3D Vector Displacement - UDK (DX9 WorldPositionOffset) - Test #1

A test of 3d vector displacement on staticmeshes in UDK using DirectX 9. It's optimized and should run on consoles really well!

[nickzucc]

You have to tell the world what you are doing bud! This is ground breaking stuff! ZBrush announced that you will be able to output Vector Displacement things should get real interesting real soon. I've never been a real fan of displacement maps...but as an artist it looks as if the VDM's could give me the control that I am looking for! Have you tried dynamic tessellation and VMD's? That could be really interesting. You could tie the tessellation and VMD push out to camera distance.

[BmikroB]

Hell yeah! No need in DX11 since such things are coming out! Great job man!

[CorySpooner]

Nice work. Main problem with this is collision will never work... I'm curious though how you're getting the normal information to work properly (specular and shading) - from the stuff I've done, just modifying verts with WorldPositionOffset doesn't change the normals so spec highlights etc don't change - are you modifying those manually aswell in the pixel shader? How did you generate the vertex colors? Did you model the ear yourself / bake the vector displacement map yourself?

[vmatey]

Oh how I wish this could be done like the T-1000s face in the floor in Terminator 2..
This is really good stuff. would this work on a skel mesh. Say if you had a person start changing its shape (like it was mutating or something?)

[NormanD]

@ringholemaster The collision mesh will be the same, it won't change. However you could have a second actor with a new collision and "swap" them with a kismet event. The collision that is used for decals such as bullet impacts is the actual geometry. The calculations are done in he CPU, so the decals will appear on the original mesh, even if the new one is morphed (the morphing happens in the GPU, the CPU does not know anything about it).

[nickzucc]

Thanks for the reply. Think you would ever have time to make a short little tutorial on this? ZBrush just opened the possibility to bake VDM's and I am dying to try it out. I can render these in Maya 2012 now but I really want to see what can be done in real-time! :)

[elijahevenson]

what does the shader look like? is the RGB going directly into the world displacement channel or is there more math being applied?

[NormanD]

@ringholemaster Just use a normal map to correct the normal orientation! Yes I baked the vector displacement map to a vertex colors with a tool I created for 3dsMax. My plan is to put a bunch of cool tools for UDK in a nice toolbar and release it :)

[NormanD]

@nickzucc I'm glad you like it! Long time fan of your art btw!

[NormanD]

@nickzucc Hey nick! The DirectX9 solution is quite limited. You can only have one "vector map" per object. You can't combine multiple deformations, since the vector deformation is baked as a vert color. With DirectX11 however, you can combine as many vector maps as you want (there is probably a texture sample limitation), but you can probably do all sort of crazy stuff. It's a shame I don't have time to research this stuff :C I think there is a lot of potential, even with the DirectX9 solution.

[danrod]

any tutorials on how to do this stuff? :)

[pll]

cant you just use a morph target? also, are you just passing a greyscale image to the world position offset?

[dubtube]

Seven years later still not standard :/