Displacement maps blending/mixing

[McNistor]

Hope this is the right section.

 

Say you have an object to be animated (bone deformed) and for said object you have two displacement maps (same UV space) which you want to blend, that is a smooth transition from one to another over time or in other words, go from 0 to 1 in opacity (or weight or w/a) for one and 1 to 0 for the other simultaneously.

Can you do this in Houdini?

[Skybar]

Plug them in to Mix VOP and animate the bias, or hook it up to an attribute or something.

[McNistor]

Well, that was fast. Thanks.

 

I'm curious, have you dealt with this in a practical way? I wonder what possible quirks and oddities one can expect if any at all.

I'm at the stage where I have no displacement map yet and I'm trying to find out whether it's a good idea to go two maps route or not before putting the effort of finding that the hard way.

[zoki]

check this file inside shop/material builder you have mix vop

it will blend between two image based displ maps

check effect in render tab

 

ps

if you want to animate it promote bias parameter on mix node to shop level

then you can keyframe it

disp_blend.hipnc

Edited April 11, 2016 by zoki

[Skybar]

Well, that was fast. Thanks.

 

I'm curious, have you dealt with this in a practical way? I wonder what possible quirks and oddities one can expect if any at all.

I'm at the stage where I have no displacement map yet and I'm trying to find out whether it's a good idea to go two maps route or not before putting the effort of finding that the hard way.

I haven't no. You could just do a simple test with two different noises or even a checkerboard to blend between, to see if it works alright before going all the way.

[zoki]

this is used sometimes for complex creature work on films

like morphing into characters , popping veins anything that is finer in detail and blendshape or bones cant solve

[McNistor]

Thanks zoki for the file, will look into it.

 

Skybar, zoki is right - I intend to use this for a character I'm currently working on. Besides, using two noises wouldn't cut it for me as I need to see how well it goes, not if it just works technically.

 

edit: zoki, I've tested the setup you posted and it works pretty well. I guess I should get my hands dirty after all and take this to the next step. I might need your help again when I get there

Anyway, thanks guys, you've been very prompt and helpful.

Edited April 11, 2016 by McNistor

[zoki]

for this kind of work this aproach can be used

[McNistor]

Yeah sure, I know...

I intend however to use it for a pose not a morph (e.g. human -> wolf) and possibly drive the weight between the maps with a bone rotation. If I figure out how. Ultimately it won't matter that much since I'm not doing any commercial stuff, I'm just learning character "stuff" and want to focus on modeling mainly not rigging/vfx. At the very least something will come out of it.

Edited April 11, 2016 by McNistor