displacement won't show from the top
 

:confused: Anyone knows what I did wrong here?

I applied this texture
http://helios.acomp.usf.edu/~acosta2/grid.jpg
as a displacement map for a NURBS Plane layed on the floor.
Then when I render the persp camera from a certain angle (say 45 degrees) I get this
http://helios.acomp.usf.edu/~acosta2/gridInclined.jpg
And that's ok, it does what I want, but when I move the camera to the top the holes disapear :confused: and I get this
http://helios.acomp.usf.edu/~acosta2/gridTop.jpg
The same thing happens if I move to a side view (both front and side), except that because it's a plane it simply renders a blank image. It's not a problem with the orthographic cameras because if I move the persp camera to thos positions I still get the same blanks.
Maybe I was suposed to check a box or change a number or something...
Or maybe I did changed something I shouldn't have...:( the only settings that I changed from a defaul displacement are:
-for the texture file, under Color Balance, I changed Alpha Gain to -3 (because I wanted the holes to be deeper)
-for the texture file, under Effects, I checked the "invert" box (because after creating the texture I realized that that I ended up moving the wholes instead of the grid :p)
-for the place2d for that texture I changed Repeat UV to 5 (both of them) (because I wanted there to be more whole in that same area)
-for the NURBS Plane, under Tessellation, I changed Curvature tolerance to Highest, U division to 10, and V division to 10.

For all I can tell I didn't do anything that I shouldn't have.

Any ideas to fix this?

Thanks.

I guess no one has ever since a situation like this..... :(

ok there is a major difference between an orthographic camera and a persp one. An orthographic igrnores the whole idea of perspective which means that things dont appear to get smaller as they dissapear into the distance. So that's why you really shouldnt render from the top camera.

I'm not great on displacements so somebody may be able to help you out with that part but you should always render the displacements from a persp camera.

:)

Alan

I know, neither one of the images above are from an orthographic camera. Both renders come from the default persp camera. I only said I "tried" with the orthos and got the same result.
And I still can't figure it out by the way :-/

Looks to me like a clippng plane issue. Try extending your camera's "Far Clip Plane".

been there, tried that...
 

yeah, that is one of the things I thought of, originaly, but no matter how high the number I still have the same problem. I tried with such big numbers that now I'm wondering, how can that thing go anyway? :p I know I tried with at least 7 digits.

thanks anyway, but I guess I can't do anything about it :(, oh well....

maybe if you upload your mb file, we can take a look. I don't like problems going unsolved around here really. I can do Maya 4.5 Unlimited files and below. No 5.0 files, sorry.

update
 

funny thing.... when I render with Mental Ray not only I fix the problem, but I even get a smoother grid (which I would prefer).
But then again, this really isn't a solution, because mental ray takes longer to render :( and for some reason it won't do a batch render from the command prompt. So I still want to find the real solution.

Here is the scene file and the image for the displacement. the scene is in maya 4.5


Thanks for looking at it.

That's odd. Mental Ray is usually faster than the Maya native renderer.

really? in my computer Mental Ray is super slow, and it makes my system unstable. For example, while using maya's rederer I can switch to different windows and see the image forming piece by piece, but when I use Mental ray if I dare to switch to a different window I am at risk of loosing control of Maya and having to shut it down the ugly way (good thing I always save before using MR), and the image won't show until it's completely done.

I have the same problem with MR too. :( Whats the deal?