Convert Material Displacement to a Mesh with Blender
Why Blender Stack Exchange recommends it
Blender Stack Exchange users link it whenever someone asks how to turn material or procedural displacement into actual geometry, since Blender has no built-in way to do that.
Recommended by 9 people across 7 different months, 2019 to 2024.
What it is
A short CG Cookie tutorial for Blender 2.8 showing how to turn shader-based displacement, which only shows at render time, into a real editable mesh. The workflow bakes the displacement to an EXR image and applies it with a Displace modifier. It is presented by the CG Cookie team.
What people said
Recommends metaphor_set · 2019-04 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Baking a displacement map with Blender 2.8 and Cycles?”
Sadly there is no built-in method to bake displacement maps in Blender **yet**. However, there is a lot of talk going on within the Dev community about it lately, so this might change in the future. Right now, the only workaround I can offer, is described in a video tutorial by CGCookie: "Convert Material Displacement to a Mesh" [this video] . It can be done with Blender 2.79 and Blender 2.80, but for both it works only in experimental mode.
Recommends WhatAMesh · 2019-07 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Using procedural noise with the displacement modifier”
To add to FFellers comment: This YT-Tutorial explains the process of backing the displacement map pretty well: [this video]
Recommends A M · 2019-08 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Making random structures”
[Option 1] is to do it via displacement: Here via shader displacement and a Musgave texture. This way it stays parametric. Works only with cycles in render view/render. [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] If you want it to be a solid mesh to further work on here is a tutorial how to do that: [this video] [Option 2] The other way would be from curves, but is not parametric. Convert your pattern from an image to curve for expl. in illustrator, then use these curves to build your mesh. curve menue>extrude then: convert to mesh from curves [LINK] [LINK]
Recommends NarveL · 2019-09 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “texture to geometry: is it possible”
**Yes, it's possible but it has it cons.. follow this tutorial and instead of using a procudural texture, use your own image texture** [this video]
Recommends AshKB · 2019-11 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “How can I make grooves deeper on a scanned 3d model?”
I would suggest you to retopo the photoscan or to model it from scratch. Then you could test various procedural displacement textures and when satisfied with the results, convert displacement texture to actual mesh displacement using this [this video]
Recommends It's Just Chris · 2020-03 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “How to export a model in blender along with the node setup?”
You will have to bake your displacement into an image and use it in a displacement modifier to create an actual mesh that will be exportable to something like Unity. Unfortunately the displacement generated from nodes won't become baked geometry, you can follow this video tutorial for the workaround. [this video]
Recommends pixel_streamer · 2020-03 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Is it possible to convert displacement node to "baked" geometry (OBJ, FBX, etc)?”
Looks like CG cookie posted a work-around for something like this... does this process work for you?: Convert Material Displacement to a Mesh with Blender 2.8 - Bonus Tutorial [this video] he uses an .exr map baked from the shader, and applies that in a displacement modifier. It's a process unique to this video
Recommends kryszekk · 2020-04 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Displacement modifier with custom height map problem”
here are 3 spheres. I have a problem with stretch on my sphere number 2. I used a Displacement modifier with an image texture (height map), however I guess that the texture is being projected flat, which causes stretch around the middle section. Sphere number 1 also has a Displacement modifier but this time with blender's built in Voronoi texture. It seems to me like it's not projected flat, there are no stretches and the result is great. How can I use Displacement modifier to get perfectly displaced object while using my own height maps? Is there a way I can avoid this flat projection with displacement modifier? [LINK] Sphere number 3 was displaced with material (the same height map as sphe
Recommends tritium · 2020-04 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Error: Freestyle Lines Ignoring Displacement”
If you bake your displacement as a mesh, then I'm sure it will display freestyle correctly. Here's a tutorial: [this video]
Cites Mr Zak · 2019-05 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “I want to merge an object with its texture”
*"have really great detail"*, "*lose all the great detail*" are highly subjective definitions. What exactly details, how are they created.. I can only guess you ask about bringing details made with microdisplacement into real one [this video] and it's generally possible though can be a bit computational heavy due to usage of openEXR files to avoid values clamping