Is there a way to do render time displacement in Houdini?

[magneto]

Hi,

Basically I am looking for a way to create a really high detail, or even Polygons as Subdivision like detail. But I want to do it before displacing the model so the displaced model would be very high-res showing every detail present in the displacement map (2000x2000).

I know I can set up a very high resolution setting inside the SOP context using Takes, but then I will still be hit by this before rendering and it won't be as effective as sending a very light model to Mantra, which will subdivide the model at render-time, right?

Is this possible or is there no other way than to create the geometry before rendering?

Thanks

[Guest mantragora]

Geo node -> Render -> Geometry -> Polygons as Subdivision.

[magneto]

Thanks, but when I do that the subdivision happens after the displacement that I do in VOPs. So basically I want the displacement to have as many polygons as possible before the displacement is applied. Currently I do this:

Grid (High res)

VOPSOP (displace geometry using a height map)

[Guest mantragora]

So make displacement at rendertime too. Shaders are for rendertime, not SOPs.

[magneto]

Thanks yeah I wasn't doing it with shaders Basically I was watching one of SESI's recent tutorials and he was using VOPSOP to do the displacement, that's why I was wondering if there was a way for that.

I will give shaders a try too. I imagine the result will be better but control will be more limited than in SOPs, in terms of calculating curvature and populating those areas, etc. Maybe that's possible too, not really that experienced in shaders

[Guest mantragora]

Thanks yeah I wasn't doing it with shaders Basically I was watching one of SESI's recent tutorials and he was using VOPSOP to do the displacement, that's why I was wondering if there was a way for that.

I will give shaders a try too. I imagine the result will be better but control will be more limited than in SOPs, in terms of calculating curvature and populating those areas, etc. Maybe that's possible too, not really that experienced in shaders

Unofficial Displacement Challange

[magneto]

Thanks mantragora, those are sick. I will have to try it out

[Netvudu]

I think the good thing about VOP SOPs is that most of the time you can prototype some of your shaders displacements there and watch in real time how it behaves and then copy those nodes to a shader to watch a hi-poly version.

[magneto]

Thanks Netvudu. That's a neat idea. I just used the mantra surface shader's displacement options since I didn't need very fancy features