Sub Polygon Displacement (Advanced Render Module)

Sub-polygon displacement (SPD) allows you to define extremely fine displacement maps that are calculated at render time. Your model might be a low-poly hillside but with SPD and the right noise map in the displacement channel, you can turn it into a grassy meadow at render time. This keeps the view port moving quickly while adding an incredible level of detail to your finished render. Things like fur, shag carpets, rippled water all become trivial to create. The key difference between a simple displacement map and SPD is that the displacement map only works on the polygons you provide. SPD subdivides the polygons at render time making the displacement map much more effective and detailed without the added weight of real polygons in your model.

One thing I would like to do with SPD but can't is to bake the final result. SPD can be used to create some incredibly detailed models, but only at render time. Some Cinema users have produced intricate swords, shields, armor, and other hard to model items with SPD. However, the final result can't be baked as far as I know at the time of this review.

SPD works remarkably well with BodyPaint. You can paint the displacement channel and see your results. Ray brush rendering does not provide a real time preview of painting in the displacement channel with SPD enabled. You have to press the Ray brush render button manually or do a full render to see the effect. However, you can temporarily paint in the Bump Channel and see a real time preview using Ray brush rendering then use this bump texture in the displacement channel when you have finished. I imagine there are huge work flow / time savings to be had by being able to essentially paint detail in BodyPaint rather than having to model it.

Just to illustrate this point, here are two images. one without SPD enabled and one without using a default plane object with 20 sub-divisions.

Standard displacement map		Sub polygon Displacement turned ON

Here is a practical example of how you might use SPD to model something of use in the real world. How long would this take using conventional modelling methods?

Even more fun is using an animated texture in the displacement channel. Take a look at this 1.7KB QT movie using fire in the colour, alpha and displacement channels.

Isoline Editing

A new isoline editing mode has been added to make the task of modeling with hypernurbs even easier. As we know, hypernurbs take a low-poly control cage and convert it into a smooth high-poly object by subdividing it and finding the best fit to the cage. In isoline editing mode, isolines are drawn on the resulting hypernurbs object to show how the original cage was applied. The best part is that you can control your hypernurbs object with these isolines. This is a much more intuitive process than editing the cage and trying to guess how it will affect the resulting object. You can highlight and control the points, faces, and edges of the hypernurbs cage using the isolines as they appear on the hypernurbs object. The end result is that you can model with hypernurbs faster and with greater accuracy.

Toggling between Isoline editing on and off. Note here how it being done here by the HUD element for Isoline editing added to the workspace and just clicking on it. Very slick!!