Trying to displace from Blender?

[zsouthboy]

Your file sizes (and interactive frame rates) are in the toilet, aren't they? Subdividing the mesh a ton of times is HEAVY on your memory usage.


(Subdivided plane from hell - slows blender to a crawl)

Instead of physically subdividing the plane, use a modifier (or two!)
Choose Subdivide, and choose SIMPLE subdivision, rather than the default Catmull-Clark - note that blender's subdivide modifier only allows you to go up to 6, so if you need more subdivision, add ANOTHER subdivide modifier below the first. Just make sure your displace modifier is last.


Also, turn off the "view effects of modifier during interactive display" button, you can see in my example, that it's unchecked.

Now in my viewport, the plane is ... well, plain. nice and fast!

[zsouthboy]

[psor]

Weeeee! I like it!

And now go, make a box and displace just one side like this and then
add SSS and some nice lighting, hehe. ;o))



take care
psor

[Kram1032]

I've one thing to add:
the Simple Subdiv is correct, for the first modifier, but as polycount increases, catmul-clark wont round it out that much, anymore. So, the second one should be catmul-clark.

I did tests with that on a cube.
(Cloudmap-displaced, first with only Catmul Clark, which transformed it to something somewhat spherical, then with only Simple, which prevented the cube shape but gave bad angles in some cases, and then, two modifiers, both at 3, the lower one as simple, the higher one as catmul - that was the best result)

[zsouthboy]

Kram:

"displacing" a Catmull-Clark subdivision is useless - the algorithm is not designed for this. (it's designed to decimate into nice smooth models)

[Kram1032]

yes, I know, but at reasonably high polycount, it looks better. Just because of the point, you wrote yourself: it's designed to decimate into nice smooth models

At low polycount, that would entirely distort the map, but highpoly-objects don't get distorted that much anymore and simply look better.