Problems displacing sinusoidal-type cladding

[tricky]

Also I'd imagine that Autocad doesn't do the best job of making geometry. The vray displace is like pretty much any other subdivision so it'll work best on a model that has evenly spaced, roughly square shaped quads. I could see autocad doing some pretty manky tesselation, similar to what'd happen if you convert a closed spline shape into a mesh or extrude it - it'll do a really shitty job with long thin triangles flying all over the place. Maybe look at quadrangulate or even horror of all horrors, do a re-model depending on what it is you're doing.

The line I have imported from Autocad in this case is literally 2 rectangles though - 4 vertices each (one at each corner). How should I translate that into a displacement friendly format?

(I could retrace the rectangles in Max, but it would still be 4 verts per rectangle)

[sea2stars]

Plane objects are easy enough to setup and modify.

[rivoli]

The line I have imported from Autocad in this case is literally 2 rectangles though

those should actually work as they are, just turning them into polies should do the trick.

[3DMK]

Sorry to be blunt tricky but you could have modeled the whole thing in real geometry in the same time it took me to read this thread.

Displacement is a complete waste of time & effort in this situation.

Simply create the profile as a line & extrude , then slice/cut to shape if required.

You will actually end up with a LOT less geometry [& no artifacts I may add] that way & a LOT less headaches.

Cheers

[tricky]

I have no problem with you being blunt but you don't know the full extent of the projects. We are looking at methods to procedurally model this sort of geometry so that variations can be created quickly. This isn't just one facade of a building. I may well give up, but I need tO know how far I can go before giving up. 

[3DMK]

Sorry mate!....it's just I don't like to see others hitting their head against a brick wall for no reason....lol [My bluntness is born out of empathy]

OK ...If you are keen on doing displacement then I would advise you to remodel the facades as I have NEVER had great sucsess with imported CAD geometry.

Best way is to re-create the facades from a standard max plane object that is subdivided evenly with QUADS as this gives the best results. I know it sounds stupid to remodel the elements but you are bound to have some headaches if you don't.

Hope this helps

[cgrant3d]

Only thing I see that's different than how we've approached it here is to use 2D displacement not 3D. If you're doing a simple displacement like that there's no reason not to use 2D displacement and you'll find that it calc's much faster too!