MAJOR ISSUES with 32bit and MAYA

[fizzy]

I’ve had this issue for ages and every thread I ever find on this never solves it.

I’m using OSX snow Leopard and Zbrush 4r2. I want to export a displacement map in 32 bit format, mainly because I hate having to deal with the alpha gain and offset each time.
But I can’t ever get 32bit tiffs to load into Maya. I always get “file failed to load” error message.
I’ve tried converting to an EXR in Photoshop, I’ve tried a 3 channel 32 bit and I’ve tried unchecking and checking my tiffloader plugin in Maya. None of these work.
The texture does seem to exist in Maya when I render but it’s got no definition. I thought it may be the alpha gain but then I thought 32bits don’t need you to play with the alpha gain you just stick to 2.2.

Does anyone have a solution to this?

Pete B

[Trist]

Are you choosing to use 32bit displacement maps just because you don’t want to setup the shader manually in Maya? If so, and you don’t need the higher quality of 32bit why don’t you try using the GoZ function? This will automatically configure the settings of the effect in your 3D app of choice and it’s usually pretty accurate.

Btw: I sometimes get a similar error message loading 32bit maps in Max 2012. Perhaps it’s a common Autodesk bug?

Anyway, keep in mind our workflow process to other apps will improve once we get the VDM features in Z4R3, for release next week. VERY exciting upgrade.

Hope this has helped.

[Trist]

Mate, if you havn’t already, get your R3 update and check out the new vector displacement feature. For too long I had struggled with height maps that produced artifacts and were generally useless for production in Max. But this…this is just incredible! A real game changer for my work!

Really not hard to figure out the settings but be sure to read the documentation as variables in ZB depend on the rendering engine you use externally.

Trust me, you will be amazed at the accuracy of the effect!

Good luck and let me know if you are having difficulties getting it working.