Vector: Vector Displacement

Node Interface

Overview

Function	Provides displacement and/or bump mapping in Cycles 4D
Nearest C4D equivalent	Simple material with displacement and/or bump channel enabled

Cycles 4D implements displacement through materials, using this and the Displacement node. See the page How To Use Displacement in Cycles 4D for details of how to add displacement to an object.

This node can either produce bump mapping, without actual polygon displacement, or true displacement, or both. However, this is set in the overall material settings, not in this node.

This node differs from the Displacement node because that node only displaces along the surface normal. This node can displace along any axis and therefore it expects a colour (RGB) input which determines the displacement vector. Such displacement maps are usually generated by other software such as sculpting applications (e.g. ZBrush).

Settings

Note: a * symbol next to the name indicates the parameter also has an input port. A # symbol indicates that the parameter can only be changed with an input node, not in the node itself.

Space drop-down menu

The options here are:

Object

The RGB input is treated as displacement along the XYZ axes of the object.

Tangent

The RGB input is treated as displacement along the tangent to the surface (red), the surface normal (green) and the direction which is orthogonal to both the normal and the tangent (sometimes called the 'bitangent' or 'binormal'). See here for a full explanation if you are interested.

World

As for 'Object' space but along the world XYZ axes, not the object XYZ axes.

Midlevel*

This value determines whether the bump/displacement is 'pushed in' to the object or stands proud of it. Any height value lower than this value will be pushed in, any height above it will stand out.

Scale*

Uniformly scales the height of the bump/displacement. It has much greater effect on displacement than on bump, so when using true displacement you may need to lower this value a great deal.

Output

Displacement

The surface bump or displacement. Typically this would be linked to the Displacement port of an Output node.