I started using Blender recently and mainly used Cycles. It’s real magic
The core of my problem is I want to export my models with textures and materials to OBJ. Sadly you cant export them from cycles, you have to use Blender Internal engine.
I really like to use a simple trick in cycles (I know it’s barbaric and there is a proper way to do it but saves a lot of time and effort on background object and certain materials like concrete, wood, some types of clothes)
As you can see I connect the color output from the image texture to the displacement input, so the darker parts will look lower/deeper.
Blender Internal nodes are different, I wasn’t able to find anything like this. I know there is a displacement modifier, but I couldn’t recreate same results using only the image textures.
So to wrap up my questions:
Is there a way to do this in Blender Render? (like on the picture)
If not, whats the easiest way to create displacement?
Bonus question: Is there any way to export properly (with textures) from cycles to OBJ? (I’m even willing to pay for it a few bucks if its a paid addon)
The displacement in the image is just a render effect, it does not actually create any real geometry displacement that you could export to another format.
You would have to use the image (baked to an image if using procedural texture) and use as a displacement or normal map.
Displacement map is for moving actual geometry. Normal and bump maps change the shading to make it look like more detailed surface, but don’t move actual geometry, and therefore can’t change the silhouette.
Cycles material output displacement defaults to bump map for the whole material. Experimental feature set also has true displacement available, and also an option to use both. This is done in rendertime.
Blender Render also supports rendertime displacement. It’s one of the properties material assigned textures can influence. There’s also an option to influence normals which is used with either bump or a normal map, depending on the setting in image sampling section.
Displacement modifier is used to get the geometry displaced in the viewport.
