Object Space Vector Displacement

[CerpinTaxt]

Hi,

I can't get vray to render an object space vector displacement map that is not ptex. I found a couple of threads with similar problems, e.g. vector displacement maps from zbrush. Is this still a problem or am I missing something?
I tried to render the ocean displacement map from the arnold docs without luck. (Link).

cheers,
jan

[vlado]

I think it only works for Ptex right now. I have not really tried any other texture formats.

Best regards,
Vlado

[CerpinTaxt]

Thanks Vlado. Will vray support this kind of vector displacement maps in the future or is there a way to convert them easily?

I'm asking because the aaOceanSuite is a great plugin for generating tessendorf ocean surfaces via a deformer or displacement. It natively supports mental ray ray and arnold but you can also write out displacement maps as exrs to render them with another renderer. Unfortunately, the exrs are uv-based vector displacement maps in object space and can't be rendered with vray at the moment.

Regards,
Jan

[vlado]

I would say better go with Phoenix FD for that. Its ocean surface is much better than Tessendorf.

Best regards,
Vlado

[ivaylo.ivanov]

The ocean tools however are not in the Phoenix FD demo (since it's pretty old). The texture itself is shipping with VRay 3.0 (called PhxShaderOceanTex), but there is some problem using it with the "Create from VRay plugin" currently. Will check this.

[CerpinTaxt]

That would be great to get access to the Phoenix Ocean Texture with VRay 3.0. What do you think makes it superior to a tessendorf implementation?

Jan

[vlado]

What do you think makes it superior to a tessendorf implementation?

The complete lack of tiling artifacts

Best regards,
Vlado

[CerpinTaxt]

The complete lack of tiling artifacts

Sounds good to me

Jan

[ivaylo.ivanov]

The issue with the ocean texture was fixed in the 3.0 nightly, will add it to the stables next week.

[pechart]

Thanks for the fix. We can now create the texture and apply it to a displacement node. But when I set the output to 'vector' and also the displacement mode to vector my mesh just disappears.

[ivaylo.ivanov]

This is example scene

phxoceantex.zip

[pechart]

Looks great, thanks a lot!
One thing: can you say something about the format the phxShaderOceanTex uses? I'd really like to use it in a deformer, so any info would be helpful. Thanks!

[ivaylo.ivanov]

It's the standard vector displacement that VRay works with. However I don't think you can use this texure with a deformer except maybe rendering it with VRay to exr first. I don't know Maya to support custom textures. Custom deformers are possible, but we haven't look into this yet.

[pechart]

Well, mayas texture deformer supports vector displacement. So it would be good, if we could translate the vray format to something maya can handle by default. This way we could use the deformed poly mesh as a source for particles and other stuff.

BTW, is there something like the tessendorf "Eigenvalue" available through the oceanShaderTex?