Multi Displacement setup

“Multi Displacement setup” by Ashraf Aiad
Multi displacement method can be very handy when setting up various displacement files for your geometry. It will enable you a higher detailed displacement for your render.
Maya When preparing geometry for export to mudbox, it would be wise to layout the UVs on the positive direction of the U. Note: when moving a UV shell, make sure it will move to the right spot. Use this Mel Script: polyEditUV -u 1 -v 0 ; Where the “1” is the value of the unit the shell is moving to

This is done to allow better naming convention for the displacement maps. Mudbox will look at the lowest UV shell on the left side and generate the first displacement map. For example: “xxx001.tiff” I will then move to the second shell on the right and so on
Note : If you have placed UV shells on the V direction as well, Mudbox will go through the lowest UV lineup first, then move up and start again from the left.

Mudbox When extracting the displacement (or normal maps) out of Mudbox, make sure the “Process Multiple Tiles” option is turned ON. “URange” option means: where the distance of the first UV shell is located. Remember the tiles are in a UV 0-1. Note : The parameter is named “URange,” hence the reason we have laid out the UVs on the U direction.

Once the operation is completed, you will end up with a number of displacement maps named according to the UV layout. For example: sphereDisp0001.tif, sphereDisp0002.tif, sphereDisp0003.tif, sphereDisp0004.tif, sphereDisp0005.tif, sphereDisp0006.tif
Maya Create “x” file nodes (where x is the number of displacement files.) If you have done everything correctly, you should end up with displacement maps that reflect their associated UV shell.
In the “place2dTexture” Nodes, adjust the following; Un-check “Wrap U” and “Wrap V”. This will prevent the texture from repeating itself in other tiles.
“Translate Frame” parameter will reflect where this texture node will be located on the UV layout. File 1: Should be left as is. File 2: Should be translated ONE unit on the U direction. File 3: Should be translated TWO units on the U direction, and so on.

To combine all of these nodes into one, we will use a “PlusMinusAverage” node. Connect the “out.Color” of each file to the “plusMinusAverage.input3D”

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