ZBrushCentral

Can't export readable 32bit maps from the multi map exporter in 4R3

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Using ZBrush 4R3, Photoshop CS5, Nuke 6.3v6 64bit, Maya 2012x64, V-Ray for Maya version 2.15.01 - revision 18407

I never had this issue in 4R2b. After upgrading our users to 4R3 we’ve noticed that both 4K and 8K 32 bit maps are now unreadable when generated from the multi map exporter. 8K maps are unreadable in either Photoshop or Nuke. 4k maps are readable in Photoshop, but not in Nuke until they are opened in Photoshop and saved back out over themselves. The Nuke error I get is "Read error on strip 8191; got 32756 bytes, expected 32768. The Photoshop error for the same 8K file is “Unexpected end of document”. Basically what those errors are telling me is that the multi map exporter is not writing a complete map. With the 4K maps, they can’t be opened in Nuke but can be if they are first opened in Photoshop (they don’t give me the same error as the 8K maps) then saved back over themselves thus writing out the rest of the information that was supposed to be in the file. I need to open these files in Nuke so I can write them back out as tiled .exr’s which are much more efficient. With most of our models having 10 or 15 objects each with 4 or more UV tiles per object, the need to use the multi-map exporter is obvious. The error doesn’t occur with the traditional export method but that has been determined as unreliable for 32bit maps as the maps it generates have extremely higher pixel values and explode the model vs. their multi-map exported counter part which do not. 32bit maps are part of our pipeline so 16bit is not an option.

So my questions are this: Does anyone else have this issue with 4R3, as all our users here do. Is Pixologic aware of this issue, and is there going to be any kind of update/fix?

At this point we are relegated to only 4K maps that have to be opened and saved in Photoshop to be readable. Even with batch processing in Photoshop, with the huge amount of maps we have to deal with this is not ok. We will basically have to roll back to 4R2b to avoid the issue but that is not desirable either. I have included a screenshot of my displacement settings but they should be pretty standard and worked just fine with 4R2b, so I don’t think they’re the problem. I also included the errors from Nuke reading the 4 and 8K maps as well as the Photoshop 8K map read error.

Help!

and thanks in advance for your time.

Attachments

displacement_settings.jpg

file_read_error_4K.jpg

file_read_error_8K.jpg

file_read_error_CS5.jpg

displacement_settings.jpg

file_read_error_4K.jpg

file_read_error_8K.jpg

file_read_error_4K.jpg

file_read_error_8K.jpg

#2

I already answered this when you posted it the first time. Did you do as I suggested? Also, you might try turning off Adaptive to see if that makes any difference.

#3

All apologies for the double post, and thanks for getting back to me. I realized that the email I had in my user account was old and no longer in use and therefore didn’t get your other reply, I then updated it and posted a more complete list of the problem with screenshots when I read the forum rules for posting technical issues. I know previously you said that

which I am interpreting as the fact that there should be no difference between the two versions of ZBrush. To which I can only say we didn’t have this problem in the previous version, we switched versions mid project and have maps from 4R2b that we were able to generate that we can’t now with the same ztool as well as any new model we sculpt on. I tried both using the “create and export map” button as you suggested and turning off adaptive. While of course with adaptive turned off the maps generated much faster, but neither map opened in Photoshop or Nuke and gave the same errors I already posted. I have tried this on at least 3 different models myself, other users have tried it on their models (we each have several characters assigned to us) and we all have gotten the same results. The one thing I did not realize however is that while we are using ZBrush 4R3 we are using their “floating license” variant and that often gets it’s updates much later than the standard ZBrush release so I guess there could be some discrepancy there. I just realized this was the case after talking to one of our IT personnel. So I guess if there’s no other way to solve this and we’re the only folks with the issue, then I’ll have to open a ticket with the Support Center per your suggestion.

Thanks for your help. If you have any other ideas I’m completely open to try anything else.

#4

OK, many thanks for your reply. When you submit your ticket please make sure that you state:

  1. That this is an issue you are experiencing with the floating license version of ZBrush 4R3.
  2. That it is a ZBrush issue when exporting 32bit displacement maps of size 4K or higher. (It is not directly related to using MME.)
  3. That you have already posted in the ZBC forum and that I suggested you contact support.

This should expedite your enquiry.

HTH,

#5

Perfect, thanks for all your help!