Embedded Files
In this final section, we will cover how to set up both the shader and the displacement of our scanned model.
01. Floating-Point Displacement Setup(?):
02. Shader Setup:
01. Create a new 'VRayMtl'
02. Add a 'VRayHDRI' map to the Diffuse slot and imput your diffuse map.
03. In your 'VRayHDRI' map scroll down to 'Coordinates' tab and set the 'Blur' value to 0.1. Setting this value to 0.1 will help reduce blurring when texture is viewed at an angle. This will also reduce render time a bit as Max won't have to do as much blurring.
04. Add a 'VRayNormalMap' to the Bump slot
05. Add a 'VRayHDRI' map to the Normal map slot of the 'VRayNormalMap' and imput your normal map.
06. In your 'VRayHDRI' map scroll down to 'Coordinates' tab and this time set the 'Blur' value to 0.01(minimum value). This removes any blurring and helps to get most detail information from Normal maps. If you're using 'Bitmap' map instead of 'VRayHDRI' map you can also set 'Filtering' to 'None'.
07. Go back to main shader and set the Bump amount to 100. This ensures our Normal map will behave correctly.
08. You can disable the Diffuse slot and make a test render to check if the Normal map is working as it should.
09. Add any additional Glossiness, Opacity, Refraction, etc. maps. For these you can leave the 'Blur' amount at the default of 1 as you can get unnecessary noise if you lower it.
Below a short video demonstrating the process:
01. Import your low-res mesh (Double check that your low-res mesh is the exact same mesh you generated your displacement map from).
02. Add an 'Unwrap UVW' modifer to your object.
03. Under the Edit UVs rollout click the 'Open UV Editor...' button.
04. In the Edit UVs window, activate vertex selection mode and select all of your UVs (Ctrl+A). Then go to 'Tools -> Break' to break apart all your UV edges. Close the Edit UVs window. This is a hack to prevent 3ds Max from smoothing your UVs since it does not have this functionality built in. Meshsmooth's 'Old Style Mapping' is similar but still distorts your UVs unpredictably.
05. Add a 'Turbosmooth' modifier to your object above the Unwrap UVW modifier.
06. Set Iterations to 0 (or whatever smoothness you'd like to see in the viewport).
07. Check 'Render Iters' and set it's value to 2. Setting this to a value of 2 ensures your mesh behaves as closely to a subdivision surface as possible, and thereby prevents edge artifacts. If your low res mesh has a fairly low poly count then you may need to set this to a value of 3.
08. Add a 'VRayDisplacementMod' modifier to your object.
09. Check '3D Mapping'. While 3D Mapping is generally the best all-around setting for displacement mapping type, you may be able to get even higher quality results with 2D Mapping. As long as your UVs are good, you can experiment with both displacement types to see which gives the best results.
10. Click the 'None' button, and choose 'VRayHDRI' from the Material/Map Browser popup.
11. Open the material editor and drag the VRayHDRI button to an empty material editor slot or your graphite material node graph and choose 'Instance' as the method.
12. In the VRayHDRI's properties, select the '...' button next to the bitmap box to locate and load in your previously generated displacement map into the bitmap box.
13. In the Color Space group, make sure type is set to 'None' to tell V-Ray our generated displacement map is a linear image.
14. Leave all other settings to their defaults. You can close or minimize the material editor.
15. Back in the VRayDisplacementMod modifier, Uncheck 'Filter Texmap' to disable filtering of your displacement map and preserve the high frequency details of your sculpt.
16. Set 'Edge Length' to a value of 4.0 to begin with, and lower as needed for better displacement quality (at the expense of higher render times).
17. Check 'Keep Continuity'. Setting this to CHECKED will have V-Ray keep displaced face edges connected without splits.
18. Set 'Texmap Min' and 'Texmap Max' to values that exceeds the largest positive or negative pixel value found in your generated displacement map. You can experiment with these values by starting at -1.0 min and 1.0 max. Then expand these values if you notice any clipping occuring in the extreme highs or lows of your displacement. This value sets the boundary of displacement, so the idea is to set it large enough that it contains all your displaced detail without any clipping. Setting these values unnecessarily high can slow down the renderer.
19. Leave all other settings at their defaults. Check the screengrab on the right to verify.
20. Before adding any additional textures it is advisable to make a test render. Checking for possible mistakes at this point can save time later on.
With this we can conclude these basic tutorials. Remember that these steps are just a foundation, more or less the basic principles of how to deal with scanned objects. You can find quite a few approaches towards this subject and for now this one seems to be working very good. However, by any means, don't stop exploring the new ideas and workflows as this is still something very new and is evolving by the day.
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