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blender 2.41 + Zbrush2

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#1

Hi there,

Since i evaluated Blender in conjunction with Zbrush this weekend, i thought id share my findings. Blender has seen some serious changes in the past months, which made me feel like i should give the opensource app another try.

I made a little project so i could use it for learning purposes. I have made a 5k poly basemesh in Zb with Zspheres. I then created a high poly model (1,5 mio poly) and used the new Zbrush plugins to create the following maps using GUV tiles;

  • a high detail normal map
  • a displacement map
  • a color map (mixed with cavity map created in Zmapper)

Then i took it all to blender to see if id figure out how to render them. What surprise : It was totally painless! With some basic tutorials i managed to render out the following pic using the blender internal render with ambient occlusion. Please note its not art but only a proof of concept :wink:

blender render.jpg

It is very easy to paint all sort of maps in Zbrush and to assign them in blender. While blender does not support some popular features such as SSS and micropoly displacements it appears to be a rock solid application worth a look for every hobbyist such as myself. Also there appears to be a huge user base with tutorials and a lot of movement in development. After all i have found that Zbrush and Blender work very smooth together.

Hope this might encourage some more people to evaluate blender :wink:

E.

Attachments

blender.jpg

#2

Thanks for sharing! Looks excellent! And I like your proof of conzept 8-).
Cheers
Lemo

#3

doh, hope it works now, reuploaded them.

#4

Would you care to share the material settings? Did you just use the bump channel or is the normal map working properly in 2.41? I’m hoping they bring micro poly into 2.42 but that’s a long shot…I’ve been playing with Blender off and on the past few months and I like it a lot but right now I’m using Cinema 4d 9 and displacement wise it’s leaps and bounds ahead but I love the fact that I won’t have to pay to upgrade Blender unlike my other render apps. :smiley:

#5

I’m also interested in how you set up the displacement. Last time I tried it, Blender’s native renderer did a horrible job with it - though I can’t say for sure that user-error wasn’t the cause. :wink:

#6

hmmm, i really just mapped it to displacement with a displacement value of 0,7. While the normal map would be assigned to the “Nor” slot with value 1 or more (and in texture editor you need to activate “normal map”). Something i noted though that the normal map does not really behave correctly with specular highlights. Maybe i need to invert one of the color channels for blender, need to check that. The displacement map works only nice on high SD, so contrary to the normal map i used a subsurf modifier with 4 SDs at render time (5 crash my machine). here are two more shoths :

displacement only

displacement only UV subsurf.jpg

I assume ud get the best results if you do a displacment map for the lower SD levels and a normal map for the highres details on top of that. But I need to test that. However some micropoly displacments would be very nice!

Attachments

normal map only.jpg

#7

Displacement maps work with a sub-d level of 4? 5 crashes my computer too. I’m quite versed in blender, it would be great when they encorporate micropoly displacement. However if you want to make SSS, there is a make human fast sss shader script. Its not the greatest since its dependant on the objects vertex paints. you can use the nodes in the latest cvs version to add addtional controls to it as well. :slight_smile:

#8

Thanks for the explination. I tested it before with just the bump channel of the material and got some so so result, I’m going to have to mess with Blender some more. :slight_smile:

#9

Do you have to up the sub-d level to 4 if your using normal maps? If you don’t this would be a great way of creating bump maps. With more complex scenes a sub d level of 4 may crash the scene. Also using the 2.42’s CVS’s angle based flattening you could get very accurate unwraps rather painlessly. If zbrush can uses that for texture placement, you might even get better results! For your lighting you can use area lights to produce more dramatic lighting with faster render time, than AO. Its a softer light so it gives a somewhat similar result.

#10

for normal maps it should be fine to simply apply the “set smooth” without a subsurf modifier. I have found blenders documentation a bit confusing here, as it is refered to as a displacement option, which it isnt really since the mesh wont change.
But for displacement maps you should have as many polygons as possible, because the mesh will change at rendertime. BTW where can one see the 2.42 features?

#11

I do not known if you need to be member, but I download the CVS builds at blender3d.org. There is a testing section of the forum. The link is on the main blender page as well to the forums. It can be tricky trying to figure out which build is the latest. Also not all builds work nicely. My build is from last month, I haven’t kept up to date with latest advancements. The blender team works fast.

#12

Hello!

Could you make a tutorial, or just explain me how did you do the material/texture “transfer” from Zbrush to Blender?

I’m trying to use the projection master to paint one of froyd’s natural wood materials into GUVtiles. But all I get is a black texture. Maybe it’s not the good way to do it… How can I use that material in Blender?

Mainly I want to use it as a color map in Blender, but I wonder if a normal map can be made from a material like this…

Help me please!!

#13

hi there, you can only transfer textures, not materials. Textures need to be flipped vertically in blender and mapping set to UV, then you can load the image into the color channel. A solution to your problem might be to bake textures from Zbrush materials (in Zbrush). These will carry the color information of the Zbrush material which you can then use in blender. There was a texture baker plugin somewhere on ZBC. Youd need to download it and try if that works.

If you got further problems let me know

#14

Hi after seeing Elephant Dreams made in Blender 2.41, I’ve been dabbling with Blender a lot latley! Its a lot of fun and I’d really like to read up on the tutorials you mntioned above. Is there any chance you could point me to these tutorials?
Upham :slight_smile:

#15

http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Main_Page

Biggest list of links I know. THe blender wiki! I think its all of them. I have gotten both displacement maps and object based normal maps to work in blender. Each has its quirks though. Unwrapping with the new ABF unwrap tool is awesome! More flexibile than guv tiles since your not limited to using zbrush for texturing (although this can be made useless if you use zapplink I think).