Modeling vs displacement
jason-2455927
Posts: 51
in The Commons
What is your opinion? Is it better to model a brick wall or use a plane with a displacement map?
I'm in the air, because modeling it means you can texture each brick meaning you can use less resolution textures, but more polygons. But displacement means you can have less polygons but you would need a higher resolution texture image.
What are your thoughts on the pros and cons for each?
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
IMO, I find that geometry consumes less memory than texture maps... HOWEVER... I find that even when I model high density models, I still require a fairly detailed and high-res texture map to compliment it. So, modelling out a brick wall doesn't always mean you can get away with super lo-res textures. In fact, if you were to model out a full brick wall, and then texture each brick with the same lower-res texture, it would probably look repetative and bland, so if all you are looking for is a brick wall out in the background, I'd say go for a texture with lots of detail and displacement.
Honestly, though, you have to consider what you are planning to use the wall for. If you'll be seeing it up-close, or if there will be lots of stuff hanging from it or intersecting with it (like pipes, nails, pictures, or whatever) you might do better with supporting some of that displacement with some geometry, but if you plan to only have a wall in the background, or down the side of a building, simply using textures is perfectly fine. Keep in mind, however, that even if you're using a single plane with displacement, you'll still need geometry to support the displacement, so you can't get around that.
In Iray you need the same lvel of geometry resolution whether the details are modelled or displaced - however, displacement can work on SubD vertices so the base mesh can be lower resolution, and a lower level of SubD can be used for the Viewport in scene set up. On the other hand, displacement won't show until render time.
Displacement is more expensive at render time as, one way or the other, you have to have the mesh resolution to support the displacement. That's exactly as Richard explained it. With a 10-yr old laptop, if you model the bricks, you may bump up against the limits for handling geometry. The cheat on all this is to apply a normal map to a plane. The plane is still flat and smooth, but the normal map will give the illusion of displaced depth. This is a videogame trick as rendering it doesn't tax system resources the way displacement or high-poly geometry do. The catch is, if you can see an edge of the plane, that will be perfectly flat. The other catch is, you need a normal map of your brick wall that matches up with your other brick wall textures. If you have the other textures, you can use them to help produce your normal map.
Really? It doesn't show until it's rendered? Huh, still learning new things every day, I love it. Now I guess I'll be doing test renders instead of viewport checks!
This is why so many of us are willing to fork over the money for the best render card we can buy. There's nothing worse than working on an image for hours until it seems perfect, and not seeing that something small in the image isn't working until it's been rendering a while.
And even then, unless your Viewport SubD resolution matches your render resolution, you can be surprised by poke-through in the render.
In most situations a good (well, made) normal map is sufficient... if it's for something that's meant for close ups, then maybe displacement, but I think displacement is more suitable for water surfaces, terrain or very close up images.
It is not really a one or the other kind of thing...both are great ways of adding detail to a character.
When I make my HD characters, I add some detail with morphs and others with displacment (and even others with bump or normal). Diffent kinds of detail lend themselves to different application methods.
Indeed
I am not a very good modeler I try to concentrate on what I can do best with daz studio and that is using it for animation. So I can only go by what my experiences to make my work flow quicker without sacrificing quality renders for better render times when working in animation, so my work flow may not apply to everyone work techniques.
I found when working in Animation with daz studio . That Normal Maps are a huge resource killa , Normal Maps are 2 - 4 x larger in data size than most 4k textures , I can speed up my render times easily by 20% + just removing all the normal maps out of a scene, and you will never even notice them gone in animation because everything is moving. Displacements how ever are very necessary for proper details, special if you are pairing the displacements with a transparency map for like windows or wall cutouts. so I try just to reduce the data size of the images rather than remove them. usually by reducing the textures from 4k to 2.5k
The number one way I found to really speed renders up in prep work isto turn off the geometry for everything not seen by the camera or used to create a shadow in the scene, then your GPU won't have to spend time calculating that geometry or textures maps associated with them, when those have been turned off under the display tab. this works great because I can still use high end quality models and textures for each animated scene with out having to destroy or rebuild my scene sets over and over. I have been able to achieve 12 seconds a keyframes for complex scenes like what I posted below. at 1920 x 1080 HD using this method. I rendered out a 22 second , that equals 660 keyframes scene in Iray under 2 hours. with just 2 1080Ti's
Like I said this technique won't work for everyone art form but for animators this is a great hat trick. without sacrificing quality renders for better render times and you can use both geometry and texture maps in your scene set ups
But that is just my 2 cents for what I do using daz studio. This was a test render from a opening scene in my new Karate girl Movie coming out in a couple of weeks
As one of the people who buys the stuff other people make, I would prefer the brick wall be done with texture and files that change the details at the time of render. Because that way if I use a third party texture on the same surface, it doesn't conflict with any built-in details of the object. And if I were to apply the original object's texture on some other object, the displacement setting would apply those details to the new object. I like things that can be repurposed.
On the other hand, having extra details generated at render time works terribly for me with dForce hair.
In Blender I'd use displacement (probably); in Iray probably not.
I have, however, managed a decent displaced wall in Studio, using Iray.