Is there a way to have an object automatically tesselated depending on the detail that is painted in the texture? I want to keep non-detailed parts low poly and detailed parts very highy subdivided. Dynotopo is doing this in sculpting mode.
(image from creativeshrimp.com)
I stumbled over the technique of vector displacement but this might be too advanced for what I need.
SubSurf > Displace > Decimate modifiers added in that order.
Or you can enable Cycles Experimental features and add a Subdivision Surface with Adaptive enabled and it will tesselate at render time based on the screen space covered by each polygon.
Indeed, but that only works in case cycles is used. For now at least. Adaptive subdivision certainly works better though only in cycles render and no viewport preview for it, again, as of yet at least.
It would be great to expose Opensubdiv’s features in this area, both through the Subdiv modifier, and subdiv tools:
http://graphics.pixar.com/opensubdiv/docs/subdivision_surfaces.html#feature-adaptive-subdivision