Getting Started Rendering in Vray (EP 5) - BUMP MAPS vs DISPLACEMENT MAPS in Vray for SketchUp

In today's video, learn to use Bump Maps and Displacement maps in Vray for SketchUp to create realistic rough surfaces in your renderings. In addition, learn the benefits of both Bump Maps and Displacement maps, and when to use each of them in your Vray Renderings!

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In this video, I want to talk about the difference between bump mapping and displacement mapping in Vray for SketchUp.
Both of these options are designed to help simulate the bumps and roughness that naturally come with materials in the real world without having to actually model that detail.
BUMP MAPPING
Bump mapping uses an image in order to simulate bumps on a flat face. Basically, Vray will use the texture image to determine where it should simulate bumpiness within your model. It’s basically a shading effect applied to your model.
To test this, let’s add a bump map to a simple material from SketchUp. To do this, start by applying a color texture to your face in SketchUp. Then, go into your maps section of your materials editor and add a bump map material. As you can see, in your rendering, you know have that bump map applied to your white material.
The best way to do this is to use a texture type that actually has a bump map image associated with it. If you have an actual map of your material, you’ll notice that your result is much better. The Vray materials built into Vray have actual bump map images associated with them that help you get a much better result.
You can adjust the strength of the bump using the “Amount” slider in the maps area of your materials editor.
DISPLACEMENT MAPPING
One of the drawbacks of bump mapping is that sometimes, you might not be able to achieve the depth that you’re looking for with a bump map, so you may want to try a displacement map instead. What a displacement map does is actually move your geometry within your render to give you an accurate simulation of a rough material.
So the first thing to note when working with displacement mapping (at least in my experience), is that it really works best with materials applied to groups of geometry. I was not able to get it working with raw geometry.
Notice that when you run your render now, Vray is actually changing the location of the geometry within your face, rather than just simulating a bump with light.
You can adjust how strong this effect is by adjusting the amount setting within Vray.
This will also work with your built-in Vray materials, just make sure to go in and apply your bump map to your displacement map.
Notice that the materials themselves simulate the roughness of the material much more accurately with a displacement map. However, you’ll also notice that displacement maps take SIGNIFICANTLY more time to render that bump maps, so you may not want to use them unless you’re trying to simulate fine detail.
Larger edge length = faster render times, lower quality
Once you’ve grouped your geometry, you’re then going to go in and enable displacement mapping in the material settings. You can then apply a map in the same way that we applied the bump map material.

[ArchitectureInspirations]

Hey Justin, what you were doing was actually copying a NORMAL map into a Displacement map. And in all honesty, you're not supposed to do that. Displacement maps are only black and white which is meant to tell the software to either go up or down (often compared to a height map). Think of the mortar between the bricks. While Bump map and Normal maps are quite similar but they're meant for details, like the small bumps on the brick. So when you copied the Normal maps to the displacement, you were telling the Mortar AND the small grain details of the brick to be pushed and pulled. Not to mention the Displacement map is not supposed to read the RGB Normal map, you can fake it with a bump map but it's still not recommended. That's why the render of the bricks looks really odd up close. In practice, we do use displacement maps a lot, especially in combination with the Normal or Bump map. There's a great article explaining these 3 maps on Plural Sight ^.^

[angbaoquocphi]

Thank you so Currently I am a student at university in Vietnam. And I had difficult about finance, so I did not learn Vray in lerning center. But through your videos I can learn many thing about vray and construction. And right now, I really feel happy because I learned many thing about you. Once again, I just want to say thank you very

[ForrestGumpRUS]

Greetings from faraway Russia. Thank you for your lessons.Everything is very clear and useful.

[axiekelgaming]

you deserve to get million subs, thank you man!

[bongphen]

Just a guy trying to learn sketchup from Vietnam: Thank you so much!

[ghanshyamdas]

Thank you so much sir for ur efforts to teach us by this kind of video.😊😊

[georgespapillon]

I might not use this often, but am happy to know about it.
Thanks.

[adityeshamathur]

thnK u JUSTIN ur tutorials are very much helpful....!!

[camilleparent]

Hello Justin, it went well with Bump part, but not able to apply displacement on single color, since I'm using SketchUp Vray 5 which has a different asset editor. Would be great if you ever have time to upgrade tuto to V5. Thanks for your great teaching.

[lostbeyond]

Hey man appreciate your work! It would be great to see a video on how the displacement has changed since Vray NEXT. I am struggling to get displacement to work. Am i right in thinking that the method has changed since then?

[robydoby]

Great tutorials as usual 👍, really thanks
I started an interior model and I added some spotlight from Vray spotlight tool, but when I go for rendering, the spot light is not appearing in the seen ( other light features appeared very well), I changed the intensity to different values, also I changed the camera exposure value many times, but it seems like the light is not there at all, advise me please.

[eralipe]

Hi, I am following the steps and have used a bitmap displ. in graytones simulating pebbles. The preview in the vray material properties looks like it should and changes based on ammount and all that, but when rendering the scene there is no change in the material in question. Even when trying only a simple face, it renders it as nothing was applied. Any help? ::)

[alifahd]

Thank you Justin for the great tutorials.I'm new to SketshUp and you ARE my teacher.
I wonder if we can use this method, to apply the generated texture (by displacement map) to the actual model geometry in SketchUp (not just In V-Ray renders), so we can get a (textured 3D print of it?) or if there is any other way to do that, I hope you make a tutorial dedicated to that!
Thank you again.

[joereale]

Sold! Now I gotta get Vray. Twilight Render is nice but Vray does so much more and it does GPU rendering.

[kyroro]

is it possible in new vray to do that the edge of geometry is not change by displacement? i want it on plane but not in the edges of model:(

[rashijain]

If you make any video of V-ray in which you explain about UV Repeat and UV offset please paste the link here.

[flipside]

I applied the maps correctly, they are even visible in the materials preview window but for some reason the bump doesn't appear in rendering buffer window, can you please give a solution to this

[SUL-KSA]

I don't have bump and displacement maps, how can i make them?

[mouniamtouguy]

Hello Justin, I know you are busy but I really need your help to fix something in unreal engine project exam. Thank you

[firzt]

is it possible to use multiple bump maps on a single material? I'm trying to use the VrayEdges material (so I dont need to use the round edges plugin) but I still want to have the roughness from a bump map. I'm not quite sure how to use them at the same time