Vertex displacement performance unusable. What am I doing wr

[leave2]

I'm really struggling to understand how mixing displacements is viable using Vertex displacement, as in order to get any decent resolution, I have to pump the subdivisions up until the displacement alone is generating millions of polys.

Is there any plan to make texture displacements stackable? Modo did this brilliantly and seamless, with almost zero performance hit.

Alternatively, is there a way to stack displacements that doesn't cause huge performance hits?

[skientia]

Octane displacement is covered on this page.
It should provide the fundamental information and overall understanding (including a new forthcoming displacement implementation).
For lightweight displacement, there is the original Texture Displacement that relies on baking node in certain cases.

Regarding Modo displacement, it is worth to mention Octane is a G-PU renderer, if Modo default renderer being compared to is C-PU based, the comparison is not technically comparable when it comes to performance: apple vs orange.

When it comes to "stacking" displacement, supposedly referring to "blending" them in a certain way, as there are different mathematical methods to "blend" two or more sources into one, two suggestions:

1. one approach is via a hypothetical dual textures setup (two of them, procedural node or file) connected to an "Add texture" itself connected to the displacement node (such as vertex displacement).

2. another method is via the dedicated "Vertex Displacement Mixer"


Edit: corrected the URL.

[leave2]

Hi sorry, I didn't realise soeone had replied. That link doesn't work for me unfortunately.

I can handle not being able to mix displacements, to be honest, my main bugbear is that I can't figure out how to make Vertex Displacement useable.

I'm on a 3090, so I feel I have at least a relatively powerful machines, but even today, simply adding a single noise node to vertex displacement, and even at subdivision level 3, the triangles jump from 600k to 45 million. If I go lower subdivisions, the displacement has zero detail.

Is this how vertex displacement actually works? If so, does it mean it's just a terrible feature? I don't understand how it's even possible to use it without a supercomputer, I had to wait 12 minutes for the viewport to update.

Any help would be really appreciated, I'm fully willing to accept the high possibility that I'm simply doing it wrong

Thanks!

[skientia]

That link doesn't work

URLs changed (from cgi/octane to octanerender/): octanerender/displacement.

About Vertex Displacement And VRAM

even at subdivision level 3, the triangles jump from 600k to 45 million

Vertex Displacement requires high enough subdivision to refine the details, subsequently increasing VRAM consumption which can be lowered by decreasing the Parallel Samples value, by default at 16 and max at 32 (at the cost of slower rendering process). More sampling / optimizations tips.

It's not that it's a "terrible feature" but the nature of how things work in the offline rendering domain.
Subdivision, whether at mesh or displacement node level, is adding more weight to the consumption balance. On any renderer that employ this displacement at runtime approach.

About Project Optimization

I had to wait 12 minutes for the viewport to update.

It would take a good guess to diagnose based on the information of this forum post.
Is it with the isolated displacement or with all elements on the project file?
If the latter, then these said elements are a factor as well.

Any reason not to utilize the Texture Displacement instead?
In the end, both have their "pros and cons" and are situation-dependent.

[leave2]

Hi mate, thank you for the response, what you say makes sense. I dropped by samples down to 8, and it has definitely made an improvement in responsiveness. The reason for using vertex displacement is because I need to create a texture that requires the noise node, and whenever I use it with a baking texture node, I get unsatisfactory results.

Thank you, though, dropping it down has made it usable, that's a huge relief. I really appreciate the help

[leave2]

Sorry, I have to come back and repeat that I am so grateful for your advice, it's made vertex displacements completely useable for me and has transformed how I'm building organic textures. You're amazing. Thank you!

[skientia]

Nothing to apologize for! You're welcome.
Such goodwill to come back twice for thanking is admirable. Thank you.