Hi there,
I need to displace some snowflakes over a surface, but I don’t want to put them in Zbrush, since I won’t be able to modify them afterwards (position, rotation or scale them individually).
So my plan is to use a texture program like substance painter and lay the snowflakes there over the surface. Then export 4k displacement map.
I want to apply that displacement map in ZBrush, but in an HD geometry (because I can’t get so high polygon count with standard subdivision levels).
But I can’t get the displacement map to be applied to H geometry, only in standard subdivision geometry…
Any tips or workflows suggestions?
Thank you veyr much for your time.
Cheers.
Can you really not subdivide to 16 million points? That’s the absolute maximum resolution that a 4K map would support.
Well, I have to do this for a 3D printed piece, and the displacement texture should be applied on a relatively big size (in real world measures), so I usually get the highest polycount possible and then decimate to the desired polycount for the desired detail size.
I said 4k textures, but I could go higher in case I need more resolution. 16 million polys may be not enough for that.
OK. But, if I remember correctly, HD Geometry is not taken into account for decimating. You may have to consider splitting your mesh into small parts if you need a higher resolution.
Based on this tutorial, there are ways to convert HD geometry to real geometry for exportation, so there is no reason not to be able to be decimated, I assume.
But my main question is unanswered, Is there a way to apply a displacement map to HD subdivisions?, because I can’t find the way to make that happen.
Thanks in advance.
I don’t know of a way to apply a displacement map to HD Geometry. And the tutorial you show involves splitting the model in order to convert the HD Geometry to regular geometry. That involves splitting into pieces that your computer can handle (i.e. not above the maximum polys per mesh for your system). If you are going to have to do that then you might as well split the model before applying the displacement map and save yourself some work.
Not only displacement, noiseMaker doesn’t work with HD geometry either.
At this point, I’ve asked Zbrush guys with the tag #askZbrush for a solution to this, although I don’t expect my question to be answered.
I’ll have to split the piece into pieces and see how the hell I could apply the same displacement and don’t see any seams between them O_o
I’m really stuck with this.
I’ve subdivided the surface till 16million and it’s not enough resolution. If I just could use, at least, one HD subdivisions, it may be enough. But HD Geometry doesn’t accetp either noiseMaker or displacement maps, grrrrrr.