In the v5 Daily builds starting from 2019-09-30 we are proud to release the new 2.5d displacement!
It is much more memory efficient than the original displacement, allowing much finer displacement (smaller screen/world size) while using less memory.
Enabled by default for new scenes, but disabled for older scenes for backwards compatibility.
It can be enabled by a new checkbox in performance tab of render settings.
New vs old. Render settings: 1px for new displacement and 3px for old displacement. Old displacement consumed less memory and looks better despite vastly larger screen size. Artifacts in new displacement mode, is very obvious. Floor displacement is exaggerated on purpose. Also there’s quite noticeable change in lighting/shading (?) on the wall’s corner. Might be because wall material also has displacement, albeit very subtle.
Edit: Corona uploader doesn’t want to work, so if you need the scene, let me know and i provide the link though PM.
Yes, we’ll be releasing displacement fixes and optimizations in next daily build. In some extreme cases the memory consumption is now 10x lower than in last daily.
There’s a big discrepancy between two displacement methods in how they treat mapping channels. If 2nd or higher mapping channel of an object is empty and there’s a displacement map in the material, which uses that channel, then new displacement ignores that map and do not displace geometry (which seems logical), but the old displacement for some reason is copying mapping from the first channel and pastes it in the empty channel (which seems odd).
I can no longer reproduce artifacts, which is nice, but displaced geometry still has strange shading on shallow angles with new displacement. I wonder if it’s a limitation of 2.5D displacement, or maybe things can be improved here?
One more test. New displacement @ 1px VS old @ 3px VS old @ 3px with disabled autobump. In my opinion, old displacement with enabled autobump, looks the best.
Negative. The report you’ve linked, is about displacement only working in base layer of layered material. I’m talking about mapping channels. They are independant from materials. Let me know if you want more detailed report with examples and max scene.
Ohh, 2.5D Displacement does not gradually replace Displace with Normal/Bump at a distance?
That would be a hard blow to usability. Or is that just a bug?
Autobump option is greyed out when 2.5D displacement is chosen. I wouldn’t say it’s a deal breaker, because autobump works very well in some instances (like in my last example), but quite often it fails miserably and much better results are obtained with autobump being turned off. Anyway, it might be just temporarily and maybe devs will make autobump to work with new displacement too.
