We added OpenGL, CPU raytracing, and GPU raytracing support for customizing MDL and MaterialX attributes like the displacement mapping and procedural noise.
Video captions: In VRED 2024.1 we further worked on our ongoing UI Modernization to improve the customer experience. We have also added new features which will increase your flexibility with your data pipeline and visual quality.
If you are working with Material X and MDL, I am happy to announce, that we have implemented the support for displacement maps. The displacement map will now be calculated correctly in OpenGL, CPU, and GPU raytracing. This can massively improve your visual quality.
We added these attributes to the Displacement section to control the displacement quality:
Intersection Precision - Sets the precision of the displacement evaluation during raytracing. A lower value will provide a more accurate result, while a higher value will improve performance but might cause artefacts on high frequency displacement maps.
Build Precision - Sets the precision of the displacement evaluation during acceleration structure build in raytracing. A lower value will provide a more accurate match but will slow build performance, while a higher value will improve build performance but might miss peaks, if the displacement changes rapidly, causing clamped displacement.
Value Limit (OpenGL) - Sets the range limits for the displacement values in OpenGL. Values outside the range are clamped, causing the displacement to have flat plateaus. The range should, therefore, be large enough to cover the whole range of values but not too large as to limit performance.
Please note, there are currently a few limitations for displacement mapping in MaterialX and MDL materials: