http://206.145.80.239/zbc/showthread.php?t=20310 had a blurb awhile back about rendering displacement maps in other 3D apps.  It never worked with Carrara Pro 4 very well.  But here's another attempt using Carrara Pro 5.

An amplitude of 12 was used for the displacement and a smooth rendering of 4 was used on the polygon model.  These shots are with displacement disabled and enabled.  Be sure to flip the TIF file vertically if you try this yourself.

www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG

Amazing! Seems that Carrara 5 does displacement mapping quite well. Very nice head.

WOW!  That's incredible, Shonner!

I've just started playing with my copy of C5.  Is it possible to export the geometry of the microdisplacement map?  Or do you need to keep the geometry within C5. 

I ask because I have C5 at home but it's like pulling teeth to get work to upgrade sometimes, so if I build something at home with displacement, I'd like to be able to bring the model in to C4 at work and still have that wonderful geometry.

 - Dex

Attached Link: http://market.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=2456080

Very cool Shonner! 

I haven't tried it yet, but according to Mark Bremmer it is possible to export the geometry of the model affected by the micro-displacement map. " Just make sure that you have "Displace in 3D view" selected in the shader room prior to exporting the object." -  Mark Bremmer.

It is mentioned in this post about displacement maps in Carrara.

Just export as OBJ (not CAR) and you'll have a very hi-res mesh that you can then import.  You may have to remove any creases Carrara adds.

www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG

out of curious where did you DL the  low poly model from .

i see Ringo also uses this mesh for examples so i figure its a free DL

stu

 

This sword model is a less forgiving test of Carrara's displacement rendering.[click image for a larger version.] It is fewer polys and has abrupt changes of geometry.

The render is pretty good, though loses some definition where the polys are larger. Some statistics: the low poly model is 138 polys. When rendered with displacement it is equivalent to 2.26 million polys.

Carrara settings:
Import model as a vertex object. In the VM set render smoothing to ON. This render used a setting of 6.
Apply displacement in the object's shader, flipping the texture map. Amplitude setting here was 18. For ZBrush disp maps don't enable subdision.

Both this model and Shonner's are available at the link he gives at the start of the thread.

Here's the low res version.