Create Custom Displacement Map

[violalyu]

Hi everyone!

 

Does anyone have any experience about creating displacement map in Houdini? For example, I have a grid, and I have a vector attribute that I want to use as vector displacement value, is there a way to bake that into RGB on a map using Houdini? Or is there a way to connect it somehow in the shader for displacement directly? I have seen some tutorials for creating it using VOPCOP, but I didn't succeed in bringing in my attribute. Thanks a lot!!!

[davpe]

you can bring your vector attribute directly into the shader (bind VOP). no need for baking (although you can do that as well with baketexture ROP). mantra offers awesome possibilities here. 

[violalyu]

8 hours ago, davpe said:

you can bring your vector attribute directly into the shader (bind VOP). no need for baking (although you can do that as well with baketexture ROP). mantra offers awesome possibilities here. 

Thanks Davpe! I will try this first, but it would be better if texture maps could be generated, similar to what Houdini does for the Ocean shelf tool, in ocean render they will bake out the displacement maps, and they were using VOPCOP, is it the same context that using bind we can bring in attributes in VOPCOP? Thanks a lot!!!

[davpe]

never used ocean shelf tool so I can't say. what do they use VOPCOP for? if you only want to use your attribute as a displacement you don't need any steps in between... unless you want to texport to a different app.

[davpe]

example:

vector_displace_by_attrib.hipnc

[violalyu]

2 hours ago, davpe said:

example:

vector_displace_by_attrib.hipnc

Thank you so much David! I'm researching on topics for my MFA thesis, and there's a paper that proposed a method to post-process FLIP simulation and up-res them by generating surface points, do wave simulation on them and compute and generate the turbulence details in the form of bump or displacement maps. I thought it would be really useful to set these up in Houdini, so I originally was thinking that maybe it would works the same as the ocean tool where they simulate and generate a range of displacement map for a coarse surface.

The only concern here is that I'm not quite sure how to integrate the displacement vop part into the preseted material such as the basic liquid, I've dived into the vop net and it's kind of intimidating, I thought it would be easier if I export displacement maps and apply them on the basic liquid. But thank you so much for sharing, it is really helpful to me!

[davpe]

I see. well it's hard to come up with any suggestions on implementing this without taking a closer look at what are you doing.

in general though, I suggest you to stay away from shelf tools. not that its bad, it just more designed to do some specific effects quickly. when it comes to modifying stuff inside it may get quite tedious and hard to navigate (as you found out) as it typically contains a huge amount of nodes that are just building a user interface or doing some convenience stuff you're gonna change anyway. with building things from scratch you'll do much better even if it may seem harder at the beginning.

btw. in the shader you can use displace VOP that offers Vector displacement preset that actually is doing what you want (displace by rgb texture)

Edited January 5, 2017 by davpe