Raising subpatch level or more polygons for proc. texture?

[3Dimensional]

I have a large plane with a procedural turbulence texture animated to look like water. I didn't want to make the plane too heavy on polygons because it's for a large lake and there's two of them in the scene. With the polygon count as it is without subpatching, the water doesn't look bad, but because the ripples are not too big, it looks more like a small pond than a large lake. I played with all the settings in the procedural such as small power and contrast, but it can't make smaller ripples when there's not enough geometry.

Making the plane subptached I get more geometry as I raise the level, but to get to a point where I like what I see I have to go to at least level 8, and that makes everything really slow, especially when loading the scene into the GPU because Octane has to compress the whole scene into the card's 4 GB of RAM (actually less when taking into account other things that are taking up space in the VRAM). So I which would be the most efficient choice of those two, between raising the subpatch level or adding much more geometry to the planes?

Thanks

[gristle]

Presuming this is a deformation?
Can you achieve this with a bump map?

[3Dimensional]

Presuming this is a deformation?
Can you achieve this with a bump map?

Well, using the Octane Turbulence node connected to a glossy material I tried the different parameters but I saw now change. I even reloaded the scene to make sure, but the water stayed flat. The manual doesn't say much about it: http://render.otoy.com/manuals/Lightwave3D/?page_id=251. I have a good idea of how to use the Lightwave procedurals, for surfaces and for bumps, but this one doesn't seem to work, I don't know what I may be doing wrong.

So I guess I'll have to keep trying the displacement in the deform tab. So what is the method that puts less of a burden on the card, making a lot more polygons, or raise the subpatch levels until the water looks as it's supposed to?

[gordonrobb]

Use your procedural in the bump channel in the normal Lightwave Surfacing panel. Then in the object properties, go to the bit you would put a deformation and tick the box that says 'use bump'. You have to set the amount there too.

This will then give you geometry to surface using octane surfacing. Downside is, you need to have the geometry. Make sure you have enough polys, then set the subd amount high enough. It is going to need a lot of polys to do water though.

[3Dimensional]

Use your procedural in the bump channel in the normal Lightwave Surfacing panel. Then in the object properties, go to the bit you would put a deformation and tick the box that says 'use bump'. You have to set the amount there too.

This will then give you geometry to surface using octane surfacing. Downside is, you need to have the geometry. Make sure you have enough polys, then set the subd amount high enough. It is going to need a lot of polys to do water though.

Thanks, but what I don't follow is how is this different from applying a procedural to the displacement? I mean, if with the bump you need the extra geometry as well, isn't it the same?

[gordonrobb]

Sorry, I t hought you were having an Octane issue, and tying to work with octane better, so applying a bump, this way helps.

What you're describing is just a Lightwave issue. If you want to displace, you need to have the geometry. Either in actual polygons, or in higher resolution subdivision.

That is likely to change with Octane 2 though as it as sub poly displacement (or whatever it's called)

[3Dimensional]

Sorry, I t hought you were having an Octane issue, and tying to work with octane better, so applying a bump, this way helps.

What you're describing is just a Lightwave issue. If you want to displace, you need to have the geometry. Either in actual polygons, or in higher resolution subdivision.

Actually I was wondering about both, what is better in LW but also how it affects Octane, since this is an Octane project. If I understand this right from what I've read previously about Octane, it has to somehow shrink the whole scene into the card's VRAM, which is no easy task for a scene that takes up about 15 GB of RAM.

So what I was wondering was if adding more subpatch levels is more efficient than not using subpatches, but adding a lot more geometry. As it is, the scene takes about 7 minutes to even load in the card, because it also has a lot of instances of grass, trees and flowers. The water, which as of now is subpatched at level 5, makes it even harder to load.

[gordonrobb]

That's a question for Juanjo I think. My tuppence worth is that octane won't care how the polys are made, it's just the end result that's sent to it.

[juanjgon]

You can try to use the Lightwave subpatchs with the "Render SubParch" parameter set to "Pixels Per Polygon" and with a value of 5 or 10. Perhaps this could reduce the number of the polygons.

Anyway the Octane 2.0 native displacement mapping should fix all this issues. You only need one polygon and animated texture map to make a complete ocean displacement.

-Juanjo

[3Dimensional]

Anyway the Octane 2.0 native displacement mapping should fix all this issues. You only need one polygon and animated texture map to make a complete ocean displacement.

-Juanjo

Sounds very nice. Although having just spent in Octane plus another expensive card it will probably be quite a while until I can afford the upgrade.