ZBrushCentral

Creating a bump map after the fact

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hey everyone,

I have quick questions for all of you supper users out there. So, I am very green to exporting and creating Displacement maps as well as Bump maps.

I have been reading through the online Z3 manual and have realized that I made a huge mistake. So, I divided my mesh up to Sub-Level 6. At level six I added all of my skin details. I.E pores, small skin wrinkles etc. using Zsub, and Zadd. I now know that I should have created a bump map and added all of these small details there instead of in my sub-division levels.

So here is the question I have, is there a way that I can some how transfer these fine details from Level six to a bump map. Is there some way I could use cavity masking, mask by intensity, by Hue or by saturation to some how create a bump map?

Have any of you out there run into this problem? I was thinking that I could just use the Cavity masking and invert my selection and then just paint using different gray scale colors to achieve it. Is this the right way to go about this?

Any thoughts out there? Or is there a better way to accomplish this task?

Thank you all in advanced. :frowning:

Sincerely

CC909

#2

Go to level 5 or 4. Create a displacement map. Delete the higher subdivision levels. You now have a bump map. :slight_smile:

#3

Aurick,

So, what you are saying is that I move my subdivisions down one. I.E if I have 6 sub div levels and all of my fine details are at level 6 go to level 5 and create a displacement map. Then delete level 6. Now I will then go back down to level 1 to generate the rest of my displacement maps and normal maps as usual? So, is the displacement map that is generated from the level 6 sub div actually a gray scale map? Or do I need to convert it over in Photoshop? If so, should this map be generated at 32bit like all of the rest of the displacements?

Thanks Aurick for all of your help, today and in the past!

Cc909

#4

Difference mapping calculates the differences between the current subdivision level and the highest. So if you have a 6 level model and create the map at level 5, then only the details that are inherent to level 6 will be in that map. Then when you delete level 6 and go to level 1, the second map has only the details from levels 1-5.

The map will be a 16-bit grayscale alpha, just like any other displacement map. Unless you’re using ZBrush 2 and Multi Displacement 2, in which case the map will be whatever you told ZBrush to make.

Out of curiosity, if you’re creating a normal map then why are you using a bump map as well? That’s kind of redundant, since normal maps are better than bump maps.

#5

Aurick,

Thank you for telling me that. Like I said I am very new and green to the Zbrush think. Not to mention the generation and implementation of those maps. So, you were saying that if you use a normal map, that a bum map is not needed? Is it also the same if you are using a normal map, that you do not need to use a displacement maps? Any ways, the information that you provided will help me in the future should I ever need to generate these maps. Thanks again. CC909

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