I have a bump map that i painted that looks pretty good when i make it into an alpha and then view it on my mesh. But i cannot see the bumps on the edges when im spinning my mesh in different angles, due to the nature of bumps not giving TRUE surface detail, just an illusion of surface detail. So what i want to do is convert this bump into actual displaced geometry. It looks sharp and crisp as a bump, on my mesh that is 1.3 million polys already…but when i try to apply displacement, the mesh looks like crap, all pixelated and low quality where the bump is. I tried taking my geo up one more subd level, but it makes it into a 5.5 million poly mesh, which when i try to apply displacement to that, it tells me “insufficient core memory” and stops. How can i get the super sharp detail from the bump map to be displaced into my mesh, and then displaced out as a high quality map that I can use in maya? Ive been struggling for 2 whole days now. Any and all help is appreciated. Thanks
The problem is that textures are 8 bit and displacements need to be 16 bit to get good quality. And yes – if the bump map shows details that are smaller than the polygons it’s being applied to, then you’re not going to get a crisp transfer of detail to the geometry even if the map was 16 bit.
Here’s something you could try, though:
- Hide half the mesh.
- Press Tool>Clone
- Press Tool>Geometry>Delete Hidden
- Press Tool>Morph Target>StoreMT
- Subdivide the mesh and apply the displacement map.
- Switch to the clone of the tool and reverse mesh visibility.
- Repeat steps 3-5
You’ll now have two meshes with the displacement map applied. You should now be able to continue your detailing, then use MultiDisplacement 2 to create your displacement maps as Floating Point 32 BIT images. That will allow the two maps to be merged together again cleanly in an image editor.
ive tried the first 4 steps, and im able to get pretty close to the resolution im looking for. However, im not sure how to get back to the other side of my mesh. How do i reverse visibility? And how would i be able to reverse the visibility if i deleted half of my mesh, because it seems as though the clone operation is cloning only the visible part of my mesh, and disregarding the hidden part, and where exactly does the morph target part come into the whole equation? I dont really understand. I appreciate the help though, and await your response. Thanks
Helllllo???
If you Clone the tool then you’ve created a copy of it in your Tool palette. That copy still has the whole geometry because you made the clone before you deleted the hidden points.
To reverse visibility, you hold down Ctrl+Shift and drag a small box someplace on the empty canvas. See the Practical Guide, Quick Reference Guide, or the Help system built into ZBrush for more info.
My steps told you to store a morph target because you’ll need it if you intend to create displacement maps for the model. Because you’ve deleted parts of your mesh, you can’t import the original geometry anymore before you create the displacement map. By storing a morph target before you subdivide the mesh, you can still restore the original mesh for that part of the model by switching back to the morph target before you create the displacement map.