3D Map smoothing prob
 

Sorry to put this in a separate post but I don't know how to add another image onto a thread?
Anyway... I've tried increasing the number of verts on my poly plane but the render results are the same, i'ts not that the hill aren't smooth shapes it's that they have a lumpy texture to them, hopefully the pic will show you what I mean.
I'm wondering if it may have something to do with the gradient shading?

I think that's because you don't have an extremely smooth transiction between black and white. Try painting the bumps in a file with a bigger resolution and let's see what happens.

You can try turning on 'pre filtering' on the file texture. That will blur the image slightly making it more smooth.

BTW: To get another image into a thread, hit the 'post reply' button rather than using the quickreply textbox.

Oh.. and don't use jpg's for displacement maps, they create nasty artifacts, use tiff or tga instead.

thanks guys i'll post back with the results

Still no joy with the smoothing
 

Hey guys, i've tried all you've suggested but it doesn't seem to make difference to the lumpy hiil problem.

I drew the map + gradient using Illustrator then exported it into photoshop at A3 300dpi greyscale and from p/s to Maya as a A3 72dpi greyscale tiff. when it's in p's the gradients are nice and smooth so I know the problem doesn't occur there it just seems maya can't handle the smooth gradient which i'm sure isn't the case it's much more likely i'm not doing it the right way...

Anyway I thought i'd post up two shots one showing the map from afar where it's not looking to bad and another close up to highlight the texture problem i'm having.

All feedback & help is much appreciated

pic2

can we see the image file?

heres the displacement image file.

and the texture image file.

I've posted this question in another forum but with no response could you help out? ( forgive the noobieness of them )

1 - Is 72dpi the only resolution maya will import image files in at?

3 - To get the highest quality render should I create my image plane to be the size of A3 use a 72dpi A3 tiff image, then in render globals set everthing to highest quality an the pixel to A3 measurments? basicaly what I don't understand is if i'm only using a 72dpi image file how can it produce a 300dpi A3 quality render from it?

When you are working in the computer and looking at pictures thru your monitor the dpi is unexistant. The dpi only comes into play when you want to print something. In other words, printers understand dpi but monitors don't.
What does matter for your monitor is the resolution. That is, the number of pixels horizontaly times the number or pixels vertically (i.e. 800x600). The picture that you attached is 393x392 pixels. It does say it is 72 dpi, but all that means is that a printer will print that at 13 x 13 cm. (if you were to increase the dpi mantaining the priting size you would need to icnrease the resolution).
So Maya will import pictures at any dpi, because Maya simply won't care about that, it'll only look at the resolution. (actually I think it does read the dpi for something else... but that doesn't matter right now).
If you want to render a picture that will print at 300 dpi at a certain size (let's just say 10x10 cm), then just go to photoshop and chose new. Then under resolution type 300 pixels/inch. Then Change the units of width and height to "cm" and for the values type 10 and 10. Then you hit Ok (or create or whatever it is). Now click "Image>Image Size...". Here you can see what resolution you have to render from maya to get a picture that size (if you want to print it, of course). So in this case it would be 1181 x 1181 pixels. So now you go to maya, change the render resolution to 1181 x 1181. After rendering open the image in photoshop and change the dpi to 300 and make sure the dimentions are still 10 x 10 cm and that should do it. I think... :p or something like that anyway.

wow! thanx for that and your time, i'm used to working in print so I understand how it works that way I just couldn't understand how Maya worked... until now :-)

I'm glad I to know I helped :D