just a thanks.

[spiraloid]

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200303/user_image-1047510759lxp.jpg

I wanted to say thanks to the zbrush team for allowing artists to detail our models so elegantly. nice work guys, your tool and efforts have inspired me so much lately I can barely sit down. keep up the good work.

Bay Raitt.

[Monkeyfarm]

Wow... When someone like Bay says that kind of thing, we're on to something here! :)

Welcome to the forum Bay!

[pr0jectZ]

haha, cool
can't say i like the blue on the last one, but this little guy is realy cool.

[Rafael Hernandez]

That's some cool modeling. Can you tell us what are you doing with Zbrush for this model, and what is an extracted normal map(what is used for?)? I'm looking forward to more of your work.

[rhom]

This little(?)feller looks like trouble.Excellent.

[zerobugetgamemaker]

great model :tu: :tu: :tu:

David

[Gerlon]

Are you intending to animate him? :tu: :tu: :tu:

[Svengali]

Hi Bay,

Wonderful low-poly model, but I'm puzzled. What exactly is going on here? Can you explain the relationship between the top row and the bottom row of images?

(I'm guessing that you are using ZBrush to generate detailed surface shading which is then grabbed and mapped as a texture onto the original low-poly model?)

Having done low-poly models myself for several 3d game projects, I am very interested in what this will be used for.

Sven

[M.G]

Wonderful model as always! ;). Does anyone know if there are any games out on the market that uses normal maps?. I can't recall seeing any myself.

[reminator]

Could you please explain the process you are using ?
Thanks.
R.

[Svengali]

Hi Bay (and Reminator),

I just did a Google search on low poly normal mapping and see now what you did.

For anyone else interested, here is the link:
http://members.shaw.ca/jimht03/normal.html

Pretty cool stuff (and I see how ZBrush would be very useful for just this kind of psuedo-surface enhancement!)

Sven :D

[davidT]

Welcome Bay, I'm a big fan of yours, I've got Digital Sculpture Techniques sitting on my desk.
david t

P.S. I'm going to love mentioning Bay Raitt as a happy user of Zbrush the next time I read a forum thread thrashing zbrush as being worthless, LOL...

[reminator]

Thanks Svengali. Interesting stuff. I'll give it a go.
R.

[travart]

hi guys, i'm new to the boards, well I'm a longtime zb lurker anyway and hopefully ill post some art soon. anyway, normal maps are so you can use a low poly mesh with special detail mapped unto it in real-time, doom III uses them. so that top right model is what you would see in-game real time, whereas the real high poly model would be impossible, but the normal mapped one gives the impression of most of it's detail. pretty cool eh? besides doom III, the freeware tenebrae engine (a mod of original quake source) allows you to use normal maps and real-time lighting. I definitely recommend taking a look at it for anyone interested in game making or just the latest technologies.

[davidT]

Just to add to what Travart has said. Over on Bay's forum Spiraloid, there is a discussion on this very topic. It appears that even Pixolator is getting involved in this. http://cube.phlatt.net/forums/spiraloid/viewtopic.php?TopicID=9&page=0

It seems Zbrush offers things that are well suited to this effort. To be honest it's a bit beyond me, but it's fun to watch as it evolves.

[2byts]

for the guys that dont know whats going on with Bays post (the modeller of the cave troll and golem in LOTR) The blue pict is a normal map( not a texture) that allows the shading information of the high poly mesh to wrap onto the low poly mesh (what you will be seeing in DOOM #)...to give the appearance of low poly mesh to look like it is a high res mesh

what i want to know is: how does one create a normal map using ZB...or even a displacement map

[travart]

I don't think zb can export normal maps innately right now, here's a freeware tool that will make one from your high poly model though:
http://www.soclab.bth.se/practices/orb.html

anyway, I believe what he's getting at in the original post is he used mirai to make the low res mesh, imported to zbrush to add detail, then made the normal map from the high res zbrush model. and what you get in the end is a low res model with high detail, which is good for real-time use.

and WOW this is the guy that modeled gollum? I'd literally never appreciated cg as much as gollum in the two towers, nice work!

[davidT]

A bit more impressive than that travart. he wrote the scripts in Maya that worked the facial animations for Gollum....I Believe his group at Weta is up for an Oscar for that work.

[gummie]

Wow, and I was just about to comment on his superb modelling technique. ;)

:eek: Hope you win the nomination. :eek:

I also hope to see more of your work and any exploits you discover with Zbrush. :) :tu:

You know, I kept hearing about the Gollum character on and off on TV. Must be a great feeling to have your work mentioned like that. :)

[spiraloid]

hey folks. the folks over at ATI have an open source tool that creates normal maps by taking a low rez object with clean UV's and a high resolution surface that has been lined up. it compares the two surfaces and creates an RGB image that when applied to the low res mesh in place of its vertex normals, it looks like the highres object.

Mike Bunnel has modified the open source for this ATI program so that the program can read .obj files and spit out a 16bit tif file with the R channel for outward displacement, and the G channel for inward displacement. the program also spits out the RGB 3 color normal map.

its free, it works.
http://www.seanomlor.com/mikeb/

workflow:
I have a directory where I write my files named:

lo.obj (this has clean UV's)
hi.obj (this has been detailed in Zbrush)

I create a text file in that directory called "go.bat". I edit that bat file in wordpad and add the following line:

NormalMapper -vsSh lo.obj hi.obj 512 512 1 lo_displace_hi.tif

I then write my files to that directory. and double click on the .bat file, go get coffee. when I come back, the images are waiting in the directory for me.

I then hook up the displacement and normal maps into my renderer of choice and am off to the races with a low resolution cage to rig and animate that just happens to look rockin when its rendered.

-b

note: make sure there are normals in the obj file. I don't think Zbrush supports this at the moment, so you might need to add normals elsewhere.

[aurick]

Normal maps are created in ZBrush the same way that displacement maps are. The only differences are that you use the Tool>Normal Map menu instead of the Displacement Map menu, have your choice of world or tangent space, and have extra modifiers in the Preferences>Importexport settings to control how ZBrush assigns the normal map coloring.

For a detailed step-by-step for how to create displacement maps, see the Displacement Mapping tutorial that's built into ZBrush or part 3 of the Telephone tutorial in the Practical Guide.

There is also info on normal mapping and displacement mapping here at ZBC. Lots of it. Start your search in the FAQ.

[Thomas Mahler]

Hey Bay,

Some questions:

1) You're still using Mirai for modeling? Hard to believe... Or are you a 1.5 beta Tester? I mean, Mirai didn't even support changing the topology while working with derived surfaces - and there are rumors that Mirai will turn into a "simple" modeler. Could be great, I loved some of Mirais aspects.

2) What renderer are you using for rendering the normal maps?