Hi there,
I’m very impressed about the new feature called Microdisplacement and adaptive subsurface(or is it the same?). Have other render engines like renderman, vray or arnold a similar feature? Under the keyword “microdisplacement” I’ve nothing found per google, only matches with cycle where shown.
In short & laymen terms:
Two techniques comprising a method… adaptation and micro:
Adaptive means that subdividing is adapted depending on distance & occlusion from view point (similar to LOD in games).
Micro means that mesh is additionally subdivided (efficient way to add high-resolution details) based on maps and predefined values.
Both done at rendertime, combined in Adaptive Micro Poly Displacement.
Pixar started with in the 80’s… Cebas named its Micro Triangle Displacement… VRay, Arnold, Guerilla, 3Delight, Air, Mental, fRender… have it (sort of)… also there’s vector based (wish for a bright future)…
Read through… Thread: Cycles new microdisplacement build and testing
It is using micropolygons in the sense that the polygons are small relative to the size of a pixel, which I think is a reasonable definition of the term. But of course with that definition you can also use a plain old subdivision modifier to generate micropolygons.
What it’s not using is the Renderman REYES algorithm, where the term micropolygon originates from and what it is typically associated with. The REYES algorithm lets you render micropolygons with very little memory usage. But it does not work well with path tracing (and was even dropped by PRMan in their last release).
Currently all polygons are kept in memory, though some kind of geometry cache might be introduced in a later Blender releases to reduce memory usage.
posted by Brecht
Also available to watch…
PS
Subsurfacing is a term connected with shading, materials.
Hope i came near to clarity of understanding.
Any corrections welcome.
Thanks a lot for your detailed explanation.
This is not something new, only in blender.