Hi i’m trying to get pointiness to work in my material. But as soon as i turn on microdisplacement (adaptive subsurf) the pointiness is gone??
Is that a bug or is it supposed to be like that?
Tnx
RDG
True, it’s by design. Pointiness needs actual geometry to work, while micro displacement is done at render time.
Otherwise here’s the Thread: Cycles new microdisplacement testing, discussion and blend sharing where you can get all info needed.
It’s a known limitation.
True, it’s by design. Pointiness needs actual geometry to work, while micro displacement is done at render time.
The adaptive subdivision is done ahead of rendering, not during rendering (like in Luxrender, for example). It is actual geometry, taking up actual memory, actually showing up in the BVH. In principle, it could be made to work. In practice, pointiness is calculated on different data, at a different point in time, so it doesn’t work.
EDIT: Having said that, pointiness highly depends on the input geometry, so using it in combination with adaptive subdivision would likely cause temporal inconsistencies across frames.
Yes BB, sorry for use of simple laymen terms and general explanation - Render time starts when i press f12.
Anyway, thanks for hair-splitting 
BTW
One of possible solutions would be to prepare & bake maps (AO or curvature) in another app (awesomebump, knald, crazybump, substance, quiksel…) then use that with cycles rendering.