No banding converting to 16-bit rgb tiff works i could swear i tried it before and got banding though tried so many different image formats.
If you tried any tif with compression in the past that would break it, mray is pretty picky about what formats it natively supports.
Glad it is working for you.
cheers,
grant
Hi all.
To Jotajota: Check your post
Thx
Bye
Leo
Thanks for the files Pixolator. Here are my results for Cinema4D 8.5. Pretty much followed cornel steps ( thx for the instructions ).
The only thing I did differently was, I loaded the displacement map in Photoshop and saved it out again as 16bit, because Cinema was reading it as 8bit before.
Displacement Height: 1cm
Sampling: MIP
Contrast: 89%
quote:
Posted by Matthew I was able to almost completely eliminate the banding caused by C4D's insistence on reading it as an 8 bit image.
Hi Matthew,
did you try to convert the displacement map to RGB. If you then load it into C4D it shows up as 24bit. Don’t know whether it will make a difference though.
Also I tried your suggestions to use the blur settings, but it blurs out the finer displacement details too much I think.
Hopefully we can eliminate the banding soon and achieve the same displacement quality as Pixolator’s image 
squeige could I trouble you to post some screen shots of the process using default render in Maya that is similar to the ones cornel did for C4D 8.5 on the first page of this thread?
Hi Zheads,
Here’s my test - rendered in AIR Renderman renderer.
Using the same technique as per some of my previous tutorials and article featured in Highend Magazine Issue’s 3 and 4
Best regards,
Zendoftheworld…
Rendered with Cinema4d 8.5 !
Saved displacement map to 8 bit not compressed and flipped vertically!
Hypernurbs render level 5.
Displacement 0.6m with Filter:
Brightness: -2%;
Contrast: 94%
Shader Oren-Nayar, rendered with Defaul Light no shadow!
Tnx Pixolator for this tread !!
Quick AIR test:
Workflow:
Download and install Liquid Maya plugin
http://liquidmaya.sourceforge.net/
Download and install AIR demo
http://www.sitexgraphics.com/html/air.html
Download Olivier’s normalmap_displace.sl and compile it for AIR
http://www.drone.org/tutorials/rayDisplace_renderman.html
Import .obj into Maya. Select mesh.
Liquid>Attributes>Add Subdivision Surface
Set up render preferences with Liquid>Render Globals, position camera, add light(s) and render.
Open .RIB that was created in text editor and add:
GeometricApproximation “flatness” [.2]
Attribute “render” “integer truedisplacement” [1]
Attribute “displacementbound” “float sphere” [.85]
Displacement “normalmap_displace”
“float Km” [5.5]
“string displace_map” [“DispTestHead_Disp16.tif”]
6 minute render time on my very slow Athlon with 768 ram and a zillion apps open at once.
Here’s another render done in xsi, see the detail it get…
Some more AIR tests revealed persistent banding issues, particularly around the neck.
I seem to remember having some trouble with Olivier’s shader in the past. I think it works better with a displacement AND normal map. Zendoftheworld, do you mind sharing what shader you are using and your settings? Is your shader capable of more detail? There are subtle details washed out in the render you posted.
mondeo30, can you tell a little bit more about your setting, and specificaly the render tree ? i simply can’t manage to get a good looking displacement in xsi (are you putting any intensity node ? change range ? wich value and were frome they wer derivated). Thanx a lot.
Realsoft3D 4.5/sp1 test
1.convert map to 16bit PSD
2.create Surface_Geometry shader(see pic)
set Bump Height to 1(important)
refit it to range -1 t0 1
adjust with linear vsl object
3.set Max. Displacement(for sds) to 0.17(max value in this map)
C4D 8.5
converted the zBrush displacement map to an 8bit image in Photoshop and saved it as a .PSD.
Added a filter and increased contrast to 95%, and the height of the displacement is .8m
Just wanted to show a comparison between 4 and 5 Subdivision renders.
Cheers, and thanks for all the insight fellas!
And here’s the file if anyone wants it.
rray could you post your scene file. My friends and I are not getting it to work in XSI 
Ok, now I’m getting good renders with Mental Ray in Max without too much banding. I don’t know what the problem was yesterday. I kept converting the 16-bit greyscale image to 16-bit RGB, and then resaving under a new name with no compression and no embeded profile. Yet Mental Ray would keep yelling at me that the format wasn’t supported, convert it to RAW, and promptly render the model with lot’s of banding. I decided to try it one more time today before giving up, since moob managed to get good results. And here it is:
Not quite as good as my Vray renders, but passable I think. Still looks like there may be some banding around the neck area like others have seen in their renders using other apps. I’m still wondering if the ability to get Mental Ray to obey the blur setting in Max may help with this. Oh well…
XSi 3.5
Hi everybody, here are my test on this scene
thx a lot for the files Pixolator.
I’m not sure to get what Rray discribed but for the moment it’s coming nicely to me, ill try to improve it.
Cheers,
– HaDDeS –
Here’s one done in Animation Master. It only accepts 8 bit images and doesn’t have subpixel displacements yet. You also have to up the strength of the displacement to see it as in Zbrush.
3DS MAX, Scanline
OBJ file to Editable Mesh.
Meshsmooth, 1 Iteration
Collapse to EMesh
Set Sub-D Displacement, Medium Preset (High Kills it, on my box)
Set material Bump and Displace same map (instanced). Set level to 100, and instead, change output to remap iamge from -.5 to .5. Set overall output to taste (I did the reciprocal of .834, 1.2 approx).
45 sec to render.
Another Try…
Saved displacement map to 8 bit not compressed and flipped vertically!
Hypernurbs render level 5.
Displacement Height 0.5 m
Texture Filter with SAT sampling
Blur Offset 2.5%
Blur Scale 2%. (Tnx Aurick)
Contrast is set to 94%
3 point light and shadow.
