I have a setup for a tunnel animation using a cone and an animated displacement map. The UV map for the cone is created so that the tapered tip is in the center, and the wider top end is the outside ring...basically the UVs are laid out so it's like you're looking straight down the center of the cone (see UV_layout.jpg).
I used the CC Cylinder effect in AE to render out 1,320 frames in grayscale (see displacement_map_example.jpg intending to use them as an image sequence in Maya for a displacement map. The idea was to "fake" a camera moving through a spiraling tunnel, as the displacement would make the walls seem to move past the viewer.
As you can see from the three different renders, the displacement gets a little crazy nearer the top, and when the tunnel is twisted, it gets even worse.
My guess is that the displacement is being affected by the scale differences in the cone...the wide end is too big, and the tapered end is too little. And when the tunnel is distorted, the polys are of course skewed, and the displacement gets crazy. It makes sense, I just don't know what to do about it.
HELP!
