My…
this is a masterpiece.
Too many polys, right?
Post it on the finished projects and straight into the gallery.
It doesn’t look like a test, does it?
Excellent work on UVs
Octapus comes from the greek language. Means eight legs.
Your’s is called endekapus. 11 legs. LOL
Oh wow…
This thread is gone all the way over the edge.
I love this stuff and I still cant control my camera (among a whole staggering pile of other ineptitude related idiocy) in Blender so I’m going a little insane.
That Endekapus is splendid, I made something like that with a measly eight legs but I never finished it, its eating other files some place on my hard drive.
I’m having trouble digging into Blender cause I keep getting sidetracked by all the little buttons… Blender has a lot of buttons and twiddly bits.
I really want to play with this technique now, definitely going to give it a go tomorrow! 
Thanks for sharing Michalis!
Looks really awesome!
There is a blender workshop dvd (http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/product_info_n.php?products_id=151) that focusses on artists coming from different 3d apps. Since all blender workshop dvds are released under creative commons it’s legal to download it (if you can find a torrent or something similar), if you can find it. Might be worth checking out Mealea Ying
I tried to find a good way to reduce the poly count - probably the biggest setback with this awesome method.
If you scrutinize this up close, it’s not that nice, but for background things it should be fine.
About 57,000 faces total
I’ll try to get it to look a little better, it’s a bit ugly right now.
Wow…
Her is a closer pic of my ship.
Im going to give something a bit more complicated a try soon.
A thing I have lerned is that using that default Grey backround with metal or grey objects is not the way to go when doing a final render, ecspecally zoomed out ones. But I like the object. :yes:
wow… learn something new everyday
my test on this:
by the way, how do I open the EXR file that were uploaded before?
Nice architecture michalis.
Today’s attempts. Textures feel incomplete but always turn out good.
CPU lights 
Haha, thx!
I know octo means eight, bus = legs. This thing has actually 16 legs, some of them are lazily modeled and hidden behind the body xD Maybe I should call it sedecbus.
Just checked the face count, seems it’s 4915200 quads 
I don’t know about posting to finished projects… It uses your texture after all.
The model itself is pretty simple, just tried to make the mesh flow nicely. Position the uv to a good spot, do a little weight painting, use high lvl of subdivision and bam!
@Rich33584
Your space ship is just fine, add a second of the maps I posted, as bumps only. You may have to add a second UV set under properties of mesh, for cycles use you won’t use the usual tex coordinates node but the attributes/vector (add the name of the UVset there.
Now you can play on UV editor accordingly. This will give you a detailed look and will keep resolution to low levels.
This is my reply to Jonathan L too. There isn’t such setback on this method. On my gothic cathedral you see ~280K, I also rendered at 70k with excellent almost the same results.
On such subjects like gothic cathedrals. If you model them, piece by piece, how much time will take to finish it? How it will look? Can you change your mind after and edit it fast, altering it? How many poly in the end? If you ever finish it, I mean.
Now, avoid using subsurf modifier, use multires instead.
When finished, apply the displacement mod only. Now, seams are already there, ask for regular UVs. Bake normap maps from multires method. Voilà. A low poly asset for games.
This method of sculpting is not different at all of sculpting a character in multires mode. The same principles, by all means. Think about it.
by the way, how do I open the EXR file that were uploaded before?
Open where? It can be opened in gimp or Ps. It can be imported as texture in blender and have it on image editor.
Important! It’s a linear (non color in cycles) color space. Never apply it as a sRGB or something.
@michalis, @tame: Have you tried the decimate modifier? Apply your subsurf and displace modyfier and then choose settings planar with 1-2 degrees. With this you can decrease your polycount a lot, without loosing much geometry. (check also the All Boundaries box)
I had a mesh with 1.6M and reduced the polys to 274K. Isn’t that great?
I ended up posting it to the finished projects after all, go check it 
@JoHal
Thanks for the tip. I reported the face count previously wrong, it was 9,8 mil. I set the planar angle to 3 and face count dropped to 2,1mil. Almost ran out of memory doing that 
Then I also added split edges @ 30 degrees to get better results with the smooth shading.
Worked out pretty nicely, some minor distortions but it just looks more interesting. It’s sill not a model for games though
This might sound a bit noobish but how do i add a black map to the UV and also when i bake a displacement map it’s only white with no detail.
You may need to play with the distance setting. Make sure your entering the right amount. I was counting the lines and entering 7 for my distance and getting all white also. Turned out my model was small and I needed to enter .7 .Then I fine tuned a bit and wound up at .725 or something like that. It only takes a few seconds to bake so you can play with it
Cool thanks.
@michalis
I did have a second and third displacement added as a bump but I guess Blender wasnt seeing it…
I rendered again and made sure it was there this time:
Also, here is the .exr I made:
http://www.richardsphoto.com/images/forums/DISPLACE_LARGE4.zip
Nice .exr, Rich.
Add some horizontal and vertical all way through the panel rectangulars. A trick that really helps. Avoid some 45º cuts.
You can use lot of non horizontal-vertical only elements, as bumps only. Indeed, even organic forms. But as bumps only. As displacements, well, time to buy more ram and go up to 10M faces.
Your space ship is nicely displaced but you need more ho frequency details. So a second bump map, scale it down 2-4x. Bumps have to be strong enough.
About baking displacements.
White only? Bake to active right? Select the relief first, shift select the plane.
It’s not the distance an issue. But, the scale of these meshes is important.
If very contrast results, scale both source and target meshes down. ctrl+A apply scale. PLEASE!
Then bake. Indeed, baking displacements is sensitive to scale. Please try to keep it in mind. Because I don’t, sometimes. LOL.
This is some very cool stuff indeed! It reminds me a lot of some things I’ve done in Vue because the bump maps in Vue are awesome, so the way this is done here - is this relying on bump maps or actual geometry? I assume not actual geometry since there is the baking of the UV’s going on. But I’m with the zz guy who is asking for a video tut. I will make one if I can get through the written one. Thanks for posting this!
The texture actually changes the geometry.
A couple more renders of the ship after a few changes.
I certainly have learned what works and what doesnt in the displacement panel. Ill make some needed changes to mine for sure.
Thank you VERY much. I’d really appreciate a video tutorial, and I can see that others really would too. I hope you’ll be good enough to drop me a line when you post such a thing. I’ll try experimenting with this using the EXR Rich uploaded. It’s the first step (where you put the panel in front of a plane…? to make an EXR) that completely baffles me…
What’s more, I can honestly say that I’ve never seen anything this amazing in CGI before, and I think you’re responsible for uncovering a revolutionary technique. I, for one, would adore being able to do this to some of the giant starships I’ve been making, as greebles and “little” surface details are always the deal-breaker, as anyone who is very interested in sci-fi for the past 5 decades can tell you.
And this gothic cathedral is an absolute show-stopper. With some human characters running mocap routines, some good writing, and this type of modelling, a Blenderhead filmmaker could take YouTube by STORM!
(UPDATE EDIT): I GOT IT!
(This really does just change everything, Michalis. In my first sci-fi short coming up, I’m going to have sets that look like friggin Taj Mahal, just for you!)
