Displacement Settings! Argh! New to Indigo

[trutextures]

Hello

I am fairly new to rendering in general. I am familiar with Normal Spec and bump etc but for the life of me, I cannot generate a good render for some terrain leafy grassy material I am trying to experiment with.

All I keep getting are spikes and chunks!

I am using the test ball and I want to use the test ball for the final render too.

Is there a tutorial for this I am missing? I would be happy for links to old forum discussions on this subject.
I have Googled for help but all I can find are specific to Maya or Blender or other software packages.

I followed the tutorials on YouTube for the various material editor settings for Indigo but when it came to displacement material maps, he just said "But we will get to that later..." Still waiting.. lol

Here's my displacement map (attached)

[trutextures]

Okay.

I have come to realise that I think I am being a bit ambitious to expect something amazing with this.

Looked at some of the materials of bark and such like and I have managed with success to add displacements for bricks, stone and terrain soil is one thing but a surface with plants of that is giving the impression of serious height variations is a little too to expect.

To obtain real definition I am guessing I would need to create mesh plants and add them to a plane with instances of grass (I am just quoting stuff I have read lol I have no hands on experience of working with mesh or models as yet)

Anyway, just thought I would chip in that I think I know the answer

[Oscar J]

Yes, you won't be able to get any nice flowers with a disp map. As you say, instances is the way to go.

[Bosseye]

Yup, if you're on Sketchup use the Fur plug in and you can scatter a simple grass component around, same for a simple flower model.

Most modelling packages have something similar.