zBrush Model & Map for Displacement Render tests

[Sami Sorjonen]

policarpo wrote:

"Hey gang, I was wondering if any of you zBrush owners might be willing to part with an object with a displacement map like Pixolator did so we could run some more tests using our rendering package of choice."

- Sounds like a good idea!
- Here is my object! :)

20040502_displacement_test.zip (http://www.cgmill.com/ss/temp/images/20040502_displacement_test.zip)


- Renderings of model:

- In Zbrush - it is just a modified / detailed version of object i made earlier:

http://www.cgmill.com/ss/temp/images/20040502_smiling_man_zbrush2.jpg

- Map from zbrush:

http://www.cgmill.com/ss/temp/images/20040502_smiling_man_displament_map.jpg

- End result in 3dsmax:

http://www.cgmill.com/ss/temp/images/20040502_smiling_man_3dsmax.jpg

- As you can see, i didn't use GUV tile mapping, UVs are done in 3dsmax - no smoothing either!
- I rendered the map in 4096pix, but had to scale down to 2048pix for download size - sorry! I can't host huge files :(
- Map should still be in one channel / 16bit mode...
- I didn't do any retouching except scaling, so there might be some problem areas
- I hope there is no banding, i couldn't get more subdivision with my system (1.8m now), i tried all possible zbrush memory settings, but no luck :( - I managed to get mesh divided to 7.8m polys, but zbrush crashed when i tried to render displacement map...

- Please read the readme file in ZIP - nothing special in it, just don't abuse poor 3d guy :)

- Readme also has information how to setup the model for rendering in 3dsmax, zbrush displacement values are also provided!

- Have fun!

P.S.
Tip: You get also my base mesh for testing, just reconstruct it from cage mesh!

-S-S

[policarpo]

Well, you totally rock!

Thanks so much. I'll post my results here in this thread.

:D

[policarpo]

here's my first render test.

http://www.policarpo.us/samples/sample1.jpg

[Jazz]

Good god that is so good!
just like da real ting eksept da culurs (sorry bout da wierd langwige) wot ya gonna do wit it? :eek:

[Sami Sorjonen]

Policarpo:

- Does Cinema 4D support 16bit maps? or is only 8bit?
- Seems like non-smoothed UVs work for cinema 4d too :)

-S-S

[policarpo]

It seems to load the 16bit .TIFF file, but drops it to 8bit format.

[policarpo]

1 more test to try and soften some of the crusty bits on his nose. :)

http://www.policarpo.us/samples/sample2.jpg

[Sami Sorjonen]

policarpo:

Yes... Geometry looked kinda ok to me when i modeled it, skin has pores and some veins, and small noise everywhere (you can see them in zbrush image - scaling the displacement map down to 2048pix will make some of smallest details vanish... photoshop bicubic scaling has bad habit of blurring details :(
- i'm not sure how much the 2048pix map actually has detail, since i haven't tested it on renderer which can render sub-pixel displacement mapping :)

-S-S

[policarpo]

now for LightWave

http://www.policarpo.us/samples/lw_sample1.jpg

[Zeddicus]

Thanks of supplying another model for everyone to play with Sami! ;)

Vray 2d Mode and Max 6 / 2 Lights / No GI / Render Time = 21 seconds:

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200405/user_image-1083563736hto.jpg

Vray 3d Mode and Max 6 / 2 Lighs / No GI / Render Time = 3 minutes & 5 seconds:

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200405/user_image-1083563822faw.jpg

As you can see, nearly identical renders from both modes. Yeah ok, my displacement amount is probably a tad higher than the original Z model, but I thought it looked better that way lol. Also tried Mental Ray displacement shader but couldn't get a good render without getting a crash error from Mental Ray, which also caused 3DS Max to crash as well. Lower quality renders were taking around 2 to 6 minutes depending on my settings and didn't really look too good, so I eventually gave up on them.

[BazC]

"Does Cinema 4D support 16bit maps? or is only 8bit?"

As Policarpo said, load a 16bit greyscale map and Cinema says it's 8bit. Convert it to a 16bit colour map and Cinema says it 32bit!!? Who knows what is going on there!- Baz

[flingster]

bazc yeah i was wondering that..both files from the zbrush boys say they are 16 bit...but they show in c4d as 8bit...BUT if you run em through photoshop...then they show up as 16bit...
i'm definitely missing something here...

Oooh and sami thanks for sharing your file bud... :tu:

[BazC]

:D Yeah Cinema has it's own special way of doing nearly everything LOL!

[policarpo]

just seeing how the model and displacement holds up under different lighting situations.

than again Sami!

http://www.policarpo.us/samples/sample3.jpg

[raymi]

Hey policarpo,
Being a new ZBrush user this might be a silly question.....
I noticed on your LW render, you have "width tile" and "height tile" set to repeat in the texture editor.
In a Poser - LW workflow....when importing a texture, I always set the tiles to "reset".
Is this not necessesary when importing a ZBrush mesh?

[policarpo]

Ahh...good eye, I will check out what happens when i set it to Reset...I guess I forget seeing how I had to manage so many darn windows in LW just to get it to render.

;)

Thanks for that.

[Nemoid]

Hey Poli, thanx for sharing your Zbrush experiments with Lw. i was wondering if the displacement is better if you increase the texture strenght from 1.0 to something like 2.o or more?

[policarpo]

here's another LW test.

http://www.policarpo.us/samples/lw_sample2.jpg

[wrosado]

Here's my Lightwave test following Policarpo's lead. I bumped the bump map setting in the surface editor up to 500% and applied an inverted alpha of the disp map on top of the bump. i was hoping to soften some of the hard edges i was getting with only the disp map. Wish it was easier... feel like Macguyver sometimes when i play with these disp maps in lightwave. http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200405/user_image-1083607300cvx.jpg

thanks

[arek3d]

max 6 + vray displacement :tu:

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200405/user_image-1083624868mfk.jpg

[CiaranM]

Here's my effort using Lightwave 7.5, rendered with FPrime, using Normal displacement.
Tiff displacement map was converted to HDR to keep 16-bit depth information in LW
http://img64.photobucket.com/albums/v196/cmoloney/Pics/smileyheads.jpg
(I may have over done the contrast on the depth map - notice some creasing)

This model was much more suitable for use in LW, compared to the one provided by pixolator (excellent though it was!). In this model the UV seams are continuous, allowing true displacement of the geometry using the normal displacement plug.

[KenH]

Here he is in Animation Master....

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200405/user_image-1083629426his.jpg

[MikeHart]

Ken, can you show a wire of the AM model?
Was at imported plain as an OBJ file???

Wow, looks so good.

[KenH]

Mike: Here's the wire. It was brought in with an obj importer plugin(see in the menu). :tu:

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200405/user_image-1083665469yon.jpg

[creed]

Cinema 4D 8.5, using the 2 materials and clipped/inverted map trick I cover in the other, main displacement thread.

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200405/user_image-1083683505wly.jpg

[dfaris]

KenH,

Did you flip the maps? its looks like the maps on the model are upside down. I see details around mouth area but I dont see any of the forehead details.

[reptil]

hi all
Zeddicus how is your setting for v-ray ?
when i try displacement with vray i just have a black screen or an explode mesh

thank

[xsi_sa]

I dont know whats wrong but in XSI I loose the projection on the displacement... everything is fine when i use bump but I guess thats not the same.

Can someone explain the difference between bump and displacement and how they are in one file? Thank you

[xsi_sa]

i wonder if you generaged the displacement correctley for it to work in xsi or whats going on? BTW the other test head worked just fine. Same procedure... kinda confused as to why is this?

[Zeddicus]

reptil: Try using lower values in the Vray displacement modifier, and if that doesn't help try scaling up the mesh a bit. Oh, and the map is already flipped vertically I think, so you don't want to do that to it yourself.

[jotajota]

en detalle ... :tu: LW7.5 http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200405/user_image-1083718136ljp.jpg

[KenH]

Dfaris: At the moment, AM only accepts 8 bit images so some of the detail is lost. There are ways around it though.

[reptil]

Zeddicus : thank for reply i ll try your advice !! thank all for this great forum

[Sami Sorjonen]

Hi! - Really nice looking renders! Thanks for everybody for testing :)

- Sorry for no replies - Moved to new town... still one week to DSL :( have to use wireless connection - costs too much for me to surf forums daily :)

-S-S

[Grub]

Here's a test with Lightwave using Sami's head:

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200405/user_image-1083887185xtv.jpg

Question for CiaranM (or anyone else): What programs are there for converting the displacement map into to an HDR image, and does Lightwave actually handle 16 bit maps better than 8 bit ones? Cheers in advance :)

[jotajota]

ola Grub ...el programa se llama
HDRSHOP
http://www.debevec.org/HDRShop/
:tu:

[andronicus]

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200405/user_image-1083946516sya.jpg

[tmac]

Here is a tip I figured out. . .maybe you
guys have already tried this. . . if you
change the .tif extension to .tiff on the
16 bit greyscale displacement map Lightwave
will load the file. . .shouldn't need to convert it to hdr. Try it out

Tom MacDougall

[Grub]

jotajota, gracias por el acoplamiento. :D

tmac- a clever tip I'll certainly try that, cheers :tu:

[Lynx3d]

Heh, cool.
Indeed works in LW with renaming to .tiff, however it will be loaded as 8bit image...

Hm i don't know how you guys are doing it, but the bump displacement doesn't work at all for me, it's basically the texture displacement in z-direction :confused:
Which is wrong IMHO.

I'm writing a normal displacement plugin and this is what i got with it:
http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200405/user_image-1084305472iqh.jpg

I did not have to edit contrast or anything, just add the image with UV-mapping to my normal displacement.
However it takes ~5sec longer than the other method at SubPatch Level 15 (but that will be shorter in animations as i cache the topology and only recalc the normals)

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200405/user_image-1084305710dqg.jpg

[tmac]

Wow that's awesome. . .lynx 3d you rule. . . kudos to making a normal displace plugin . . . how does it handle the uv seams?

any chance you will make your plug available?


Thanks,

Tmac

[SergioC]

Hey Lynx3D,

are you going to share this normal displacement plugin with your fellow wavers?

Pretty please, with a cherry on top :)

Cheers

Serg

[KingSalami]

3DS Max 6, scanline renderer with only 1 iteration of meshsmooth.

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200405/user_image-1084311345rvs.jpg


Just like you wanted, I did not edit the model in any way ;)

[Frenchy Pilou]

Cool hairs :D
Pilou

[Whateva]

Hi guys,

For Lightwave, if you SmScale your model in a Morph Map in Modeler and use the Normal Displacement and Morph options you get very similar results as the Normals setting....but it's waaaaaay faster.

Lynx,

I am curious as well about the UV seams. No one ever shows the back of these tests in Lightwave....which is where the seams ruin everything.... unless you split it into two UV maps even using the same image map for displacement. This seams to fix the confusion of Lightwave not knowing which way to displace it's seam Vertices cause it only has one choice.

Shannon

[Lynx3d]

Well i just decided that version 1.0 of my normal displacement is ready... :) http://lynx.aspect-design.de/plugins/normal_displace_info.htm

Can't guarantee that the gradient inputs will work as desired (but i tested weight maps)...oh and for some reason textures with Alpha produce artifacts.
It will show up as "NormalDisplacement", so don't click the "Normal Displacement" or you'll waste a few minutes on a large mesh :)

About the UV-seam...yes, it is a problem because every point belongs to multiple polygons, so you have to decide for one poly, otherwise the mesh would "rip apart" (if you could unweld the points...but you can't)

Currently i pick a "random" polygon, that should work just fine if your map has continous color across the seam.

This is how the backside of the head looks: http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200405/user_image-1084376839ykv.jpg

[Splerg]

Lynx3D, I love you dude... not in a gay way tho... well u know what I mean :D

[tmac]

Thank you lynx3d . . . your plugins rule


Tmac

[Matt333]

Thanks a lot Lynx3d but It seems like the link you gave is the "relaxUV_testversion2.zip" file :)

[Lynx3d]

Ooops...corrected :D

Will mail the sources to Richard Brak in a second for compiling a Mac version.

[Grub]

Hey Lynx 3D, great work on the new plugin! I'm looking forward to testing it out (pleased you got the download fixed) :tu:
Btw, the method on this thread uses texture displacement which only displaces along a designated axis, like the Z.
However, I posted a more capable bump displacement scene file on Pixolator's thread (page 10).
The seam artifacts are not as bad as using normal displacement, check it out- might give you more possibilities for developing the plug-in. :)

Edit- well I did some quick tests with Pix's sword and it looks like your plugin totally rocks- cheers, man! :tu:

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200405/user_image-1084386274sgf.jpg

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200405/user_image-1084386316spc.jpg

[tmac]

I'm curious if your plug solves positive and negative displacement. . .I'm testing it right now. . .thanks again for a great tool

tmac

[Lynx3d]

Hm, LWs bump displacement indeed works nice on the sword (btw, if you set the bumpmap strength in the "Basic" panel to like 30% the displacement keeps the same, seems like the 'fake' bump is still extra) but the results are different, makes the handle thinner and blade tip thicker than mine :confused:

However on the smiling_man i just can't get bump displacement to work, even with the trick to add a layer with "substract" mode consisting of a 50% gray image.

Actually i started writing that plug last year when i was still using LW6.5b...glad it still does quite well with zbrush maps :)

[Mattoo]

Two words..... Holy crap!

Thank you so much Lynx3D. That's fantastic!

[Grub]

Yeah, I agree- it seems the bump displace doesn't work as accurately as the normal displace, you need that extra bump mapping to pad it out. But who cares, I'm using your plugin from here on- thanks again for your hard work :tu:

[Mattoo]

Well, I've done some testing and it does indeed work great, thanks once again Lynx!

A few observations:
- HDRShop, when converting and flipping the image vertically in HDRShop to .HDR format I get a lot of banding on the displaced mesh in LW. If the image is converted to 8bit in Photoshop it looks fine in LW. I'd really like to be able to use the full 16bits.... any chance in releasing that 16bit TIFF loader you mentioned you'd made in another forum? :)

- Secondly, your Normal Displacement doesn't seem to work well with more than one texture applied. I tried the original method in which they would normally be applied in LW, as two images, a positive and a negative set to additive and subtractive (which ofcourse you've solved due to your Luminence Center feature).
But, I have to say, I only tried that when I realised HDRShop was giving out funny results.


Many thanks once again!

[tmac]

Lynx3d . . . I just tried out your plug on a low res body. . .painted some bumps in zbrush. . .brought it back into lightwave. . .puts some bones into it to see how it works with that. . . pretty good results so far. . . .I had problems if I set my subdivison to anything but first. . .usually I use last or after bones. . . .also it doesn't seen to push in as well as out. . .probly a lightwave limitation or my fault.

thanks tom http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200405/user_image-1084396427rcs.jpg

[CiaranM]

Thanks Lynx!

No more seams for us http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200405/user_image-1084396542aox.jpg

Here's a tip regarding HDR displacement maps:
Sometimes it's necessary to adjust the contrast of the displacement map to get the best final results. Try using the free program CineGimp - where you can adjust levels, curves, all that photoshop stuff while maintaining the HDR format in your output. Though it may somewhat be redundant with the new luminace center function in this plug. Just a tip!

Matoo: haven't experienced any banding here. The above displacement was run through HDRshop without any problems

[Mattoo]

CiaranM (AKA Finkster?):

Interesting. I tried it again, I even had a look - maybe I had an old version of HDRShop.... nope, and still the same banding. It's as if it has converted it to 8bit.

Did you do the vertical flip in HDRShop? - maybe if you did that bit in CineGimp? (CinePaint - whatever it's called now), maybe that's where HDRshop is messing with it?

[RobW]

Lynx3d- Thanks so much! This is excellent.
Can we send beer, wine or cash in return? Works perfectly minus the displace order of course, and I haven't fully looked at it, but looks like blending between two different dmaps doesn't work (I get spikes in random places).

Mattoo- not sure if you saw it, but someone (don't remember who) posted (don't remember which thread) that if you rename the extension on the dmap zbrush outputs from
.tif to .tiff , LW reads it just fine with no conversion. Which is, suprisingly, the case.

[Whateva]

YAAAAAAAAAA! Lynx you're a frickn genius!!

If you were here I would kiss you on the lips... :)

Now of course I'm extremely ticked that Newtek never bothered to fix this problem 2 years ago. Does it work ok on a render farm? I haven't tried that yet.

Shannon

[drjjwow]

Any chance you have a max plugin that will do the same thing :)

[Lynx3d]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>had problems if I set my subdivison to anything but first. . .usually I use last or after bones.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Try to set the evaluation of NormalDisplacement to "World Coordinates", and SubD to "After Bones". Morph Mixer should still get applied before bones, then SubD, then ND...i hope :)

[Grub]

RobW, the tif tip is on this thread, man. When I tried that, it didn't work at all... Not much of a problem though, since it's easy enough to use HDRshop. :tu:

[Mattoo]

RobW: Cheers, I'll try that although I'll be shocked if that works - too easy.

Grub: I'm still getting problems with HDRShop converting the TIFF into an HDR - just gives me nasty banding in LW. Hopefully the TIFF loader for LW will get fixed soon, or ZBrush expands it's range of savers.

[Grub]

Mattoo- I'm getting some banding also, I think I'm going to look into using Cinepaint. :tu:

[RobW]

Grub- yeah, and only two pages back :) I should have just read the thread again. Thanks for that tip Tmac. Now with Lynx's excellent plugin, things are much quicker- save from zbrush, rename extension, load, set midpoint to 50. Done.

LW does load the .tiff no problem. It is listed as 32 bit in LW, which I imagine is just the file format and not the actual bit depth. Not sure why it would work here and not there Grub. Using LW 7.5c here.

[Mattoo]

I'm not getting any luck with the renaming to '.tiff' either. And I've tried in both LW7.5a and LW8.

What program did you use to flip the texture vertically RobW?
I've tried renaming the original .tif and that refuses to load aswell - so maybe it's the program that you used to flip it that allows your LW to read it....?

[Mattoo]

Grub; I tried Cinepaint and I couldn't get that to spit out anything useful. I thought it handled .hdr's....?
I only found a Cineon saver which LW refused to load the image anyway.

Maybe there's some third party loaders/savers for CinePaint?

[Lynx3d]

Weird, i was pretty sure i got to load the 16bit tif as .tiff but i must've confused the files because it does not work anymore :D

Anyway, i wrote a 16bit grayscale tiff loader that converts them to 32bit float grayscale (LW only supports 8bit integer per sample or 32bit float)
http://lynx.aspect-design.de/plugins/tiff16bps.htm

To me it seems like the HDRs don't really save all the precision, sure they can reproduce much more than 256 brightness levels, but, we want them to have between 0% and 100%, and HDR is more about supporting values much greater than 100%...

-edit-
what i really find disappointing is that Photoshop can't even flip 16bps images...what bad joke is that?

[RobW]

Mattoo- actually I'm just flipping it in Zbrush before export. Flip, export (no splitting into neg and pos anymore), go to load in layout, rename extension right in the file-requester, hit load. Just tested it again to be sure I wasn't imagining things.
As you see I'm not doing anything strange to get it to load. I'm as suprised as anyone it works, but won't complain.

[edit]

Just looked in the input-output plugin directory. There is a tiff.p loader- perhaps it had to be installed manually? Dunno.

[Mattoo]

Once again Lynx3D is here to save the day! :)

Works like a dream, fantastic stuff!

No banding what so ever, genius.

RobW: I tried your method - still got the same negative result. I even looked on Flay for other third party TIFF loaders, there's one from DStorm but it's ancient, LW 5.6 days, I'd doubt it would work.
You've got some serious mojo there, I wouldn't mess with it - it seems to work for you.

[Grub]

Mattoo- Cinepaint was no good either, I also tried a prog called hdrview, which actually loads the tifs but they turn out horrid. As for 16 bit tifs, what a pain in the butt. :D

RobW- I installed those plugs, but alas no luck. I can load 8bit tifs ok but not 16bit. I'm wondering if you're using a Mac version, the tif loader might be different.

Lynx3d- Wow, another plug to hopefully save the day, gotta test that out, cheers!

[cedox]

This one is displaced in Lightwave.
http://cedox.hangaari.org/muikula.jpg

The first and third images are after Lynx's Normal Displacement is applied. Some (for me) strange seams appear and ruin the model.


Second and fourth are with bump maps.

The displacement worked fine in zb. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong here?


- cedox

[basselito]

This was made with Max5 and Vray. Sorry for using the all-to-well-know-kitchenprobe.hdr. ;)

Took about 11:00 min.
http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200406/user_image-1086678045bsi.jpg

[ZB_Artist]

Hi Sami Sorjonen,

Super nice work!!!

:tu:

[JackMcRip]

Animation:Master
8Bit deep .bmp (vert. flip)

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200406/user_image-1086764893mpp.jpg

@basselito: do you change something at the displacementmap? Maybe make smoother? Can I use your pic to show the directly rendering difference from my Piy, to your? I want upload it in the Animation:Master-Forum.

[JackMcRip]

I wonder about the nice and simple import to A:M

@Sami Sorjonen :
Do you model complete head in ZBrush?
Edgeloops, too?
Or you have modified it in another 3D-Programm?

[Sami Sorjonen]

JackMcRip:

"Do you model complete head in ZBrush?
Edgeloops, too?"

- Make it lowres again by genarating lower subdividision level. I remember it can be done...
- Then you see the mesh structure - I think i made few minor poly changes in Silo, to the back of head and neck, but it was originally built in Z-brush, with Zspheres
- Everything else is done in Zbrush, using zsphere style "bubble head" as starting point :)

basselito:
- Really good quality displacement render! - Seems like Vray is currently the best option for rendering displacement mapped objects :)

-S-S

[JackMcRip]

@Sami Sorjonen : what is the mapping-typ you use at this head???
I try to make a model in ZBrush and i need for A:M the same mapping-typ.

[JackMcRip]

or do you have start mapping in Silo and ZBrush take this map?

[X_M]

I'm just getting to playing with Zbrush and wanted to thank everyone for the tips.

Digital Fusion, Photgenics HDR, Shake and possibly Combusion (Maybe) can handle 16 bit tiffs and do not have Photoshop limitations.

They are all expensive options but I know some people here own them already.

Marious S.

X

[Maya4fun]

Hello there this is test with Maya/MR.

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200407/user_image-1090593589pxq.jpg

_____________________

My first attempt>>>>>

Rhino(féroce) but no so^=^ (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=016499)

[Junk]

3dsMax 5.1 Scanline and Vray
I focused on close up

Using Scanline and displace modifier, the renderng show pixillation.
With a meshmooth more than 3 subdivision it's awfull

Using Vrau it's more smooth but the are artifact on the eye, above the eye

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200407/user_image-1090601789nrj.jpg

[Wim]

Hello


I see your render is really nice, I'm trying so hard to get eny results in LW 8.2 but it just does'nt work. Can you explane me every step your do for getting a result like that? Its maybe a lots of work but you would help me really a lot. I've bought the DVD with Meat S but its only Maya. I'm stuck in Z brush, how and what does I have to do to make a good Displ M and how do I come to a nice render like yours? I now its a lots of work for explaning me that all but you would do me a big faver.

Peace Wim