Boldly go!

[zandoriastudios]

Check out the new per pixel displacement in V13! Thanks, Martin!

[MMZ_TimeLord]

Sweeeeeet! Now my earth elevation maps that are over 2000x4000 will be worth something!!!

 

*HUGS* to Martin

[johnl3d]

something new to play with..."Great !"

[nino banano]

wow!!! this image really rocks... thanks for share William..it is a good reason for update the version 13...

[Zaryin]

*drools* Thanks for the post, Will.

[ericsh6]

Now I can't stand it any more - I must try V13. I already upgraded to the 2006 CD, is V13 available for general consumption yet? Where is it downloaded?

[markeh]

Doggone I'm poor as all heck and now I'm forced to upgrade! Doggone!!!

[Dhar]

And a "pixel displacement" is........?

[markeh]

Ok I've jumped up and down enough. Am I to understand that with pixel displacement the renderer pays attention to how close you are to the mapping as far as how much detail you can get from the displacement? This sounds similar to what terragen does if that's right. In any case it's very cool just wanted the specifics. Not that it matters but just curious if there is a render hit as well?

[ericsh6]

I think pixel displacement might be the answer to the clouds I am looking for - I can use a procedural fractal material on the surface that will displace pixels thus creating a 3D fractal on the cloud edges as opposed to the 2D I have been trying to force to work. In theory it should work.

[DanCBradbury]

awesome render. How did you apply a displacement to a sphere? is it a projection map?

 

Anyway, there's one problem i see with your render. Your mountains are a tad bit too high, about 60 miles to high. The highest peak on mars is about 27 km high, and your highest peak there is about 126 km high. So by decrasing the displacement map percentage by a factor of 0.2 your peaks should be much more acurate. In either case, that's one damn fine render you got there

[robcat2075]

Am I to understand that with pixel displacement the renderer pays attention to how close you are to the mapping as far as how much detail you can get from the displacement?

 

Martin explains some here:

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&sh...ndpost&p=155031

[markeh]

Martin explains some here:

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&sh...ndpost&p=155031

 

That might be a fellows only link I wonder. The link was broken for lowly me.

[trajcedrv]

GREAT PIC!!!

 

Not that I measured tha mountains myself, but I have the feeling that this displacement looks much better than in previous versions of A:M...

 

Not that I'll be able to upgrade anytime soon (I'll probably have to wait till v14), but I would very much like to know how is that done (from a technical standpoint) and will that make it possible to create 'virtual' hi-patch characters?

 

Anuway, good work Will, thanks Martin!

[Rodney]

...and of course, pixel displacement can be animated.

[Paul Forwood]

Nice image, Will! Yeah, I went searching for DEM maps aswell and found some Mars maps. I haven't unzipped them yet though.

 

This new displacement is truly amazing. For those who missed Will's previous post, you may not realise the power of this new displacement. No longer do you need a dense mesh to tease these shapes out of the geometry. One patch is enough! Yes, ONE PATCH!

 

[attachmentid=13275]

 

This image is just a few boxes, one patch per face, with displacement maps on their top patches. Sorry, it seems very dark. Oh well, I should have some better examples by the end of today.

 

Here is Will's jaw-dropping example :

 

[attachmentid=13276]

 

Woo hoo! A:M just got a whole lot better!

[itsjustme]

Just when I think it can't get any better. This is getting scary!

[bentothemax]

WOW!

 

 

Thats amazing, I'm Definately upgrading to 13 !!

[Elm]

Hi!

 

This city was done with displacement at the end of 2004.

 

In fact, it's based on a satellite image of baghdad.

[Eric2575]

Ok, I don't know what you all are getting so excited about, here I am spending countless hours trying to get the bumps out of my mesh and you guys are falling all over yourselves about being able to get a ton more bumps per patch. <_>

 

In case I have to clarify before anyone gets upset: I'M KIDDING

 

That last example says it all. Totally awesome.

[zandoriastudios]

It is the resolution of the texture map that determines the amount of detail you can put in, not the patch resolution. So if you are going to be "up close" to a mountain range, then you need to consider what is the resolution of the image that is decaling that surface, because it is the displaced pixels that are defining the shape.

 

To decal a sphere, right-click before applying and change application TYPE from planar to cylindrical or spherical (depending of the type of image you have), scale the Y-axis of the decal to be even with the top and bottom (Y-axis) of the patches that you are decalling, and APPLY. If you look at the IMAGE in your decal, you will find that it is automatically set to repeat 3 times on the x-axis. keep that in mind as you add other images into the decal, because you will need to manually set that value....

[OdinsEye2k]

My sentiments to this can be found by completing the lyric below:

 

"Team America!"

 

Ok, I don't know what you all are getting so excited about, here I am spending countless hours trying to get the bumps out of my mesh and you guys are falling all over yourselves about being able to get a ton more bumps per patch. dry.gif

 

And I know you are kidding - but the funny thing is you illustrate the point beautifully. Rather than mangling up our beautiful, easily animated patches to build in fine 3d detail, we can now simply superimpose the fine details on top of a coarse mesh.

 

And, it is animatable - so you could take renders of complex 3-d shapes, mash 'em up, stick them on your model, and you can even 'smartskin' this stuff.

 

(Martin will object to my calling this feature small since it likely requires some calculation to know what screen resolution rather than patch resolution is) But here, small changes can give you a rather powerful increase in detailing ability - and it feeds back into allowing simplification of your meshes.

 

EDIT: And it's further worth noting that Martin's doctrine of 'everything animatable' (esp. re: the infamous v9) is what makes it possible to lash all of these things together in a useful way.

[Dhar]

I did a little search on "pixel displacement", are they the same as "distance mapping"?

 

I understand things better when they're put in layman terms; so pixel displacement is basically taking a 2d image and enhancing it to look like 3d?

 

Also, is this statement true: "Current GPUs have more pixel-processing power than they have vertex-processing power. For example, the GeForce 6800 Ultra has 16 pixel-shading pipelines to its 6

vertex-shading pipelines. In addition, a single pixel pipeline is often able to perform

more operations per clock cycle than a single vertex pipeline." ?

 

Thank you for your patience.

[zandoriastudios]

Dhar,

Displacement mapping pushes the surface of the patch up or down based on a grayscale image. Similar to a bump map, but where a bumpmap doesn't alter the real location of the surface--a displacement map does.

 

In earlier versions of A:M a patch would be subdivided into 16, and that is how much extra detail you could get.

Now, it is dependent on the resolution of the displacement image, so you are now going to see JAW-DROPPPING detail in A:M models.

And this is going to have the people who have been trying to learn ZBrush (only for this reason) peeing in their pants. Because A:M just jumped a lightyear ahead of everyone. To quote spaceballs, "We've gone plaid!" Ludicrous speed ahead!!!

[Dhar]

Thank you for the superb explanation Will. You make an excellent teacher.

 

My next questions is: how will this effect render time?

[Sharky]

It's a powerful feature.

Thanks for post it!

 

Cheers,

 

Sharky

[heyvern]

I think the is the "Holy Grail" that a lot of people were searching for.

 

The pixel of the image can define the "shape" of the mesh. 1 Patch or 1,000... same detail.

 

Good grief! Potentially you could displace... detailed clothing on character models...

 

The mind boggles... the drool flows.

 

Vernon "Change Your Pants!" Zehr

[MMZ_TimeLord]

Not to mention raising simple hull plate detail on spaceships or rivet detail on steamship hulls, etc.

 

Even, lots of small detail on things like dashboards, watch faces, etc...

 

I'm as giddy as a school girl... wait... I'm not a girl...

[williamgaylord]

Wow! Will have to catch up to V13 soon!

 

Bill Gaylord

[Chance]

I haven't been really keeping tabs on the updates that were coming this year, but after seeing this, I know I need v13.

 

Now there is nothing stopping me from making really low patch count models that still have ludicrous surface detail.

[Srmjr]

This is just a fantastic, awesome leap forward. Hash is now steps away from being able to unarguably say "game over" to the other "big" packages.

 

This is truly exciting and I will be upgrading from ver11.

 

I don't think it can fairly be compared to Zbrush just yet. The thing that makes Zbrushing so enjoyable (at least for me) the realtime interaction and painterly feel. When A:M comes out with a 3d paint tool AND true HDR image based lighting, it will officially, unequivically be GAME OVER! But in the meantime, this is awesome, and i can't wait to try it out!!

 

Sterling

[Paul Forwood]

Here is an example of A:M 13 alpha 4's displacement via projection mapping in a material:

 

[attachmentid=13321]

 

Matt Bradbury asked to see an example of this. As you can see there are some problems at the moment. I checked the choreography several times and I can asure you that the only thing moving is the rotating planet. No lights move.

 

Okay, here is much the same thing but using the new A:M 13 displacement via decals:

 

[attachmentid=13322]

 

These would be improved by using higher res, uncompressed colour and displacement maps. The ones that Matt provided were pretty low resolution jpeg images.

[MattWBradbury]

Looking quite awsome there. I'm sure you made the mountain 100 miles high to just exagurate the effect of the displacement projection map. If anyone wants to try out the displacment maps on other planets, look through this website to find hight maps and color maps of the nine planets and the sun.

[Paul Forwood]

I'm sure you made the mountain 100 miles high to just exagurate the effect of the displacement projection map.

 

Absolutely. Also I didn't do any research to find the height of those volcanoes and the diameter of Mars, otherwise I would have rendered a more realistically proportioned version too.

 

Thanks for the links!

[gschumsky]

How come Mars has an atmosphere in Will's image (yes, I know v13 has the planet atmosphere plug-in, and it's cool to use, but...)?

 

Unless that's supposed to be some other planet that is yet to be discovered. If that's the case, then that's okay.

[Paul Forwood]

Mars does have an atmosphere. Predominantly helium, I think.

My Mars was colonised by carneys with high voices. When they left the helium strangely vanished. Meanwhile back on Earth balloon sales were at an all time high.

[nixie]

dude i'ts artistic license!

 

But wow this is cool, I need to upgrade - but alas im a struggling student, il scrape it somehow - i must!

 

So how well would this work with moving surfaces on a character say? or is it better to use normal maps?

 

Cheers guys and The hashers!

 

Nixie

[Paul Forwood]

I think this will work well on characters but I have yet to try it.

 

There is problem with the displaced surfaces at extreme angles in close shots, where it gets clipped just inside the camera frame, causing it to look torn. I have only noticed this on single patch tests though so it might not apply to closed geometry. I haven't tested enough to know the limits of displacement mapping but I am sure that we will be seeing some amazing examples of things like water motion, furrowed brows and cloud motion as well as static applications like terrain texturing. It's exciting stuff!

 

Here is a low-res example of the tearing along the bottom edge of the frame:

 

[attachmentid=13330]

 

I didn't even use a greyscale map for the displacement in this test, I just used the colour image as a displacement map too, so the displacement is not correct for the terrain.

[nixie]

certainly is. Im right in thinking that we can now displace 5 point patches properly now? because this will open many doors. Having used Zbrush also - I cant wait to sell some organs!!

 

Anyone for a used liver? high milage but still life in the old girl!

 

Nixie

[MattWBradbury]

I really like the displacement maps, but didn't find anything about a displacment projetion map. Here's the quick test animation. The render took 5:20 to render at 4X4 multipass. The color map is 10800X5400 and the hieght map is 4096X2048. The animation shows the displacment map changing from 500% to -500% over 1 second.

Displacement_maps.mov

[Paul Forwood]

You set your projection map's displacement value in the material's properties. It is off by default.

[John Bigboote]

WOW. I'm diggin what I'm see'in!

 

Time to UPgrade...

 

QUESTION: Does Maya, Max or LW feature THIS kind of displacement mapping?

[MattWBradbury]

I made an animated sequence with the displacment map. It's a movie of a white sphere moving accross the screen. You'll notice a slight jitter about half way through. That happend when I minimized A:M and came back to it and it mixed a bit of the first frame into one of the passes. I have no idea why it would do that.

Moving_Ball.mov

[oakchas]

Wow!

 

Thanks Martin!

 

To show my age here.... IIRC, the original MYST game used a displacement map to make the island in a terrain prog, like terragen... At the time there were some general tutorials on how to do this with a grey scale image in that program. But then, it all had to be exported into another program and they made the game... etc... etc.

 

If I'm smart enough to understand what this means... any topo map could be shaded to give you accurate landscape. Put in the dirt, grass, tree lines, etc. with a colormap. Yes you'ld still need to make trees and grass... but, well... there's too much to consider for my limited brain cells. Whoa! this will be very nice.... patch counts remain low... goodby dense grids... no need for a "terrain wizard"...

 

The addled mind simply boggles at the thoughts... and if only half of them are right.... Well.... Thanks again, Martin and the rest of the Hash crew! You guys ROCK (MOUNTAIN, SKIN, BEACH, STREET, ORANGE, PLANET, SPACESHIP... )!

[Srmjr]

 

QUESTION: Does Maya, Max or LW feature THIS kind of displacement mapping?

 

 

Not native (at least not that I've seen.) There are plugins for those packages, but..., not native!

 

Good job Team Hash!!

[ypoissant]

I really like the displacement maps, but didn't find anything about a displacment projetion map.

You don't need projection map plugin. You can apply a decal in a spherical projection manner. Just load a sphere model. Right-click on the model and select "Add" -> "Decal" and then select your map. Right-click on the decal and select "Application Method" -> "Spherical". Then right-click again on the decal and select "Apply". Now you can set it as either a bump or displacement map.

[MattWBradbury]

Ahh, thanks for the clariffication Yves.

[R Reynolds]

"Now you can set it as either a bump or displacement map."

 

With the new displacement, I question the need for bump or normal maps. Would someone please do a comparison to gage the render hit?

[KenH]

Bumps are naturally faster. On a test that took bump 10 seconds to render, it took displacement 18 sec.

[Paul Forwood]

Also bumps don't show until rendered.

 

Displacement is in realtime so interface response is affected. In a complex scene, with lots of displacement, things might get frustrating, especially on slower machines. For this reason I think it might be useful to provide an ON/OFF button, like particles. I haven't tried really bogging down a scene yet but I'm working on it and haven't reached a point where it gets too slow yet. I have noticed a fluctuation in the realtime response. At times the realtime update seems to struggle a bit and then at others, even after adding more complexity to the scene, the response gets really zippy. So I guess there are some things that will get ironed out eventually as regards speed.

 

Render times are increased over bump maps but not too excessively. I do think bump maps are still very useful. And as was said previously it is just the click of a button to swap back and forth between bumping the surface or displacing it.

 

It all seems very workable to me so far. I'm so enthused about this new enhancement that it still feels like Christmas to me!