Baking Displacement

[FoodMan]

Hello...

That would be sooo awesome if we could bake a displacement map from a high res. mesh...

let me explain...

I have just made a large piece of terrain , with high setting reconstruction, I get 157 millions polys, that I can reduce to 50 millions... but still, trying to retopo such large mesh can be problematic, as I plan to go even much higher in resolution ...

so what about the possibility to have a bake solution right there in Pscan ! 

the way I see it :

- Load images
- Align
- Reconstruct
- Texture

Then :

- Duplicate and decimate the huge mesh to a pretty low poly number..
- Bake displacement command>> basically baking the difference between the high and the low mesh to get a displacement map..

PS. don't get me wrong, I know how to do it in 3dCoat, but it's just that loading such huge high res mesh is not possible in these sort of app. (max is around 25 millions polys, even though I have 256 gb ram)..... on  the other hand Pscan can handle VERY large meshes....

I wonder how much Mudbox and Zbrush can  handle before crashing...?


Anyway, this would be soooo nice, and would save me hours of headache ... make it available only in pro, no problem...

f/

[RalfH]

I am not sure if I understand correctly what you want to achieve. Do you want to create a difference map between a high-reolution mesh and a lower-resolution mesh? If you are working with terrain data as you say, it would be much easier and faster to create a DEM rather than working with a full 3D meshed model.

[FoodMan]

hello Ralf..

well yes, some large terrain... but no DEM is possible.. It is for animation mostly (Maya) , and a mesh with color tex. and disp is required.. no other choices..

h/

[jedfrechette]

I am not sure if I understand correctly what you want to achieve. Do you want to create a difference map between a high-reolution mesh and a lower-resolution mesh?

Essentially, yes. A displacement map is a common way to encode high resolution geometry on a low resolution mesh. Basically, you have a low resolution base mesh plus a texture map that is used to deform it so that it matchs the original high resolution geometry. This has various performance advantages over just working with the original high resolution geometry.

[RalfH]

jedfrechette, thanks for the explanation! I'm still wondering whether it wouldn't be easier to create animations based on a DEM, given that this seems to be about "terrain", i.e. apparently about a 2.5D surface.

[FoodMan]

well it all depend on the kind of terrain... the one I do now is fully 3D,  very intricate, shot from ground and reconstructed with arbitrary object.. not heightfield... besides it could be used also for  turntable models..

anyway, that would be very useful to have.

f/