ZBrushCentral

Combining normal maps???

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi,

I’m kinda working on a project and have already started sculpting my model. It’s basically just correcting the mesh and fleshing him out but I was hoping to do all the details such as wrinkles, pores, etc… separately in photoshop and somehow merge the two normal maps (the original fleshed out one and the wrinkle one) together.

Anyway, I have a few question on the subject and on related stuff.

  1. I notice that when I export a displacement or normal map from Zbrush that I get the subdivision polygons within the image. But, when I take it to photoshop, I find that I can do a gaussian blur on the texture to smooth it while still retaining the look I want. So, how can I get a smoothed out version of the image without having to taking it into Photoshop and blurring it (cos blurring it in photoshop can also cause problems with texturing at the UV edges washing out)? I don’t want to up the subdivision before I export the map, either, because the subdivided polygon look can still show up in some sections of the image. There should be some sort of ‘infinite subdivision’ option when exporting textures.

  2. If I create an AUV texture in Zbrush, flesh out the model then later decide to add a different UV map for the bump mapping only, is this possible?

  3. Once I’ve done my sculpting and have created a bump map for my model, can I export the two maps as one normal map WITHOUT having to apply the bump map as a displacement first?

  4. Is it possible to mix normal mapping and bump mapping together in Lightwave 8.5 (If anyone uses it)? I’ve tried and the normal map overrides the bump map. Is there a work-around perhaps?

  5. Is there any way of transferring a displacement/normal map from one UV map to another? IE I have made a AUV map and then decided that I would create a new hand-made unwrapped UV map but don’t want to lose the sculpting from the original AUV map generated in Zbrush.

Oh, and I’m using Lightwave 8.5, in case anyone has advice outside of Zbrush. And I would appreciate if we could avoid answers that involve “just wait until they release Zbrush 2.5” because I do know that there are tools that can help me out in this future version but I prefer not to wait. (Don’t let this seem like I am ungrateful of any advice you provide, though)

I might have some more questions later.

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,
Revanto

#2

I’ll tell you a good place to start to find solutions to your problems. Head over to the zclassroom by going here: http://www.pixologic.com/zbrush/education/zclassroom/class.php

To find out how to roll your bump map into your normal map scroll to the very bottom of “texturing with zbrush” and check out the zmapper walkthrough by Ryan Kinglien :+1: