How to make Carved Wood in 3ds Max...

[wakozi]

hi. i think vray has its own settings when using displacement maps. so the resulting render is not quite affected if you are using displacement on a flat surface. i use vray with sketchup though.

[Cad64]

  wakozi said:

hi. i think vray has its own settings when using displacement maps. so the resulting render is not quite affected if you are using displacement on a flat surface. i use vray with sketchup though.

 

Can you explain that a little further? I don't quite understand what you mean when you say "the resulting render is not quite affected if you are using displacement on a flat surface"? That's the whole point of the displacement map. To affect the flat surface.

[wakozi]

well yes, my bad. it does affect the surface. XD. but what i mean is the detail in the resulting render stays the same no matter what amount of poly you have on the surface. to add/lessen the detail to your render using displacement maps, there is a menu under displacement that says maxsubdivs. there you can enter the amount of subdivs that would result in the amount of detail you desire for your render. i dont know if its true for 3ds max though. (but ive read somewhere that it is the same).

 

first image default settings max subdivs = 256, second image max subdivs = 5

these were done in SU. (still learning max)

 

[Cad64]

  wakozi said:

well yes, my bad. it does affect the surface. XD. but what i mean is the detail in the resulting render stays the same no matter what amount of poly you have on the surface. to add/lessen the detail to your render using displacement maps, there is a menu under displacement that says maxsubdivs. there you can enter the amount of subdivs that would result in the amount of detail you desire for your render. i dont know if its true for 3ds max though. (but ive read somewhere that it is the same).

 

Displacement is typically controlled in the material settings, but there is a Global Displacement Setting for "Max Subdiv" in the Mental Ray render settings. The default is 16k and the maximum amount is 64k.

 

From the Max Help files:

  Quote

Max. Subdiv.—Controls the extent to which mental ray can recursively subdivide each original mesh triangle for displacement. Each subdivision recursion potentially divides a single face into four smaller faces. Choose the value from the drop-down list. Range=4 to 64K (65,536). Default=16K (16,384). For example, using the default value means that mental ray can subdivide each displaced mesh triangle into as many as 16,384 smaller triangles.

 

I always leave this setting at the default. I've never felt the need to change it.

[wakozi]

i havnt touched mental ray yet. still learning the work flows with max. so its good to know it has some similarity vray for su. it should be easy rendering using mental ray. thanks mr cad64 for the additional input. ^_^

[mslgim]

  Cad64 said:

Then I quickly created an opacity map and a displacement map from the diffuse map .....QUOTE]

 

Wow, thank you! I have play around with the displacement maps because I am not familiar with them. This is great, I can't wait to get my hands on the project and the 20 minute time-frame is a plus!

[mslgim]

  Cad64 said:

Can you see any difference between the two images?

 

Not really, the only difference is that the 132,000 poly's has a darker contrast in the overall image; however, there is no difference on the texture and effect. Again thanks to you all!