ZBrushCentral

1mil poly laser scan -> displacement map?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi guys,

Quick Question:
Is it possible to extract a displacement map from a high resolution laser scan?

I have:


  • 1 sculpey maquette of a dog
  • 1 laser scan of maquette, about 1 million polys, including all fur details (no uvs)
  • 1 low resolution model of the dog, modelled in maya, using the hi-res scan as a template (good uvs). This will be used for rigging, animation and rendering with (hopefully) a displacement map from zbrush.
  • Maya 7, mentalray and zbrush 2
My plan:


  • To import the low res dog into zbrush
  • Import the hi-res dog into zbrush and generate a displacement map based off the difference between the two surfaces.
My question:

Thanks for any help,

Mike

#2

ZBrush can’t create displacement maps for unrelated (arbitrary) meshes. ZMapper, however, allows you to create a normal map for such meshes. There’s info in the ZMapper manual about how to do this.

#3

Hi Aurick,

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

I’ve spent the last 24 hours trawling through the manual, and googling zmapper walkthroughs, but I still get stuck at the same point. Here’s my process,


  1. import hi-res geo, no uvs
  2. go into zmapper and capture current mesh
  3. back in zbrush, choose a 2d brush first, then import low-res geo, good uvs
  4. in zmapper, create projected normal map and I get an error, Mesh must be composed of multiple sub division levels.
It seems to want to project the hi-res detail from the low-res model’s hi division levels, rather than the high resolution model. I think I’m missing something quite basic here, but I’m new to zmapper (obviously!)

Thanks again,

Mike

#4

Mike,

Im not sure if you have a copy of maya- but if you do I know there are two options:

a. the new surface sampler (maya 7), does exactly what you want, analyzes differences is two meshes and creates a displacement or normal map.

b. the plugin xy shrinkwrap. Ive never used this, but it seems to be more stable than the surface sampler and does the same thing. This is what zack petroc uses in his zbrush dvd.

#5

All you have to do is divide the model once and then return to subdivision level 1. You now have a model with multiple subdivision levels. :slight_smile:

#6

Hey thanks Aruck and Defage! Looks like I now have four options! I went back to my original plan and managed to get great looking displacements and normals in maya 6 folloeing the instructions at www.drone.org. I’ll probably finish the project using this method now, I’ve done two characters out of four.

Once things settle down here, I’ll be sure to check out zmapper, surface sampler and xy shrinkwrap. It took about 24 solid hours to get fast with my current technique, and I don’t want to stop and switch to another method now that I’m half done.

Anyway, thanks for the helpful replies guys,

-Mike

(I did ude zbrush to clean up the 1mil poly meshes a little though. The maquettes had really flat feet)