Houdini plugin - Displacement

Contrary to bump / normal maps which simulate grooves on the surface, the displacement component simulates real geometry at render time as if it was actually modeled. This feature is very useful for adding fine detail to a mesh which would otherwise be difficult or impossible to model. Maxwell supports both 1D vertical displacement (also known and Height Map) and 3D displacement (also known as Vector Displacement).

Displacement parameters

• Enabled: enables the displacement component.
• Texture: 8, 16 or 32-bit grayscale texture to define the geometric detail.
• Type: defines the type of the displacement method.
  • On The Fly: unique displacement technology that allows you to create virtually unlimited detail while using very little extra memory. Recommended for very fine, smaller/medium displacements and when the RAM consumption needs to be prioritized.
  • Pretessellated: 1D height map displacement. Recommended for general purposes when the RAM in the system is not a limitation, and it renders much faster than the On The Fly method.
  • Vector: an RGB color map displacement holding information for both the X, Y and Z coordinates of each point. As points can be displaced in the three axis, this type provides a surface with richer detail than simply 2D displacement that uses black & white height maps.
• Subdivision defines surface accuracy, ability and response to detail, independent of texture resolution. It is a measure of the subdivision level of the mesh. Higher value means more accurate result, but also longer render time because of the more render time subdivision of the mesh.
• Adaptive: when this option is checked always the most detailed displacement will be created that a given texture can provide.
  
• Offset: specifies which gray level in the texture represents zero displacement.
• Smoothing: controls whether the displaced surface should render smoothly (continuous shading) or render faceted. This flag is independent of the object’s smoothing angle setting.
• UV Interpolation:defines the interpolation method of the UV coordinates for the new geometry.
  • None: no boundary interpolation behavior occurs.
  • Edges: all the boundary edge-chains are sharp creases; boundary vertices are not affected.
  • Edges and Corners: all the boundary edge-chains are sharp creases and boundary vertices with exactly two incident edges are sharp corners.
  • Sharp: smooths only near vertices that are not at a discontinuous boundary. All vertices on a discontinuous boundary are subdivided with a sharp rule (interpolated through). Height Map Properties (for 1D displacement only)

Height Map Properties (for 1D displacement only)

• Height: specifies the maximum distance displaced on the base mesh. This value needs to be greater or less than zero for displacement to appear. The white of the displacement map will be raised to the given height. The displacement height can be set in percentage or absolute units.
  • Percentage (%): relative to the longest edge of the associated object’s bounding box. Using relative height is useful to preserve the same displacement height when scaling the object.
  • Centimeters (cm): absolute height to displace regardless of the object dimensions.

Vector 3D Properties (for 3D displacement only)

• Preset: offers a collection of presets adjusted to the export methods of the main modeling tools that automatically set the fields with the corresponding options
• Transform: indicates if the displacement information coded in the vector file corresponds to displacement in Object, Tangent or World space at each point. It's derived from the settings used in the vector displacement map creation.
• RGB Mapping: indicates the order of the axis information associated to the R, G and B channels of the map. It's derived from the axis system with which the vector displacement map were created.
• Scale: controls the overall size of the displacement (in X,Y,Z).