Has anyone tried this yet? Curious to know if it works in Vray.
It should work, but I really haven’t tried it yet; if I manage to do it, I’ll post the workflow here.
Best regards,
Vlado
I exported geo and a vector displacement map from mudbox. Rendered it in Vray with Vector displacement and it didn’t work. I then switched displacement in Vray to normal displacement and I got something, but it wasn’t vector displacement.
I’m just guessing here. But it’s probably the color mapping between Vray and Mudbox in the RGB space. There was a post somewhere on here where Vlado described how Vray interprets vector displacement.
Edit: Here’s what Vlado said..
Yeah, I would still expect to see something.. But that isn’t the case.. Also, is there a VRayVectorDisplBake material for Maya yet?
When using Vector Displacement, it looks like the object being displaced looses all subdivisions. It’s really hard to find out if it’s mudbox or vray for maya though. To be honest, it seems like almost every function I use is bugged with Vray for Maya. Was Vray for Max this buggy at release? Vlado, how about a service pak?
To be honest, it seems like almost every function I use is bugged with Vray for Maya.Can you give specific examples? They might simply be user errors, but of course, there is also the occasional bug - please report anything that you think is out of the ordinary to vraymaya@chaosgroup.com
Was Vray for Max this buggy at release?Much worse
And it had about 1/100th of the features.
Vlado, how about a service pak?Seeing as how you are using vector displacement, I assume you are using one of the nightly builds? If yes, then you already have the service pack.
Best regards,
Vlado
Is that because Maya is easier to develop for? Or just the experience gained after developing for Max?
I always was interested in this after I heard Maya is really difficult to develop for. 
Hi,
I have tried vector displacement for mental ray and the results are breathtaking so say the least. Nothing can compare unless you actually render the whole 8-10 million mesh inside maya. So I really hope this will be implemented to Vray real soon!
I saw the mudbox and Pixar ptex presentations about vector displacement. WOW! We really need that in Vray!
http://area.autodesk.com/siggraph/video32
http://area.autodesk.com/siggraph/video23
Wayne Robson wrote the vector displacement shader for Mental Ray:
http://www.psychocore.com/
Yeah I saw those vid’s as well. The really sweet part was NO UV’s necessary when using ptex.
So is there any update on vector displacement support. I too , cant seem to make it work. Would be good to know if this is being looked at & if we can expect any updates soon.
Many Thanks
Chris
here’s a sample Mudbox vector displacement. I can’t seem to get it working with the
V-Ray nightlies
Lastly I’ve been trying to use vector displacement mapping with Vray too.
I’ve done this using free software xnormal (www.xnormal.net), using low poly and high poly models in obj exported directly from Zbrush. Neither good results. I need to find another way to do it.
If someone manage to get it to work with Beige ear sample, let me know.
Thanks
Hello,
One of our very talented artists here at Swiss managed to get Vray to render vector displacement maps from mudbox. Here is what you do in 10 easy steps:
1. Extract an Absolute Tangent map from mudbox.
2. Import mesh and assign a shader with a displacement file texture.
3. Between the file and the displacement node you need three nodes:
Multiply
+/- average
blendColors
4. Connect from the file texture (use the “Other…” option):
OutputR → Input1.X
OutputG → Input1.Z
OutputB → Input1.Y
and set multiply input2 values to 0.5 0.5 1
5. Connect multipyl to +/- average input [0].
In the Average node create a new item (under input 3D) and set it’s values to 0.5 0.5 0
6. Connect output from average to blendcolors color1. Set blend to 1.
If you don’t do this step Vray will crash.
7. Connect blendColors to the displacment node
OutputR → displacement
8. Create a Vray displacement control node for your mesh and set it to Vector Displacement
9. I usually smooth my mesh 2 times before rendering.
10. In renderGlobals under Vray/Misc check the “allow negative shader colors”, now render!
/ Johan
Very cool; but you should be able to do the same just with the Color Gain and Color Offset parameters of the File texture, no?
Best regards,
Vlado
First your switching the green and the blue channel. Then the operations channel specific. So I think that is hard to do with the file texture I guess you could basicly let Vray do this under the hood, so people wouldn’t need to convert the textures in this way. Would be nice with a dropdown menu so you can select which kind of vector map you feeding into Vray.
You can also do these operations in a comp program and then you wount need to do anything special in maya. It’s the same procedure in comp:
1. Switch blue and green channel.
2. Multiply red and green channel by 0.5
3. Add 0.5 to red and green channel
This solution is only for the “Absolute Tangent” from mudbox. You also have "Relative Tangent, “World space” and “Local space” vector maps. Should be possible to convert them as well.
Best regards,
Johan
Ah yes, I missed the switch of the red and green channels. Yeah, we’ll probably need some way to switch the different vector map types. I’m curious how this works with PTex textures where you don’t have a mapping channel to use as a reference frame…
Best regards,
Vlado
Yes, I’m agree with griml0ck, this “substeps” shouldn’t steal at Vray for Maya users the time needed to research the way. We want do the map and apply it. Maybe Chaosgroup should prepare some presets for displacement vector (perhaps mudbox, xnormal, modo…). In the same way, talking about displacement, would be cool to have a parameter for define the “zero point”, if is black (0), or grey (0.5), in place of use the expression displacement offset = displacement amount * -0.5.
From my point of view, besides Chaosgroup works on an incredible rendering engine able to fake the light in a impressive way, the Vray product is aimed for a final user, not like Mental Ray, that is aimed for a company for embed it in its softwares, or renderman, aimed for programmers. So, like user, we want create the maps and getting it work as fast as I can hope, without uncomfortable configurations and settings.