So, Modo 301 is out now and supports a new type of displacement map called a vector displacement. I’m no expert at displacment mapping, but this method appears to be superior to standard greyscale displacement maps generated from ZBrush. My question is there any way to generate a map of this type for rendering sculpts out in modo? I havent yet been able to use Z3.1, so forgive me if this is an available feature. A quick search of the forums didnt turn anything up. Thanks–
Looking for the same thing 
I’ll post here if anything pops up.
howdy,
i was really impressed by the vd maps in modo 301 too… and i think i got a handle on how it’s done:
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traditional difference map - you take TWO meshes. one mesh is hires sculpt, the other mesh is low poly cage that will be displaced at render time. the difference between HIRES and LORES is encoded into the LOW RES MESH’S UV MAP TEXTURE. only ONE uv map is taken into consideration.
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vector displacement map - you take TWO meshes. one mesh is hires sculpt, the other mesh is low poly cage that will be displaced at render time. the difference between HIRES and LORES is encoded in the LOW RES MESH"S UV MAP TEXTURE. BUT… when that comparison between hires and lores is made, BOTH the hires mesh’s uvs and the lores mesh’s uvs are taken into account and a CORRESPONDENCE is made between the uvs.
this allows the computer to say “ah, this vertex on the lores mesh CORRESPONDS to that vertex on the hires mesh”. in traditional difference mapping, THEY DON’T CARE about correspondence, just the distance from hires to the NEAREST POINT on the lores.
since a correspondence is made, a determination can be made in regards not only how far away a point is from the nearest point on the other mesh, but we can say that the corresponding vertex went up 2 and left 3 and forward 7.
THIS allows you to encode undercuts like mushrooms.
it doesn’t seem that zb can do this. YET.
and frankly, it doesn’t seem to be necessary for generating a displacement map to go to max, maya, lw, etc…
it’s unlikely that our hires mesh will contain detail that cannot be recreated by regular displacement maps on our lores mesh.
BUT
it would be really really cool to be able to have a “MUSHROOM BRUSH” or an “EAR BRUSH” that contains all the undercuts that we can drag paint onto our meshes.
and the ability to create our own VD brushes… just select a mesh or a portion of a mesh and make it into a vd brush… that would be cool.
jin
Agree Jin,
An ability to make Mushroom or Ear brushes would be great, and in some cases extreemly time-saving.
The reason why I got interested in Vector displacement was just because of this, the ability to clone small complex shapes in ‘less than 15 seconds’.
Hope this comes around,
untill then…
Someone on the Silo forums discussed a program/plugin that did exactly this for 3Ds max.
Basically, IIRC, make a displacement map of the lowres, and then a displacement map of the highres. These need to be saved to a floating point image format for good results ( zb3 probably doesn’t support this ).
Then subtract the two maps for your vector displacement map.
http://www.silo3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8914&highlight=vector+displacement
http://www.xsibase.com/forum/index.php?board=29;action=display;threadid=28834;start=0
http://area.autodesk.com/mudbox2011/features#vector
just looking at this on the mud box site. Guess you also require a shader that can handle this.
Yah, I saw this too, that Mudbox could do Vector Displacement, looks like it can be generated after the fact too. I was told by a good friend (who is a very smart graphics programmer) that it wouldn’t be possible to generate them after the fact, it needs to be calculated at each stroke, which I assumed would be the reason why ZBrush didn’t support it. This is an interesting development though, guess we’ll see what happens.
This is very cool and would be very useful, but the important question I am trying to find is what renderer supports Vector displacement. Seems Modo does, and MR can support it with a custom shader but not out of the box… but does Renderman (which has the best displacement capability still) support Vector displacements? Does anyone know?
Also, with regards to not being able to generate Vector displacements after the sculpt is done is probably not true. All vector displacements is is using an RGB map to represent each point’s vector from the initial model at the same level to the final sculpt. Its no different than extracting a normal based grey scale displacement map except that you have 3 vectors instead of 1 to calculate and record and all baked into an RGB map for the each point’s 3 vectors. So you really don’t have to record at each paint stroke (not that this would really solve the problem anyway), but it is still a model extraction process.
I can actually confirm this tonight after I get home and test this feature again.
Please, please, please add this Pixologic!
Please, please, please add this Pixologic!
not sure what this link is ?
this can totally be done using any 2 meshes so long as the uvs are exact, i have been using vector maps for the past 2 years. The uvs are the key, they must be identical
edit: i generated the maps from proprietary software
That is cool. Especially when you could just share the image with a team or the world.
look here shader for max maya and xsi now wee need zb support for vector displacement
really waiting for pixologic to include vector displacement feature in their new release.i don’t no why people are not interested in this i have post a thread on new release post but nobody replied to it. 
small_orange_diamond
Yep, nearly 3 years later, and still no word. So sad, because vector displacement is such an awesome feature. I just love the sculpting in Zbrush and would love to be able to get this into other packages. Guess we’ll see what ZB4 has to offer a siggraph.
How goes the thing?.
Vector Displacement Mapping in Z4?
Ya its still not there…this post should be kept alive…
yep its a must at this stage. everyones jumping on board
Let’s get some attention on this topic. Can anyone at Pixo shed light on whether you’re developing the capability to create vector displacement maps?