Playing with Displacement Maps

Due to the liquid material that I was using for Larry's model texture, I was only able to add a displacement map to him which increased the render time for each frame to about 10 minutes (no thank u). 

Anyway, this is the UV snapshot I used to draw into for the displacement maps. Although they look kinda cool, I was unhappy with the quality of the line and how think it was so if I wanted to pursue this look further I would need to redrawn the scratchy texture. I would also want to use the texture to accentuate the curves of Larry and use it almost as shading.

UV snapshot

Raised UV texture

Embossed UV texture

Raised texture render

Embossed texture render

As you can see, The embossed texture blows out the surface rather than receding the texture. I had to play around a lot with the actual displacement map I used and it ended up to be a very dark grey background and black for the drawn aspects.

Final map used for embossing -

I think if I really want to use this form of texturing I would either need to look at how to add a bump map to the bitfrost material I am currently using or look into a different material all together which would be my last resort. I am quite attached to how the bitfrost material looks and how the light of his heart bounces around inside him so would be quite sad if I had to let it go.