Or nearly blank.
I have my sculpted model. I change my subdivision level down from 5 to 2, open the displacemnt map controls, turn up the map size, and hit create. Zbrush thinks, and makes the map. The problem is that the map contains next to nothing. If I take it into photoshop and level the heck out of it, some things appear, but not much. Now, previous to my last work/edit session on the model, everything was working fine generating the displacments.
Any idea what I did?
The first thing to do is check for a stray point. Go to your highest level and Alt+Click on the canvas. The model should center itself and mostly fill the canvas. If it doesn’t, then you have a stray point that is skewing the displacement calculation.
The model centers perfectly.
just for kicks, I created a new texture and assigned it to the model. I painted on it with the RGB brush, and the normals of some of the object tured inside out.
I went back a few model saves and found one that worked. Apparently the model broke while I was using projection master and a custom alpha to ‘carve’ some designs into the model.
Are you remembering to always save your models at resolution level 1? Failure to do this can cause corruptions.
Ok, I think I figured out what my problem is, but I don’t know how to fix it.
If I set my model to lvl 1 and change the intensity slider for the displacements to be generated, the model IN zbrush changes. What I suspect is that I somehow caused a displacement to be active on the model in zbrush, so now when I go to generate a displacement map, z brush gets confused and generates a blank map.
Does this make any sense?
if it does make sense, can I tell zbrush to apply the active displacement map to th emodel geometry?
First: Intensity has nothing to do with displacment map generation. That’s why it, Mode, etc. are set a little away from the other options in the Displacement menu. They are only used for displaying a map; not for creating one.
To apply a map as geometry, you should view the displacement mapping tutorial that’s built into ZBrush. It’s the one with the telephone, found in the Help system, and shows exactly how to do this. Or you can do a search here at ZBC for where I’ve talked about ApplyDispMap.
I’m actually running into the same issue. When I create the map Zbrush does the calculation but the map appears to be a solid gray color. I also brought it into photoshop and get the same thing, vith a high Bright./Cont. I start to see a bit of detail but the smaller bits get totally lost…
Did you come up with a remedy for this? I wen’t through the telephone tutorial and I seem to be doing everything correctly.
Hey folks…
Maybe I’m stating the obvious, but before you generate your displacement map, did you take it down to res 1, and create a nice big new (2048x2048 or bigger) texture, and then hit GUV tiling? Also, be sure “Quick 3d Edit” is OFF.
I can’t tell you how many times a made a nice texture that failed to map properly in my external app (Maya) because I failed to assign UVs in ZBrush first (which is a simple matter of pressing a button).
I hope this helps…
Yes I have done that. I’ve been thinking about this for a while now and i think i may know the route of the problem, butr i’ve yet to find a solution.
The original mesh that was imported was my level 1 mesh. When i bumped the sub d’s to 6 i deleted everything below level 2, which was what i originally imported into Zbrush from Max. Could this have anything to do with it. Being that now the lowest level mesh is something that was altered in Zbrush?
Best,
Billy
Well, when you deleted the original level 1 that also made it impossible for you to restore your base mesh. (Going to level 1 prior to calculation is not the same as restoring the base.)
Try going to the new level 1 (formerly level 2) and activating Tool>Geometry>Cage prior to creating the map. This is the only remaining method available to you for restoring the base.