Combining Displacements from separate materials/projections

[appointment-insect]

Dr. Sassi,
I have been working through Elly Wade’s Tutorial on rendering Redshift Basketball. My intention is to add a team logo, and change the ball’s logo to Wilson to match our High School’s ball. My challenge is that I cannot properly stack the materials’ displacement when my logo is Projection-Flat and the Basketball’s displacement is UVW Mapping. It appears to do one or the other. I have tried to create a UVW from projection, but when I apply it to a Displacement Node, the surface textures become flat as well.

In my shared file, I have placed 2 duplicates of the same ball. The left one has proper UVW displacement in the leather (from the Basketball Material) but the Logo appears simply painted on, with no indentation. The one on the right, has displacement, so we can see the depth (displacement is in the right-most material "RS Wilson Logo Gold Trim"), but the general displacement of the leather is from a frontal projection. This is visible from above where there is the displacement stops.

How can I make the ball look like the example on the left for the leather, but have the impression/indentation like the basketball on the right?
File:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11YosFlTy8D8539zshf4m-lxi_v6g9OXE/view?usp=sharing

[Dr. Sassi]

Hi appointment-insect,

Thanks for the file. Stacking Displacement is not possible, AFAIK.
You need to do this in one layer, preferably on the left in the Object Manager.

There are options to avoid starting over, such as the Reference Node having a Displacement output. See file.
But that requires you to copy the materials you like to use and disconnect the Displacement channel, to use the copies to stack them.

CV4_2025_drs_24_RSds_01.c4d

I hope the example helps to explore it.

My best wishes

[appointment-insect]

Thank you for your rapid reply. Your example file helped quite a bit. The use of reference materials was helpful. When I used it, I still had trouble with the fact that one material had a different projection than the other. This then reminded me of an older shader-graph method for showcasing stickers/decals/etc. I ended up using a UV Projection Node between the displacement texture and the Displacement node. Then I combined them in the Displacement Blender. While it doesn't appear to mix as easily as Color Layers do, the result did allow me to indent into the leather.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/118gFWWNXKMOW3_0CAiQxnxyHrZ_d2Bbp/view?usp=sharing
Thank you again.

[Dr. Sassi]

Hi appointment-insect,

Thank you for your reply.

The Texture and the Ramp node have options for using a specific UV tag. I mention both, as they use a different name for the field. Uv-Channel for Texture and Texture Space for the Ramp Node.
https://help.maxon.net/r3d/cinema/en-us/Default.htm#html/Ramp.html?Highlight=ramp%20
https://help.maxon.net/r3d/cinema/en-us/Default.htm#html/Texture+Sampler.html?TocPath=Shaders%257CTexture%2520Shaders%257C_____13

Here is an example
https://projectfiles.maxon.net/Cineversity_Forum_Support/2024_PROJECTS_DRS/20241017_CV4_2025_drs_24_RSuv_01.zip
Select the Texture or Ramp Node, and while the Redshift render is active, drag different UV tags into the fields.

My best wishes