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Problem with MAYA 7 or ME? begging for help!

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi Guys,

Firstly ,Any and all help will be greatly apreciated so thankyou in advance & please excuse my frustrated typing after 5+ weeks of trying & going thru this site and tutorials up to my ears, i still cant figure where my problem lyes with my displacement maps in Maya 7. (My Show reel is due in 2weeks and would really love to have this on it). I do know about most of the threads on here for DisMaps, so please dont flame me i have honsetly tried my best to follow each one in there ways to get my own to work.
I have tried to explain as best i can, mentaly exhausetd right now. I will also upload my Files if anyone wishes to veiw them if it will help???

My PC Specs -
AMD 2100+ 1GB of RAM - Win XP Pro & Service pack 2
9600xt Vid Card, 10GB+ free space all untill i upgrade BUT…
same effect happening on my laptop which is AMD turion 64 with 1.5GB of Ram & X700 vid card with Win Xp home

Ok my plans of attack are/have been.

1. Model in MAYA 7 & also UV MAP in MAYA 7 ( then export as .obj) [color=Black]I have made seperate maps for each part of the model e.g torso, head etc, they are all in there own co-ordinates ( i saw this on a tut somwhere).

2. Import obj Then check for over lapping UV’s ( i’m sure i have tried both pressing the GUV tile button and also without & also making new texture at this stage).

  1. Store Morph Target.

  2. Subdivide about 5-6 times ( round 2mill poly mark) Should i have the Smooth Uv’s checked?

  3. Use projection master for details ( my last trial quickly made star and other pattern to do test render in MAYA after spending to much time doing so much work to find i didnt check for UV overlapping).

6. Steppin back down to Div-1 & switching to base model create Dis Map( i have tried cage here & re-importing original mesh) I have tried ADAPTIVE and also Dsubpix 2&4 & map sizes 1024 x1024, 2046 x 2046x & also 4092 x 4092 & intensity at 8 ( do i need to have the MODE button clicked on or off?) i have tried both pretty sure.

7. After Alpha is created i flip V & then export out ( taking note of the Displacment number).

8. I then export out the base mesh from Zbrush & import into MAYA [color=Black]( i have kept it Quads, i tried both having Uv’s merged and not).

This is where i get a little confused - "Do i have to convert Poly to Sub D surface at level 1 etc??? I saw mentioned in another tut that you can check some shader box or somthing to render as a sub D??? i cant seem to find this option??
Continuing on…

9. Take the Alpha ( Dis Map) into Photoshop and convert to 16bit RGB Tiff file.

  1. I create a Phong Shader & middle click to add the Displacement shader & add the new 16bit RGB dismap.

11.I make the alpha Gain the same as the exported size from Zbrush & type in the =-file1.alphaGain/2; to make the exact half of the alpha Gain in the Alpha Offset.
[color=Black][color=Black]
12. I make sure the Feature Displacemt map is OFF.

  1. [color=Black][color=Black]I open the approximation editor and create Displace Approx & the Subdivision Approx. Making it Spatial & preview fine quality, min Divisions of 3 & max of 5 in Displace Approx and then again Spatial and min divisions on 4 & max of 7 in Subdivision Approx. In both make them non view dependant & Edge length 0.100 And in the conversion box i leave “NONE” selected

14. Change the renderer to Mental Ray & render, this is what i come out with

As you will see there displacemnt is not showing

[]Bboy-Zbrush.jpg

Thanks for taking time to read my post

#2

Your not the only having problems with mental ray in maya 7. Iam too. :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: Iin fact I was getting to the point of nearly throwing the damn PC out of the window. Although I did discover something intersting yesterday after another multi hour session trying to get it to work, mental ray doesn’t always displace on my version all the time. Thats to say sometimes it’ll displace and other time without changing a thing it wont!

Soon as I have time, I’ll try another install of it and hopefully that’ll sort things. I did get the pixolator head and sword to render and if it’d be of use (providing I can duplicate it again) I’ll send over the file with my settings.

Wayne…

#3

have you

checked out the new walk thru pdf by Scott Spencer on maya and zb?

checked out the Displacement exporter with the Multi-displace2 plugin?

Also have ya read thru the Displacement exporter thread in this forum? Chock full of info!

I know you said you’ve seen it all but sometimes things sneak by us!:smiley:

#4

Hey guys,
The values you entered in the alpha gain (maya) like the tuts tell. May or may not work with the numbers you got from the Alpha depth factor in Zbrush.

Reason is that if your scale is off or you had color managment on in photoshop or several other reasons.

Answer is to keep increasing the Alpha Gain number until you start to see a displacment in Mental ray.

Also make sure you set your alpha offset to be half the valuse of the Alpha gain. Expression for the Alpha Offset value = file1.alphaGain/2;

You can also try increasing the contrast on your RGB disp image in Photoshop.

Another hint is to try Parametric insted of spacial in the approx editor.set max at like 5 or 6 for lots of small detail. It’s gonna be slow but it works for me.

Also export a caged version of your zbrush mesh. Helps when you smooth as a poly object or covert to subD will work either way.

HTH
Craig

#5

Well I for one have follwed every tut to the letter and what frys my brain is that wqhile I used to get the pixolofgic head and sword working, now with the same setting, software and machine it refuses to displace.

I’ve tried what every tut says the alpha gain etc should be (and actually a few ‘in the dark’ trys just to see if THAT worked) all to no avail. I’m pretty sure somethings gone screwy as mental ray has now stopped displacing anything at all…which is obviously a bid weird.

I’m going for a new maya install tomorrow and hopefully thing’s improve then. till then I’m discovering the wonderful world of Silo.:smiley:

Wayne…

#6

Hi, Yes i have gone thru that Video Tutorial by Scott Spencer extensively to the point where i can do all of his steps blind folded

This is why i am so frustrated i am unsure of what i am not doing to get the correct displacement, can anyone please help me out - Any of you Displacemnt guru’s out there i am more then willing to send you my files so you can have a look at them and see what i might have missed. tonight i will try and rar my files and post them up also, for now gotta get to college but i will check from there for replys.

thanks in advance

#7

hi,

I meantthis one actually…it’s the latest tutorial.

The Displacement Exporter…lastest version.

The Displacement Exporter questions and TS thread.