Displacement Maps
- thomas (Unlicensed)
Hybrido and RealWave provide an option for translating the waves' height elevation into a sequence of displacement maps.
Activating the Displacement Feature
Hybrido
To activate Hybrido's displacement feature, go to HY_Domain > Node Params > Ocean Statistical Spectrum > Calculate Displacement.
The size of the maps in pixels is directly linked to the the "Quality" parameter, e.g. a level of 2048 creates a squared map with 2048 x 2048 pixels.
RealWave
To activate RealWave's displacement feature, go to RealWave01 > Node Params > RealWave > Displacement format and choose a method:
- Greyscale (YYY). Only the height information will be stored.
- RGB (XYZ). The waves' translation along all three axes will be stored.
We recommend "XYZ", because with "YYY" it might happen that height values will be clipped.
The default size of the displacement maps is 64 x 64 pixels. Change this value here:
- Calculate texture > Yes
- Resolution > enter a custom value
- Calculate texture > No
Map Export
There a two things to remember:
- With both Hybrido and RealWave it is necessary to active the "Displacement Texture (*)" resource in the domain's or RealWave node's "Export" tab.
- With Hybrido, choose the EXR format to avoid displacement errors like clipped waves.
Map Quality
RealFlow's "Ocean Statistical Spectrum" (OSS) model has a "Quality" parameter (available for Hybrido and RealWave). The higher the "Quality" value, the more details you will finally see. In conjunction with RealWave it is a good idea to synchronize "Quality" and "Resolution". Furthermore, the OSS creates seamless tiles for large oceans. Other wave deformers cannot be tiled and this may lead to unwanted distortions at the borders of the projection geometry in your 3D application. If you can see this problem slightly increase the displacement texture's size, e.g. to 102%.
Sometimes it also better to turn off subpixel displacement. This can be helpful if you should see unwanted patterns on the rendered surface.
