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Displacment in render studio

shawn_crockershawn_crocker Member, OS Professional Posts: 798 PRO
Has anyone accomplished this?  Would you be able to explain how?  I feel like I have tried every way but I end up with no displacement on the part.  It feels weird that after applying the displacement modifier onto a part with an appearance, I then have to also drop a file modifier into the displacement.  The only file modifiers that will allow dropping into the displacement give me controls for animation and such which also leaves me feeling like I am missing something key here and probably obvious.  I have been messing with render studio for a few days now and am starting to see how incredible it is.  Most of the appearances only need a very small amount of tweaking.  The lighting is so impressive as an out of the box solution and the level of detail on imperfections in almost all the materials is truly amazing.  As a drag and drop quick rendering tool it is just incredible.  I recognize there must be so many people calling out for Neil's help here and I hesitate to do so but I'm thinking @NeilCooke might know what is going on here?  This displacement thing seems to be undiscussed in the documentation and is really the only thing that I have just not been able to get working.
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Best Answer

  • Paul_ArdenPaul_Arden Member, Onshape Employees, Developers Posts: 163
    Answer ✓
    @shawn_crocker currently displacement will unfortunately not work. The interface lacks the capability to set the maximum displacement value on the geometry which is required for it to work (without it, it is assumed to be 0.0 so no vertices move). We also do not currently expose the parameters which allow the geometry to be more finely re-tessellated just for the displaced parts. Exposing this in a way that doesn't let users explode the tessellation complexity and run out of memory is tricky so displacement support will likely be hidden until we can find a good solution for that.

    For Add Round Corners by the way this actually doesn't use tessellation at all so basically comes for free in terms of geometry complexity. It uses a bit of ray-tracing slight of hand to do its work and doesn't really slow down the rendering at all, so you really can go nuts with that feature. Also in the last release we changed it so that when you add rounded corners it hooks up the appearance you already had there so you don't need to recreate it.

Answers

  • S1monS1mon Member Posts: 2,320 PRO
  • GregBrownGregBrown Member, Onshape Employees Posts: 100
  • shawn_crockershawn_crocker Member, OS Professional Posts: 798 PRO
    Thanks @S1mon.  It had slipped my mind that Onshape had added this render studio video learning resource.  I am starting to look through it now but I am still not seeing info specifically on displacement.  I have had no trouble getting bump maps to work it is the displacement that seems to be having no affect for me.
  • S1monS1mon Member Posts: 2,320 PRO
    @shawn_crocker

    I'm far from a rendering expert, so I had to look this up. A displacement map would actually change the geometry. Bump maps just make it look like there's been a geometry change. I'm going to hazard a guess that there will never be displacement maps in Onshape. They would likely have to work on a tessellated model with a lot of triangles. Any time I've seen other tools that do stuff like Z-brush this is how they work.
  • shawn_crockershawn_crocker Member, OS Professional Posts: 798 PRO
    edited May 2022
    @S1mon
    I hear you.  I see what you mean about tessellation.  I have been unable to get it to work even when using a sphere which sort of forces the tessellation on import to be pretty high.  I have been unable to see any change at all.  Any other time I have used displacement in other software and the tessellation has not been high enough, Some change is observed but at very low quality.  It would be strange if the "add displacement" modifier was present but simply didn't do anything by design.  As this is in beta, I think it is understandable that maybe it isn't working ATM but I do wish somehow to be able to concretely know this.  As render studio basically came straight from reality server, it is weird that the option is there.  Not saying I think your wrong, just thinking there is something critical I am not doing here that hasn't yet been fully documented or shined a light on.  I do appreciate your input here Simon.

    To add to this, "add round corners" generally works flawlessly which to me, indicates tessellation is ok as rounding over the corners is usually reliant on tessellation quality.  Other software (solid works visualize) I have found usually fails miserably at rounding over corners because I usually am rendering sheet metal designs which have a lot of flat surfaces.
  • Paul_ArdenPaul_Arden Member, Onshape Employees, Developers Posts: 163
    Answer ✓
    @shawn_crocker currently displacement will unfortunately not work. The interface lacks the capability to set the maximum displacement value on the geometry which is required for it to work (without it, it is assumed to be 0.0 so no vertices move). We also do not currently expose the parameters which allow the geometry to be more finely re-tessellated just for the displaced parts. Exposing this in a way that doesn't let users explode the tessellation complexity and run out of memory is tricky so displacement support will likely be hidden until we can find a good solution for that.

    For Add Round Corners by the way this actually doesn't use tessellation at all so basically comes for free in terms of geometry complexity. It uses a bit of ray-tracing slight of hand to do its work and doesn't really slow down the rendering at all, so you really can go nuts with that feature. Also in the last release we changed it so that when you add rounded corners it hooks up the appearance you already had there so you don't need to recreate it.
  • shawn_crockershawn_crocker Member, OS Professional Posts: 798 PRO
    @paul_arden
    Whfff!  I can stop thinking about what I maybe doing wrong now.  Thanks for the answer.  I was kind of wondering how the tessellation could possibly be good enough to get such fine corner rounding.  Since the "add displacement" function is actually not functioning right now, it would seem like maybe it should be hidden away until supported.
  • Paul_ArdenPaul_Arden Member, Onshape Employees, Developers Posts: 163
    Since the "add displacement" function is actually not functioning right now, it would seem like maybe it should be hidden away until supported.
    Indeed, that is exactly what will happen (not next release but the release after).
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