VRay Displacement stepping

[chrisjacks21]

I am getting some sort of stepping/banding on my water surface - I am using a Vray displace modifier set to 3D mapping. I have tried tweaking all settings but can't seem to fix it.

I am using a map that is made up of procedural noise and smoke maps and using mix & masks to blend them - coordinates are set to object XYZ.

Any thoughts?

[Morbid Angel]

this looks like typical banding when using an 8 bit image in displacement. Do you have any 8 bit maps there? otherwise, it can also be that one of the procedurals is not mapping correctly, i.e. the coordinates produce weird artifacts. You can plug your maps one by one into a vray light material and render without displacement to just see how the maps look in the frame buffer.

[chrisjacks21]

Thanks for your reply Dmitry - there are no images used, they are all procedural so can't understand why it is happening. I will have to try what you have suggested and strip them back one by one.

[jacksc02]

Hello Chris!
rather than using displacement you can try this free plugin
http://www.guillaumeplourde.com/index.php?cID=75

It is for Houdini but it works for max

[vlado]

There is a bug in the 3ds Max Noise texture that leads to this type of banding. You can try other noise textures, e.g. Bercon maps, which do not have this issue.

Best regards,
Vlado

[chrisjacks21]

There is a bug in the 3ds Max Noise texture that leads to this type of banding. You can try other noise textures, e.g. Bercon maps, which do not have this issue.

Best regards,
Vlado

Aha thanks Vlado! Do you know if the smoke map is ok?

[chrisjacks21]

Hello Chris!
rather than using displacement you can try this free plugin
http://www.guillaumeplourde.com/index.php?cID=75

It is for Houdini but it works for max

Thanks Chris - I'm too far gone now to switch my water setup does look good though! how does it tile over large areas - as this was always an issue with dreamscape...

[vlado]

Aha thanks Vlado! Do you know if the smoke map is ok?

I'm not sure; I'm afraid it might be an inherent issue in the 3ds Max noise generator (which is used by most procedural textures).

Best regards,
Vlado

[kimgar]

hmm, anyone know a way around this without installing 3rd party procedurals?
vray rt does not seem to produce the banding though, any tips on what vray setting i could tweak if i wanted to mimick the vray rt behaviour?

[vlado]

hmm, anyone know a way around this without installing 3rd party procedurals?

It might be possible to cook a VRayGLSL texture that does something similar (GLSL has a built-in noise function). Are you just using the Noise texture?

vray rt does not seem to produce the banding though, any tips on what vray setting i could tweak if i wanted to mimick the vray rt behaviour?

We coded all the textures for V-Ray RT ourselves, so we were careful to avoid this issue.

Best regards,
Vlado

[kimgar]

ah, so vray rt procedurals are actually chaos code? that explains it

we are using the smoke texture a lot for ocean surfaces, and this issue really causes a lot of trouble.
it doesn't seem like there will ever be a fix from autodesks side, so any help, tips or cooking from you guys would be so very much appreciated.

what did you have in mind regarding the VRayGLSL texture? i have not had the chance to try it yet, and this sounds like an excellent opportunity.

[samuel_bubat]

The standard max noise map works fine. It´s the smoke map that produces the bending because it´s just a 2d procedural.
This was more obvious in previous max versions before slate where you could see if it ´s 2d or 3d.

[kimgar]

yeah, it is too bad, the regular noise just don't cut it for me, i kind of need those sharp crests or what to call it the smoke map produces :

vray rt:

autodesk:

[samuel_bubat]

Try Bercon Maps, they own every 3dsmax procedural anyway
Also you can try a Cellular Procedural in circular mode with inverted colors.

[anchovy]

Want to post the max file? I have done a fair amount of displacement with the built in noise with no issues and the built in noise function in the sdk are clean other than the issues with the second order derivatives.

I'm interested to see whats going on that its so visible an artifact.

-Michael