfect but when I get to the height/displacement map there are lines on the map as if my model was faceted/ non smoothed even if I can see it is. I tried exporting and importing it in any way I could think of and even tested it in xnormal but the problem remains. If I make my low poly in max the problem is gone and it looks fine but I was hoping I can use zrmesher for some quick low poly meshes that don't need a lot of attention. I have nver needed displacement maps before so this is new to me and I would really appreciate some help if anybody know whats wrong with this. Thanks in advance :)
2013-09-18%2017_20_55-Adobe%20Photoshop%20CS6.png

Replies

  • MM
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    MM polycounter lvl 17
    if you are making a disp map for lowpoly then that is how it is suppose to look. have you tested it on something like marmoset toolbag ?

    generally the disp map for lowpoly is the difference in height between the lowpoly and the subdivided highpoly. so the height map would be brighter in between vertices/edges which is what you are seeing there.

    2VTplgN.jpg

    however, if you want subdvision displacement map then your target mesh also has to be subdivided. this method is mainly for offline rendering like in vfx. subd disp maps look very smooth due to the fact that they are rendered against a subdivided mesh as opposed to a lowpoly mesh.

    edit*

    here is an example from marmoset toolbag. look how faceted the displacement is but the tessellated mesh is smooth.

    aWxI2W8.gif
  • EarthQuake
    Yep, like normal maps you can't tell if its "correct" by looking at it in photoshop, you need to apply it to the model.
  • disanski
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    disanski polycounter lvl 14
    Thanks a lot for the help MM and EarthQuake.
    I forgot to mention that this is to be rendered with scanline in 3ds max but at that point I did not know there was a difference and this was actually rendering fine in marmoset. With what MM said and help from a friend I ended up adding a smooth modifier and turbosmooth on the Low Poly mesh before baking so that did the trick.
    Thanks again for the quick response guys.
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