Pixologic Release - ZPipeline Guides

[fattkid]

Just thought I'd leave an update on my situation....

I used the second level mesh, which was 25k triangles instead of the original base mesh that was 6k tris (smoothing it in Maya didn't work very well either), and an Adaptive map, and things turned out pretty good. There was a very noticeable difference between the rendereed Adaptive map and the DpSubPix map.The Adaptive map seemed much more "forgiving" in areas that are displaced a fair amount from their original surface and seemed to mainatin the overall volumes better. Anyway, thanks again gentlemen.

[Hezza]

Just one other thing i noticed, you said previously that you smoothed your base mesh in maya to sort some render problems on triangles. I had this same problem but didn't want to smooth the base mesh for animation purposes. One thing i found out was that in the SubdivApprox attributes theres an area called Mesh Converstion, under there set Conversion --> Quads to Triangles. This sorted out the render problem nicely and allowed me to keep my low poly mesh.

Just wondering if Scott could provide any info on this, is it considered bad working practice? will it throw up any other problems furthur down a production line? I've just never heard it much mentioned.

Anyway, best of luck and lets see some new renders.

Hez

Think i'm gonna go mad and kill someone this morning, i swear this bloke down my road is just revving a chain saw for the hell of it and not actually cutting any trees. He's been at it for ages.

EDIT: It seems he must have been cutting trees, cause he's just started the BLOODY WOOD CHIPPER. ARGGHH!!!!!!

[fattkid]

Hezza - Thanks for that info! Much appreciated. Especially since I already had my low res base mesh skinned. I did notice when rendering with Quads to Triangles set, the accuracy of my displacement map was compromised just a little bit. Not enough to worry about, though, just FYI. I've included a final render comparison between two Maya models with 3k and 50k faces, alongside the 3million face Z Brush model. Thanks again for the help.


.http://trevorsart.com/FinalRender.jpg

[Scott Spencer]

Glad it worked out for you!

Convert quads to tris I have seen before but never used. Ultimately all quads are tesselated into tris at rendertime and I can only assume this is a pretesselation option. Hey, if it works it works! I wouldn't imagine it would cause problems down the line.


S

[Hezza]

Ok, after giving out advice on using Quads to Triangles i've run into my own problem with it.

I've not done any work on my dwarf character for over a month and decided to finally try and get him finished. Previously i was only using the the Quad to Triangles setting to fix some dodgy tesselation on his trousers and boots, his head was rendering fine with conversion set to none.

Now i've come back to him and i've been playing with shaders and his ears are messing up, looks like the mesh is clipping into itself. Switching to Quads to Triangles sorts the ears out, but then the displacement on his face goes all jagged. No amount of changing the SubDivApprox settings can seem to fix him. Tried upping the division levels, lowering the length etc to no avail. So i'm kinda stuck now, he either has dodgy ears and a nice face, or a dodgy face and nice ears.

Any help would be much appreciated, kinda stumpted at the minute

Hez

(Ignore the mouth/chin area, its covered by a big beard)

Conversion set to None, nice face, bad ears


Conversion set to Quads --> Triangles, good ears, bad faces.

[Hezza]

Ok, its not the end of the world, seems i'm just going to have to Smooth him one level in maya before render time, i dropped the SubDivApprox down a level on min and max and the render time has dropped by about 40 sec's which is a bonus, can't see any major loss of detail either.

This may make things easier in the long run, as i'm using hair, i couldn't attach it directly to the low poly mesh as it wouldn't match the displacemented mesh enough, so i was applying it to a smoothed version of the mesh anyway which i was going to wrap deform to the low poly mesh. (It makes sense in my head i'm sure )

Hez

[marciani]

Hi all, i'm newbie and
following the pdf i've encountered some problem (probably is my poor skill in XSI)
-Create a sphere in XSI and assign a spherical projection
-Export in ZBrush and check UV: at this point i have the whole object paint in red and the texture create is not right.
I can't able to exit from this...
Some help?

Second question:
-Export a mesh in Zbrush and in Z assign a guv tiles and create a texture.this work fine.
- If i try to export also the displacement map following all the step(starting create in xsi exported and mapped UV in ZBRUSH), when i come back in XSI and put the mesh and the Displacement, nothingh change: off course i 've check the render tree and i have all the input correct.
iI need change manually some value? it's seems like not applied...
Thank's
leo

[fattkid]

I'm back with another question........

How do I render bump maps in Mental Ray with default Maya shaders? Mine are not coming out right and I can't figure it out. I'm using the Z Brush/Maya guide, setting alpha offset to -1/2 of Alpha Gain (base color of bump map is 50% grey, made in ZBrush, 4096 size), converting to .map, and rotating the texture. What settings should I use in the bump2D and file nodes? I've been messing with the filtering settings but no luck. Any suggestions or ideas? Thanks for any replies.

[smokebox46and2]

For those who can wait no longer for the 3ds Max/Mental Ray pipeline, the solution to your problems is posted in the ZBrush Tutorials Forum under the heading Tutorial:ZBrush displacement maps in 3dsmax, metal ray


It works perfectly!

[Scott Spencer]

Hey Fatkid:

To adjust the "volume" of the bump map under bump2D adjust the bunp depth slider.

S

[smokebox46and2]

Is the 3ds max Pipeline awaiting the ZBrush 2.5 release also? I didn't realize that the pros would have as much trouble as the amateurs with the displacement problem. Max must not be very cooperative to work with at either end when it comes to integration with other apps.

Oh well...

[DarthWayne]

Currently being in the process of moving my main rendering app from Maya to 3D Max here's my take on the whole max thing. I found that it's pretty easy MOST of the time to render the maps as long as you follow the same basic rules that you would for a maya mental ray render. Although I have to say that I'm using Vray not mental ray. Sometimes the map (although generated and treated the same way as a one that works perfectly well in max) will do 'crazy stuff' seemingly out of spite.

So I guess what I'm saying is that a definative max guide would be a massive helpt to me for one right now. If anyone has any 'magic' Vray settings pass them on as you'l save me days of fiddling about. I've found the pipeline guides to be really useful , so I'm eagerly awaiting the max one.

Wayne...

[smokebox46and2]

The test files from ZBCentral work great in max/mental ray, but all of the ones I create seem to be duds... Why's it so hard?

[ryankingslien]

Ladies and Gentlemen! Lo and behold! The eighth wonder of ZBrush land! The magical, the commanding, the bold!

The ZBRUSH to 3DS MAX 8 guide has been released to the world! Get your copy here. Experience what others have only dreamed about and, sometimes, crashed their heads against the computer trying to figure out.

If you have questions regarding the guide please post them in the Question and Troubleshooting forum here.

Thank you Michael McCarthy for yor hard work and for an excellent guide!

Cheers,

Ryan

[DarthWayne]

Now thats really made my night! Thanks.

Wayne...