Vray Displacement for smoothing

[Guest]

I am watching this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP08Y...eature=related and about 2 minutes in, he explains why it is quicker than using a meshsmooth modifier but I cant hear what he is saying. Can some one explain please why its much faster? Also why the edge length is set to 0.1? It seems settings it to 0 also has the same result but higher values seem to reduce quality.

[voltron7]

I got the impression that it was faster because it was dynamic, so the smoothing is only done at buckets during rendering...HTH
(Someone please correct me if I am mistaken...)

[vlado]

Sometimes it's faster than an equivalent turbosmooth, because we do it at render time and can go to quite high levels of subdivision. For only 1 or two subdivision levels, turbosmooth might be faster.

Best regards,
Vlado

[henning]

Is the displacement-subdivision working exactly like the turbosmooth algorithm? On quad and non-quad faces?

[vlado]

I doubt it. I don't know how the turbosmooth algorithm works; from what I remember the subdivision scheme is devised by Autodesk. The V-Ray subdivision is Catmull-Clark on quads and Loop on triangles.

Best regards,
Vlado

[henning]

Thank you.

[Guest]

Great! Thanks for the explanation.

[vlado]

I should point out that this feature will be particularly useful for the next service pack if you use PTex textures. VRayDisplacementMod correctly keeps track of where each point on the surface came from, so that the PTex texture can be applied accordingly. Whereas TurboSmooth changes the object topology and it is no longer possible to use the original PTex texture.

Best regards,
Vlado