hi all. a little while ago when i made some guns for a half life mod i had a few conversations with some people who mentioned displacement mapping as an important technique to learn for games modelling. Then last week after seeing kurts use in his showreel I thought id come back to having a go. I did follow a youtube tutorial back when i was doing the guns but the couple that i was practicing on were quite complicated geometry wise i think to have the time to make mistakes on, so i left it alone.

I thought id have another go, just following a tutorial from a book that i have. In that tutorial the example uses a single poly plane to create some mountainous terrain with a 3D crater texture. I thought Id take the idea a little further, use a cube, and make my own texture in photoshop, just some random lines and squares and such. But in applying the displacement map, the geometry of the cube has broken at the seems. I have created a mental ray approximation node as the following example in the book...'Mastering Maya 2009' ...does this, but this hasn't solved the problem. If I can post the before and after shots below, would anyone be able to tell me how I can fix the problem. or is it just a case that for 3dimensional objects, i.e, not planes, u have to do the transfer maps technique.

Attached Thumbnails

and with displacement map...

Attached Thumbnails

what are the settings on your approximation node and which one are you using? surface or displacement?

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that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

Computer skills I should have:
Objective C, C#, Java, MEL. Python, C++, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, HTML, SQL, CSS, FXScript, Clips, SOAR, ActionScript, OpenGL, DirectX
Maya, XSI, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Motion, Illustrator, Flash, Swift3D

Hi Chirone. The example in the post was just a quick play I had before I went out last week. I have the scene saved but I changed something which I can't remember now and Im not getting the same results as in the picture. I've just tried to recreate it from scratch, but Im getting different results entirely.

Since I first posted this thread Ive had a little play with a couple of other displacement tests. I don't think I quite understood when I did the one in the pictures in my first posts that you create the approximation node for the object. I think I thought you created for the renderer, if you see what I mean, so it's possible I just didn't have the object selected when I created the approximation node.

As I've understand it from google searching, the option to go for is the subdiv option, then select the distance/length/angle option. That seems to be the majority options people set from the seaches I've done. But it's confusing. I don't really understand what all the different options for the approx node do, and I seem to get different results each time, even when I'm pretty sure I'm setting up my object i.e, basic poly cube at the origin, and my material, the same way.

Id like to feel confident I can create some nice displacement cause remember when I worked with source engine for a bit? I made those guns? A comment I got from an ex-tutor of mine, was that I should learn how to do displacement mapping, to add the detail to low poly objects. I tried a brief experiment with a flamethrower model I made for the mod, but the results were pretty funny, the whole low res ballooning thing. Gotta rush to work now. I shall try and add some more useful information to the discussion later on!