Possible to bake geometry to vector displacement?

[DPS]

Is this possible? In vray or other software?

I have created a ground plane with some gravel on it. The gravel is low poly single pieces of gravel (but high poly when scattered throughout my scene). I'd love to optimize it somewhat but the camera angle is low to the ground so a planar displacement won't be ideal.

Is there any means to bake this into a tile and keep the texture on the side of the pieces of gravel? That's why vector displacement came to mind. Or if there's another approach?

[vlado]

Mudbox can bake vector displacement maps...

Best regards,
Vlado

[DPS]

I tied mudbox when doing this a while ago but it grinded to a halt when I had lots of objects.

Ill give it another try.

Thanks

[FSGFX]

you cant bake multiple objects to one object if you like to create a vectordispmap...
only if the highres mesh is a subDlevel from the lowres...

to bake a vector map... the lowres is subdivided internaly to the same polycount as the highres...
and during the bake the vertex distance and vector is stored for each vertex... from the limit surface to the highres version...
there is no raytracing goin on to calculate the map... its only calculating the vertex positions...

[DPS]

That makes sense.
Would be neat if you could create one in the same way as a planet displacement map.

Thanks