IMPORTANT - remember to check "alpha is luminance"ĥ. set the max displacement for white / black using the alpha gain of the displacement textures color balance node. apply the displacement map to the shader group node (I do it this way rather then connecting to the displacement input of the material because it works for both maya and mental ray materials.Ĥ. So there is a definite order to setting up a mental ray displacement.ģ.
The box is computed by looking at the shape node of an object that has a displacement attached to it, based on the color balance value. It supposedly helps maya be more efficient using memory while computing the displacement, but why maya cannot make this computation on its own defies any logic. It's like a 3D clipping plane for displacement. If you have ever tried to do a displacement and it does not displace as far as you expected it is usually due to the bounding box being to small. What is does is limits the region of space in which the displacement can occur. The bounding box has has been there for both maya and mental ray. They take every possible rendering task you can perform in mental ray and then give you so much control over every little arcane internal variable, that in the end you have no control at all! I can sum up all the problems that I have with Mental Ray in one statement. It just works and better still it breaks the task into bite size chunks that even a 32bit machine can handle! No bounding box, no arcane mystical render tesselation computations. You give it a map, tell it max displacement for white, and give it an optional water level. You go to one dial and you have to increment it in units of a billion to see any effect and then you go to the next dial and if you increment it by. You control offset distance with color balance, and displacement tesselation with a displacement approximation node.īut still have to set the bounding box using the shape node's Maya displacement section.Īlso mental ray has all these freaking knobs and dials but do little to document how to adjust them properly or even describe what their function is for that matter.
What is the point of having a displacement node for instance that controls NOTHING! There are like half a dozen adjustable settings in the displacement node and I have never seen any of them used for anything! The problem I have with mental ray displacement is that like most things in Mental Ray it is just to fricken convoluted! You can also play with alpha offset to adjust this value. < 50% grey (darker) = negative displacement > 50% grey (lighter) = positive displacement
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