ZBrushCentral

Displacement map has almost no value

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

This is my first time using displacement, so bare with me. :wink: I did project three displacement maps in zbrush and they all came out great, and I can render them in max just fine. But now I’m projecting the torso of the character, and the resulting texture looks almost flat grey. almost no value. I can see a hint of dark grey but it doesn’t do anything for me in max. Is there something wrong with this model? An option that I haven’t tweaked?

Thanks!

#2

It’s impossible to answer without more information, like the steps you’ve been following and the settings you’ve been using. We don’t even know if you’re using 3.1, 3.12 or 3.12B, or if you’re using something MD3 or Displacement Exporter.

#3

Hi, I’m using the latest zbrush 3.1 on windows. For the settings I use adaptive/smoothUV, exporting a 2048 texture. And yes, I use the displacement exporter. That’s basically all I do. The texture looks practically flat. I can’t see any detail unless I squint realy hard. Are there other options I haven’t discovered yet? What would potentially cause this? Is this a known problem? Thanks!

#4

Is it the map that you can’t see the details in, or the render when you apply that map to a model?

Very often, a displacement map seems to have minimal detail when viewed with the naked eye. That’s because these maps have 16 bits of color depth – far more than the eye can see. Your map will use just the amount of that depth that is necessary to reproduce the displacements, and very often you will not be able to make much out when you view the map. But it should render just fine.

A quick test is to simply select the displacement map in the Alpha palette, clear the canvas, then press Alpha>Crop and Fill. You should see all your details on the resulting canvas.

If your rendering engine supports 32-bit maps you should consider using those instead. They can only be created using Multi Displacement 3 (in the Zplugin palette). You won’t view the map in ZBrush, as it’s exported directly to disk. You also shouldn’t open it in Photoshop because the format isn’t supported. But when you load it into your rendering engine you should get great results with less effort than is required for a 16-bit map. (No need to worry about the Alpha Displacement Factor when working with a 32-bit map.)