ZBrushCentral

Weird Normal Maps

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hello!

So. I'm having a problem with my normal maps comin out of Zbrush 4. I'm using GoZ with Maya 2011, but maya's definitely not the problem, because the normal maps are clearly not right. I'm modeling a building for a school project and my sculpt in zbrush looks fine, but when I create the normal maps and use GoZ to bring it into Maya and render, you can see that the normals have this weird roundness to the flat surfaces even though they definitely don't in my sculpt. It's really frustrating. Here's what it looks like in ZBrush:

zbrush.JPG

As far as the zbrush settings, i've played with "adaptive" and "smooth UV" but neither of them help. The normal map i've posted here has adaptive and smoothUV off. (best results I've gotten so far) Thanks in advance for the help! :-D -Raph

Attachments

normals.JPG

viewport.JPG

render.JPG

#2

you need to break those edges before you bake or export out the mesh into another application and bake there. Zbrush considers everything to have a 180 degree smoothing angle at bake. That is why it is warping the edges. Zbrush has never done well with hard edges.
If you change your smoothing in maya to 180 and look at the mesh with a flat color you should see the same errors.

You should also orient your UV shells on 90 degree angles if possible. I don’t know what you’re planning on doing with your model but that unwrap can use a TON of clean up.

#3

By “breaking those edges” you mean in the UVs? or in the actual model?

And yes, I know the UVs are super ugly xD but I’ve got two characters to work on as well as the rest of this scene and I figured I’d just get the seams done in Maya and let UV Master do the rest in ZBrush (I can’t seem to get RoadKill to run for some reason, and my maya results needed a lot of tweaking anyway).

Since this is all due in 2 weeks, and the class is almost entirely focused on concept and the prof is completely uninterested in technique I figured I’d rush things. As long as I could get things to look half-decent.

I definitely need to do a technical degree of some sort after university. Philosophy and concepts are great, but I hate having ideas and being unable to execute them the way I imagine them.

Sorry for the rant, and thank you for the response! So… I’ll try breakin’ up those UVs and seeing if it helps :slight_smile:

#4

you can try the UV’s, but I believe zbrush will require you to actually break the edges in the geo.

#5

Yeah, I tried it and it didn’t work. It bugs me a bit, but what I ended up doing is just beveling the problematic edges in maya by a small amount. Didn’t want to run the risk of separating walls by accident during sculpt/detailing.

Thanks for the help again!