Clarficiation on baking displacements

CreativeSheep

I need clarifying on something, correct me if I'm wrong. Can't you bake a displacement map after rendering into a lightmap or something of sorts, I could swear Unity can do it, and if so why can't any other render engine do the same ?

EarthQuake

What? A displacement map and a lightmap have little to do with each other. This is a really confusing question.

CreativeSheep

When you render an object with displacements, and there are errors, baking those errors into a lightmap or what have you after the object is rendered with the displacements. I don't know what is confusing about it, it's a logical question.

EarthQuake

What sort of errors?

Why would you bake the errors into a lightmap?

What would you do with this... data... when you have it?

I still have no idea what you're asking or what you're trying to do. Perhaps it would help to show photos of the problem and a detailed explanation of what you're trying to accomplish.

CreativeSheep

You know about when an object renders with displacement. Suppose that object has weird spikes etc. You then bake displacement map to the UV's and when you view the image, you'll see the problem areas in the UV's.

EarthQuake

You should be able to apply a displacement map in Max and use render to texture to bake a light map. That should take the displacement into consideration.

CreativeSheep

I'm using Maya. I mentioned a lightmap because what else can you bake too that would show the problems in the displacement, as far as I'm aware, nothing ?

EarthQuake

I'm not very familiar with baking in Maya, but you could try adding a lightmap in the transfer maps thing.

The displacement map itself should should the issue though, no?

Look at where the issue is, select the closest face, figure out where that is on the UVs, and then check the displacement map in that area.

CreativeSheep

I duplicated my mesh, did a transfer maps from one mesh to the other, all that happened was my displacement map image was applied as an image to the duplicated mesh, instead of after rendering the mesh with displacements then the result is baked into a light map based on the UV coordinates.

The point is to error check your displacements after rendering them on the mesh and lightmaps are the only way to debug since you can visibly see errors, whether that is spikes or what have you, I know it originally sounds out of sorts, the key is after the mesh is rendered with displacements, not before.