I wanted to replicate the look of a wild, water-carved river canyon that I have frequently rafted through, and this is not easy to do with terrains.    There are so many features of Carrara that really excite me with their possibilties, but one of the coolest, to my mind, is displacement. I haven't seen a lot of documentation for Carrara's implementation of displacement, other than some clues from Mark, but I always liked to tinker anyway, and I haven't been able to break Carrara yet,lol.   I got DCG's Enhance C plug-in sometime back and I am really starting to enjoy the possibilities it gives for designing textures, but then another thought occured to me; what would happen if I tried using it in the displacement channel? I made some low-poly "rock formations" with overhangs and some hoodoo-like rock stacks in Wings, and then imported them as .obj files. Each formation is around 1700-3000 polys(after one "smooth") so Carrara handles them easily.

(click picture to enlarge) I made the formations 2-sided so I could turn them around and use them again elsewhere in the same scene. Anyway, I applied a slightly tweaked Gray Granite preset mat to them and then applied various Enhance C filters in the displacement channel, and then Viola!  Another thing that is really cool is taking several very-low poly "rocks", applying displacement and then using them in the surface replicator. I used thousands of 'em and Carrara doesn't even blink! Can you tell I love this app? This is probably old news to all of you Carrara veterans, but on the off chance that it might be helpful to some of the newer users,(like myself) I thought I would share what I just learned. Obviously I have too much specularity, or shine on my rock mat, but I thought I'd leave it that way for the thumbnails 'cause it helps show more detail. Cheers, Dan

What you are saying sounds interesting but I can not grasp the relationship to the image?

Maybe you need to show a sequence of images which show the steps you took and the changes resulting. (Sorry if I am a bit dense--I am having one of those days!)

No problem. I will try to do just that.  God knows how many things I've read in this forum that have gone miles over my head until someone took the time to illustrate what they were talking about,lol.

Here is a screenshot of an unrendered sample scene. Not so impressive yet,eh?

I apply a regular rock preset shader to the rocks and make it a master shader. Then I click on the displacement tab and pick an Enhance C filter from the dropdown menu of available shaders and filters and apply it. Every "rock formation" I apply the master shader to now will get the same kind of displacement. I also used a flat terrain and some low-poly rocks and applied the same master shader to them. This is just a quick-and-dirty scene to show what kind of effects you can get. I would take alonger time to carve out the bottom of the river bed for an actual scene,lol.

I recommend many of the noise, fractal, and skin filters, with perlin, or enhanced perlin, but the others are also worth a try. Believe me, there are many hundreds of possible combinations. I spent most of a day just trying as many as I could, and I still have more to try. Here is a render of the sample scene. Does this make any sense yet? If not, no worries, I'll explain further.;-)

Thanks, that's a great tip :)

Keep up the good work--what you are showing is way different from my wildest interpretations of your original post.

I will make a pdf of this thread when you are completed to add to my Carrara/EnhanceC tutes.

Your trouble is much appreciated.

Thanks bwtr.  Happy to do so. I've just started to really get into experimenting with displacement and I was really surprised how easy it is to use. Here's a simple hexagonal shape extruded into some low-poly columns. I applied the Black Basalt preset(oddly enough) and added an Enhance C fractal into the displacement channel. I like the way it adds an unevenness to the columns and makes them much more natural and rocklike. I may make a few more variations and some rubble to the replicator and have a go at modeling the "Devil's Postpile".;-)

Thanks  Xnah.

It's strange how we have mental blocks. Using EnhanceC as you have would never have entered my head. I too will have a bit of fun today. Thanks.

I have just been playing around using  EnhaneC,Organic1.   WOW--the variations are amazing.

Lol, yeah it gets to be a bit addictive trying out all the variations and seeing how they displace the mesh. 

An Old Stone Wallusing your EnhanceC idea.

Man! That  looks great! Now you're giving me ideas right back. Ya gotta love a forum like this for sharing ideas and information back and forth.

Some great potentials with Terrains also!

Just too many choices!

Last one.  "Hells Island!"

That stone wall is really delicious, it looks a bit like old wood as well :).

As was stated in one of the threads at the daz forums: Once you get one of the DCG plugins, you'll want them all :D. This was the one that I didn't have yet.

Here's a quick little WIP; more of a "proof of concept" render. I plan to make the canyon wider, add some stair-step type rapids, snags(fallen trees and branches) lots more distant trees and vegetation, and a raft full of people. The rock texture is the first one that I totally made by scratch. I added a slope operator with a little green gradient and I liked the "mossy" sort of look it seemed to add. I've had Carrara5 for almost a year now (March) and I'm just now starting to come to terms with the shader room. I want to get the DCG Terrain Tools plug next so I can experiment with trying to get some froth or spray effects. I'd also like to see if I can use it to try to add a band of wet looking rock just above the river.

Heres the unrendered scene.