Exporting Alphas

[rezin8]

Just wondering if anyone knows how to export your bump map seamlessly out of Zbrush 1.5?

What I'm trying to do is take all the painting textures, materials, along with the bump settings used in Zbrush, so I will not have to do the bump in the 3D program that I am using to animate in.

Seems simple.Eeverything else works fine...just the bump ...only the bump and nothing else but the bump... :)

much thanks,

rezin8

[aurick]

To export the bump map, select your texture in the Texture palette and click the Make Alpha button. You can then switch to the Alpha palette and export your bump map from within that palette's inventory options.

[rezin8]

Nice I didn't see that. However, when I export it out to .bmp or .psd it looks like black and white shadows. Shouldn't look like a bumb material like I see it in zbrush?
:confused:

[aurick]

A bump map IS a black and white image. It doesn't have any color information at all. Instead, it tells the bump channel in a rendering program that supports them where to put dips and bumps during rendering. 50% grey is no bump, while black and white are either the deepest creases or the highest ridges.

Basically, you need to take BOTH the texture map and the bump map into your other program in order to get the same effect that you see in ZBrush. Also, some material properties will not export (such as reflectivity). Materials are native to whatever program you are using, and can't be swapped between them. However, different rendering engines are capable of supporting different maps (which can be switched between programs).

As a rule, only the color channel actually has any color at all. All of the other maps are generally greyscale to tell the rendering engine how strongly to apply a particular channel's effects.

To learn more about these channels, you will want to read the documentation for that program.

[rezin8]

You tha' man.

Much appreciated.