ZBrushCentral

odd normal map baking error

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

hi all, i’m getting some strange results when baking normal maps, please see the images below.

my intended workflow was as follows:

  • low poly UV’d mesh in 3dsmax - goz
  • sculpt in z brush
  • bake normal map in zbrush
  • goz low poly sculpt to 3ds max

nothing strange about that workflow as far as i can tell. the problem is baking the normal map, it comes out like this:

my uv layout looks fine in 3dsmax with no flipped faces or overlapping geometry. any help appreciated! thanks:)
(also when i bake a height map i get the same rendering error)

Attachments

rock_bank_2g.jpg

#2

Go to ‘Tool > Texture Map > Create’ and click ‘New From UV Check’ and see if there is any red in the resulting texture map. If there is, ZBrush doesn’t like your UV map. ZBrush doesn’t like any of the UV islands touching the border of the UV space. If that is the case, then scale or move them in a bit.

#3

thanks for the reply will give it a shot and let you know :slight_smile:

yep scaling the mapping away from the borders fixed the problem - many thanks!

seems like a bit of an odd ‘feature’ of zbrush, because in the games industry we’d like to bake out tiling textures. might bring this up somewhere on the feedback forum.

i don’t really want o have to resort to using xnormal.

anyway cheers again.

#4

Your welcome. I’m glad that solved your problem. Regarding your comment about tiling textures, and I don’t know if you have seen this or not, is Environment With Tate Mosesian tuorials in ZClassroom. If you havn’t seen them, they might be of some interest to you.

#5

thanks for the link - i’ll check it out :slight_smile:

edit:

yep theres some good stuff in there. even though quite a lot of it is not directly applicable to what i’m doing (mainly because i’m using a cropped photo as my base image, not hand crafting every element) he covers some features of zbrush i would not have found by just messing around in the package…as the old saying goes, every days a school day :slight_smile:

cheers again!