We are increasingly being asked to produce textures and patterns for RP parts, although Alias has had a tool to produce meshes from displacement maps for many years it seems undeveloped, contains inconsistencies and is not useful for the following reasons;
- the mesh tolerance is always in cms, even though construction units are set to mm, this means that you always have to scale up the model before producing the mesh, then scaling back down again
- If you try and produce a finer mesh by adjusting the tolerance then it always snaps back to 0.0010, even if you type in 0.0001
- The displacement detail slider only goes to 100, however you can type in 512, odd.
- If you use render globals option ( using 'accurate' V9 dosnt seem to work) the mesh tolerance ( also defaults to cms?) slider shows 0.00100 as a maximum but allows 0.00001 to be typed in.
- Again the displacement detail slider goes to 256 but will allow 512 to be typed in.
- The resultant mesh obviously shows gaps if another shader is assigned to adjacent surfaces, however Alias mesh tools cannot fill these gaps.
- If you extend the map to include all geometry then this is solved but results in self intersecting meshes on ball corners and sharp details, this makes the production of solid parts for RP problematic.
- If instead you try and use the 'create wall thickness' option when exporting the STL, again this results in self intersecting meshes in the displaced areas.
Although it is possible to use this tool, with many work arounds and great care, other software seems does this function with great ease, but it would be much better if the tool in Alias worked correctly.
