Hi team,
I have been trying to apply a footprint bump map I created in photoshop to some unusual shapes in Rhino (oval type pads). When I attempt to place it directly onto the pad it was positioned off the surface so couldn’t be seen. I then tried to apply it to a flat surface which you will see worked. However, when I attempted to mesh this surface it just seems to crash, perhaps I’m not putting in the right values.
Solutions as soon as possible would be very much appreciated 
Cheers,
Bella
Hi @Bella1
Please post the PNG’s as well - they’re not embedded in the file.
-Jakob
Hi @Normand
See PNG above. Sorry, didn’t realise they weren’t embedded.
Thanks
A quick test here does create a mesh ( ExtractRenderMesh command)
How did you try to mesh it?
The mesh is rather dense,
I’d start with a low density and use the refine option :
Hi @Bella1
A few things to go by:
a) When doing displacement mapping, it’s my experience that working with meshes - rather than NURBS - is a good idea. It gives you more control over the detail level, because instead of using the render mesh, you get to set the meshing parameters. Render meshes tend to not have the detail you need (and often not WHERE you need it). Keep the NURBS originals on a separate layer.
b) Displacement mapping uses the UV mapping to apply the image, so you need to first set up an appropriate UV map for the geometries on your footprints layer.
c) The memory limit in advanced settings is set to 512 MB as default - this will often be too low. If you have the RAM, set it to 8192 MB (which is the max).
d) When working with closed polysurfaces, the displacement will affect the underside as well, so you will have to extract either top or bottom to avoid that (if you want to avoid it, that is). After displacement, you can use ExtractRenderMesh to get a version of the mesh that is “permanently” displaced, join it back up with the bottom (which will leave naked edges), and then use MatchMeshEdge to make the edges line up.
Also, notice in the video how I change the nummericals for the disaplacement, so that black/grey is displaced (5) and white is not (0) - that’s to make sure the upper part will line up with the extracted bottom surface.
See the attached video link for how I would aproach this. I’ve taken the liberty of moving one of the footprints to world center and deleting the rest for my own convenience
Footprints F_JN.3dm (7.5 MB)
HTH, Jakob
EDIT Oh, and I use a custom material with the footprint map to check the size/location of the footprint, because it’s much faster and easier to check the mapping with a bitmap than having to wait for displacement to re-calculate all the time.
Jakob, you’re a life saver! Thank you so much for this amazing video!
