By Chris S. (Fez) (68.51.141.174) on Thursday, January 30, 2003 - 04:33 pm:

Is there a way in Layout to displace a model and then subdivide the displaced mesh? For instance, if I displace a plane set to render at subpatch level 6 with the turbulance procedural I get an angular topography of nonplanar polygons. If I "save transformed" and subdivide (TAB) the plane in modeler, I get the surface I want. So can I somehow subdivide a displaced surface in Layout so I don't sacrifice the economy and editability of my mesh?

By Zafar Iqbal (Zafar) (80.197.222.134) on Thursday, January 30, 2003 - 05:20 pm:

Yes.

Under Object Properties->Geometry you need to change Subdivision Order to After Displacement.

By James Allen (Skonk) (80.74.170.13) on Friday, January 31, 2003 - 04:59 am:

Make your plane a subd object in modeler first then take it into layout and apply your displacement.

James..

By Chris S. (Fez) (68.51.141.174) on Friday, January 31, 2003 - 07:19 am:

Thanks for the help guys but I don't think that is what I want. I have a subpatch object. I would like a "stack" of operations whereby Layout 1) Subdivides 2) Displaces, and 3) Subdivides again to smooth out the Displacement. Is there some sort of metaform plugin that can be added AFTER the displacement?

By James Allen (Skonk) (80.74.170.3) on Friday, January 31, 2003 - 07:30 am:

Theres no point in having it subd the object before and then after the deform even if u could, u can take a 1 poly plane and subd it in modeler, and then apply a deplacement map to it in layout and it will generate lumps and bumps just the same as a 1000 poly plane would. Just make sure u set the render subpatch level quite high, default is 3 so ud want a lot more than that for what ur trying to do, try going as high as 50 or so. U dont need to set the display level as high but if your comp is fast enough u could try it to get a preview of how it would render.

James..

By James Allen (Skonk) (80.74.170.3) on Friday, January 31, 2003 - 07:34 am:

Just thought id have a mess.



This is 1 4 point poly, set to subd in modeler then a turbulence displacemend added in layout with subd level set to 150.

James..

By Chris S. (Fez) (68.51.141.174) on Friday, January 31, 2003 - 08:40 am:

Hi James.

"Just make sure u set the render subpatch level quite high"

This is the problem. It seems wasteful to me to set the patch level so high. For example, say I have a polygon in modeler. I subdivide the plane a few times and then jitter the geometry. Then I hit tab to smooth out the jitter . Conversely, to get a nice smooth displacement in Layout I have to jack up the patch level. It would be more economical if we could subdivide the mesh after the displacement to smooth out those angular polygons which are evident in your picture even with a subd level set to 150. Am I making sense?

By Earl Wilson IV (Earl) (12.224.242.21) on Friday, January 31, 2003 - 09:32 am:

You're making sense Chris. The solutions suggested so far do not accomplish this, (though they may, in their own way, accomplish something similar). Keeping the base poly low is important, and thus subdividing in modeler (for your example) isn't the best solution.

I don't know of any plugins that can accomplish this 'stacking'...

By Elmar Moelzer (Elmar_Moelzer) (62.47.36.118) on Friday, January 31, 2003 - 11:52 am:

Hello
Guess what? I too have written a feature- request to NT for this a few weeks ago.
Mine is going a bit further though.
The whole thing starts to make sense especially once you happen to have animated displacement.
Imagine doing an ocean. You have big rather uniform and smooth waves. For this you would usually use a not to dense SD- object with SD- order set to last. But on top of the big waves you will want tiny waves that are sharper and less unform. So you would want to use SD- order first. But both at teh same time is not possible right now. So I would want to be able to set the Sd-order per Displacement- texture- layer. And this is not all yet. On could go further and say well I want the samller waves to be sharp, but not quite that sharp, so I want another subdivision afterwards to smooth them out a bit more.
I could even imagine this to work for other object- displacement- tools as well, as well as maybe bones i.e. I dont think that this would be hard to implement and it would make displacements with SD a lot more flexible in LW.
CU
Elmar

By Lernie D Ang (Faulknermano) (210.14.24.5) on Saturday, February 01, 2003 - 08:14 am:

yep.. i'd sure like that have this kind of control from within layout.

By Marvin Landis (Marvinl) (68.63.199.213) on Saturday, February 01, 2003 - 11:48 am:

Here's an idea I have been experimenting with lately. It won't help with animated displacement, but it is a nice way to add procedural details on the rougher parts of a landscape (and less details on the smoother parts) without having to crank the overall subdivision level to extremely high values.

Use Texturescape (http://amber.rc.arizona.edu/lw/texturescape.html) in Modeler to create a landscape with 1000 polys (obviously you can use more or less polys depending on your specific needs). You can use an image (including SDTS or other elevation data) or a procedural within TextureScape to create this simplified landscape which will form the basic shape of the terrain. The way the plugin works will cause rougher portions of the terrain to contain more triangles than the smoother portions of the terrain. Make sure after you exit the TextureScape tool by hitting the space bar, that you also do a merge (m key) to automatically eliminate the duplicate points. Then hit Tab to make this into a subpatch object and save it.

Now load this object into Layout and do the standard displacement technique to add procedural details to the terrain. I have found that to get realistic details, especially in the mountainous areas, I can use a much smaller subdivision level than I normally would need with a regular gridded subpatched mesh.

By James Allen (Skonk) (80.74.170.17) on Saturday, February 01, 2003 - 12:02 pm:

To create smooth details on this type of object, no matter how u do it, its going to take a lot of polys. It doesn't matter if u start with a 1000 poly mesh and use a low subpatch level or start with a 1 poly mesh and use a subpatch level of 150 in the end it all works out the same, cos lw has to freeze the mesh as it renders it. A level of 10 on a 100 poly mesh is more or less the same (not sure exactly) as a lvl of 100 on a 1 poly mesh. As for adding something like smaller waves ontop of larger waves, u simply use 2 layers of texture for your displacement, one with a large size and one with a smaller size.


James..