Displacement to Poly in Maya

Displacement Map Baking in Maya

This tutorial explains how to create image-based displacement maps for polygonal objects in Maya 3 and then bake the displacement to the objects geometry.

1. First, create an image to be used as the displacement map. The image below is a simple one created in Photoshop. The areas of the image that are lighter will cause Maya to raise raise the geometry more. Completely black areas do not affect the displacement. Save the image for use in Maya.

2. In Maya 3, select the options box for a new Polygon Plane.

3. Change the Polygon Plane Options to 10 subdivision for the Width and Height. The more subdivisions you create, the greater detail the displacement will have.

4. In the Hypershade editor, create a new Blinn material.

5. Now create a new 2D texture. Select File for the 2D texture type.

6. Double click the 2D texture you just created to open its attribute editor. Click on the folder next to the "Image Name" field and choose the image you created in step 1.

7. Using the middle mouse button, click on the middle of the 2D texture you created. While holding the middle mouse button down, drag the mouse over to the Blinn material you created. A selection menu will pop up. Choose "displacement map" from this menu.

8. After step 7, your Hypershade window should look like this:

9. Now assign the Blinn material to your polygon plane. This can accomplished by selecting the plane in one of the Maya viewports and then right clicking on the Blinn material and choosing "Assign Material To Selection."

10. A quick test render should show the plane displaced according to the image you chose for the displacement map! (Make sure you have a light in your scene or the render will appear black.)

11. To "bake" the displacement map to the plane's geometry, type "displacementToPoly;" in the command line at the bottom of the screen in Maya. Press enter after typing the command. This command permanently changes the goemetry of the object to add the displacement detail.

12. Now your plane should look something like this:

To achieve different looks, you can use other textures for the displacement map than a file. For example, you can use the procedural shaders to create different displacements.