...
Courtesy of Meindbender
Displacement is a powerful texture-driven tool that can help users to create real geometric detail on objects. Contrary to bump/normal maps, the displacement feature simulates real geometry at render time as if it were actually modeled. This feature is very useful for adding fine detail to a mesh which would otherwise be difficult or impossible to model. Displacement uses a texture to define the geometric detail. Maxwell supports both 1D vertical displacement (also known as a Height Map) and 3D displacement (also known as Vector Displacement).
Displacement Types - On the fly, Pretesselated and Vector
...
1D displacement map (middle) applied to a simple plane. Height Maps contain displacement information only in the vertical direction
3D Vector displacement map (middle) applied to the same plane. Vector displacement can specify direction in all three axis
...
Maxwell Render has three methods of displacement:
...