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From displacement to mesh workflow?

armagon
polycounter lvl 11
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armagon polycounter lvl 11
The engine i'm currently working on does not support realtime tessellation for materials. Since my workflow involves a lot of Substance and Quixel, i really wanted to benefit from the displacement maps generated by those applications.

What is the proper workflow for this? I mean, i understand it involves creating a plane, adding a displacement modifier and feeding the displacement texture into it, but, there are some caveats:
  • How can i make sure that the final mesh will tile just like the texture?
  • Should i subdivide the plane? How many times? Is there a golden ratio for non-hero assets?

Replies

  • Eric Chadwick
    As long as the UV exactly matches the borders of the plane, it should tile the same as the texture.

    Yes you need to subdivide, if you want to export to your custom game engine. However without realtime tesselation, the vertex count will need to be limited like every other regular mesh asset in your scene... the engine has to send that mesh to the card, after all, same as every other mesh you're using. 

    So just tesselate it to fit inside your regular vertex budget.

    Edit: you can also tesselate it much higher than you intend to output. Then run the mesh through ProOptimizer. This will reduce the vertices in the areas that don't need as much detail.
  • armagon
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    armagon polycounter lvl 11
    It's a plane, so i wasn't planning to UV anything other than a simple planar. I intend to subdivide at least in 3 levels, to create LOD's.

    Do you think it's a better workflow to make a huge subdivision, displace and then use Meshlab or something else to reduce the polycount for the LOD's?
  • Eric Chadwick
    I suggest you try different decimation tools, see which works best for your kind of art. A short list here
    http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Tools#Decimation_Software
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