ZBrushCentral

Disp./bump maps,Blender,ZMapper,3DS MAX,please check it out!

ZBrush Usage Questions
#7

lol! too funny.
i attempting to have a mini tut made by “whomever” that would eliminate all of these questions in regards to max/zbrush displacement maps.

all i got was read the pipeline bs.
i am glad (and thankful) that you at least are having success in getting some answers to this. you snapshots are great along with your detailed descriptions.

please continue to post on your progress and any other little nuggets of wisdom you get.

#8

This was modeled in blender? Incredible?!?! Did you zbrush for the detail or it it all modeled detail?

As for your unwrap, make sure all of the islands fit in the square. If any islands are outside the 1 by 1 square they can cause issues when exported as an obj file. I would like to see some seam pictures so I can crit that. You seem to have way too many islands for your character and probably a ton of seams. You take care of those two issues and you should be able to take the model into any program without issues. Although you have to make sure you keep track of the orientation of the disp map and normal map.

This is top row quality modelling though, you should post either your wip or final image in the main forum.

#9

DarkEdge: The thing is,I was actually hoping to create a step by step tutorial for all those MAX users who has similiar problem. I’ve been trying to make those crazy maps working for about a week and a half now and still not much luck :frowning: Hopefully,I’ll get it working and make that tutorial if needed.

womball: The model wasn’t made in Blender :smiley: I used Mudbox for modeling and ZBrush for cleaning/smoothing/fixing some stuff and making the details. It’s still a WIP,though,got to work on the legs now…

About the unwrap.None of the “islands” are outside the square. Blender makes sure that all the parts fit right in there. As for seams,I don’t think that hey have anything to do with the problem. I used GUV in ZBrush and had the same result in MAX ( with GUV tiling,ZBrush breaks the model into small rectangles so if you press “UV Check” you’ll see your model all covered with seams :slight_smile: ) I also tried breaking the model in about 4-5 parts in Blender,the results were even worse.Those back spikes looked all messy and that’s why I try to unwrap them individually so to say.

As for the model itself,well,thanks I’m glad you like it :slight_smile: I’ve been using ZBrush for about two years now and never posted anything here. Don’t know why,though…

P.S. Since I posted the images I think it would be a good thing to mention that the model is based on one of the drawnings made by Brom. I already contacted him and he was kind enough to give the permission to use his art,so there shouldn’t be any troubles with all this copyright stuff :slight_smile:

#10

I have gotten really good results with the blender unwrap and they should be animation fool-proof. So any pose is possible. Are you using fix seam in zbrush?

#11

Unknown Artist - I don’t know if you want to or not, but if you send me your .ztl with no textures or alphas. I would be more than happy to trouble shoot your problem for you.

You can email it to [email protected] if you would like.

#12

womball: Yes,I use that option.

–E--: I would gladly do that,but the model is 31mb :confused: Don’t think I’ll be able to send it via e-mail services. Any other suggestions?

#13

even zipped up with no textures or alphas saved in the .ztl?

I can compress a .ztl with top sub d level around 2 million polys down to about a 16MB file when there are no textures or alphas or morph targets stored with it, when i use win rar at best settings.

#14

Okay,I had to delete some polys at the bottom of the model,but now it’s 10mb so hopefully everything will work.I’m about to send you the file :slight_smile:

#15

what about just over msn or aol IM? aol SN for me is E05B and msn is [email protected]

#16

Okay,let’s do it via MSN then.I’ve already added you.

#17

unknown artist-

i would like to encourage you to go ahead and make that tutorial…please!

would i be so selfish to say that even if the tutorial was just for me to go ahead and make it?
…unfortunately for you, yes! lol!

i have many irons in the fire but haven’t bothered with trying to figure out the max to zbrush back to max thing because there are others out there more intelligent than i that are having problems.

once you find a method that works, would/could you be soooo gracious to send me the method???
[email protected]

#18

One way to make a displacement map in zbrush:


  • Create/import a mesh that has multiple sub d levels.
  • Go to the lowest sub d level
  • Under tool – displacement set the DPRes to whatever map rez you want to create
  • Turn on adaptive
  • Turn on smooth UV
  • Hit Create DispMap
  • After it is done creating the map it will throw it into the alpha slot, but it wont select it
  • Download Displacement Exporter
  • Select your new displacement map under the alpha menu then click on DE Options, D16 button Quick Code DE-FCFK-EACADA-D16
  • You want to create a 1 channel, 16 bit, vertical flip yes, scale- auto, smooth –no, seamless –no, ch 1 range – full range ch1 res – full
  • Then export active set as a .tif to wherever you want on your computer
  • Do not edit this map in photoshop unless you know what you are doing!
  • If you want to use 32 bit float maps use code DE-LBEU-EAEAEA-R32
  • Export your lowest sub d level from zbrush to max to apply your displacement map to.
One way to apply your displacement map in max for viewing and rendering:


  • Import your lowest sub d level from zbrush as an .obj to max
  • Convert it to an editable poly
  • You may have to select all the polys and set all their smoothing groups to just one.
  • In your editable poly options in the modifier stack under subdivision displacement set it to high in the presets
  • Assign a turbosmooth modifier to it with its render iterations set to mach the same poly count as the highest sub d level in zbrush
  • Remember zbrush counts in quads and max counts in tris, so your render polygon count will need to be double that of zbrush polygon count!!!
  • Add a displace modifer above that
  • Turn on luminance center leave it at .5
  • Load your displacement map in the image – bitmap
  • Turn on blur to .001 (if any at all) if you find you have tiny steps in your final render a 16bit displacement map should get rid of these but it doesn’t always work.
  • You will have to mess around with the strength under your displace modifier until you get it look like how it did in zbrush. Should be anywhere from .5 to 5
  • Turn on use existing mapping.
  • Now you can render it or start cranking up the iterations in turbo smooth on the view port to see it real-time in the view port.
Some suggestions to keep in mind when creating displacement maps:


  • You want a clean UV layout. You are basically using a texture map to replicate millions of polygons so your uv layout is incredibly crucial.
  • You want use as much of the texture space as possible. Don’t have big blank spots in your texture map.
  • You want even uv distribution throughout your texture. Don’t assign a ton of texture space to the head and just a little bit to the body.
  • You want your lowest sub d level that you are applying the displacement map to, to be very similar in size and shape to the highest sub d level that you are trying to replicate. Exporting your lowest sub d level out of zbrush to max to apply the displacement map to is the absolute best way to ensure you are doing this.
Here are some screen shots of my max import and export settings and zbrush import and export settings and a shot of my modifier stack in max for displacement.

This modifier stack works with any renderer as far as I am aware and of course there are other ways to do this, but as far as I have seen this is the method that people have the least trouble with.

Attachments

clip_image001.jpg

clip_image002.jpg

clip_image003.jpg

clip_image042.jpg

34.jpg

#19

So I finally got Unknown Artists file and here are my results

First two are the zbrush model.

Second two are the max displacement renders with AUV tiles.

I did this super quick under 1 minute so you could get better results with playing with the strength intensity in max.

So all I did differently was assign AUV tiles to your mesh, create a new displacement map and then export out the lowest sub d level as an .obj to max and export out the displacement map as a .tif and then just went through the workflow that I stated in my above post.

The only artifacts that I see are at the bottom of the mesh where it is open, and as I said before you can blur that out in photoshop or just add more edge loops to the open areas to keep zbrush from doing that.

You don’t have to use AUV tiles of course, I always manually unwrap all my meshes and my displacements turn out fine. I just use AUV tiles on tests like this because it is so much quicker than re unwrapping it manually and it ensures that you are getting the best results for things like this because there is no stretching or distortions. Of course you can’t paint on it in photoshop which is why I never use it on my models. Only for quick tests.

Attachments

zbrushfront.jpg

zbrushback.jpg

max_more_strength_front.jpg

max_more_strength_back.jpg

#20

Hi --E–. Im with the same problem. I tried every tutorial in this forum, include yours and nothing is working. Can I send you my model too?
Thx in advance.

#21

please describe your workflow in great detail first.

All Unknown artist had to do was assign AUV tiles to his mesh at lowest sub d in zbrush and recreate a new displacement map and then export that new low sub d to max. So His problem was his UVs

#22

DarkEdge: If I’m going to make that tutorial,I’ll post it on these forums so other people can see it too… :rolleyes:

Okay,cool,it's been two weeks now since I started learning this "ZBrush to MAX" process and I can't say that I've gone much farther with my researches. Anyways,I've got some more questions and problems now.I pretty much learned how to use AUV tiles in ZBrush and get some good results in MAX (I should thank Eric for that.Thanks a lot man :D ) but the thing is,the results aren't as good as I actually want them to be... I've been experimenting with that method for last two days and the results were kind of different.I'm going to post some images to illustrate that. Experiment #1: I used sub level 2 to generate the displacement map (don't worry,I export the same level :p ) without "Cage".Rendered with default scanline renderer with "Displace" modifier on top of "Turbosmooth" (render iterations set to 4). The result: [[img]http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/3344/auvnocageheadsk3.th.jpg[/img]](http://img265.imageshack.us/my.php?image=auvnocageheadsk3.jpg) [[img]http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/57/auvnocagefullfrontgq3.th.jpg[/img]](http://img262.imageshack.us/my.php?image=auvnocagefullfrontgq3.jpg) [[img]http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/8173/auvnocagefullsidefv6.th.jpg[/img]](http://img156.imageshack.us/my.php?image=auvnocagefullsidefv6.jpg) What I really like about this method is that almost all the details are there (take a look at the eyes) and there are alsmot no artifacts around the eyes.I used 16 bit map,so I think the results could be even better if I used 32 bit instead. But here comes the bad part of the test: [[img]http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/8735/auvnocagehandvz3.th.jpg[/img]](http://img299.imageshack.us/my.php?image=auvnocagehandvz3.jpg) [[img]http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/6549/auvnocagefullbackeh9.th.jpg[/img]](http://img259.imageshack.us/my.php?image=auvnocagefullbackeh9.jpg) Take a closer look at his claws.See those artifacts? I know how it could be fixed actually,but I'll talk about it a bit later. Now look at his back. The good thing is that there are no artifacts now. Wohoo... And the bad thing is that some parts of the model don't look like they should be. Not only the top of his shoulder-blades is slightly chopped off,but they also are kind of bulky and have no details on them (I'm talking of the lower part now). Those spikes should look a bit thinner too,but this not a big deal actually. Oh,and there should be some small veins around the spine,but I think this is due to the 16 bit map... Or is it not?... About the claws.The reason of their current look is the difference between the highest and lowest sub levels.It's too big.Pressing "Cage" before creating a dispacement map should fix the problem,but in my case - it doesn't work. This is due to the "Pinch" brush that I've used on his face (the line that connects his ears and mouth).Everytime I render the model in MAX with this new displacement,I get quite large artifacts coming of that line.Not everywhere,though,just where it bends (not far from mouth,check the first image).I could try and smooth this erea,but I really don't want it too look "soft" :confused: These are just my thoughts,though,so correct me if I'm wrong. Experiment #2: Same map,same sub level exported,but this time I used Mental Ray so there is no "Displace" modifier,the displacement map is added on a material. "ZBrush to MAX Pipline" method... Okay,the results were pretty much the same.Pretty much,yeah... Here comes the back shot: [[img]http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/3242/auvnocagefullbackmrdx1.th.jpg[/img]](http://img183.imageshack.us/my.php?image=auvnocagefullbackmrdx1.jpg)

Okay now,I don’t know what the hell is going on there and how to fix all this rubbish,but I’ve tried all defferent types of settings and none of them made the back look better.Well,maybe just a little bit…
So using MR as a renderer is still a mystery to me.

Experiment #3:
Similiar to test #1,but this time I used sub level 3,since “Cage” doesn’t work for me.
The results were quite good.Most of the details,fexed claws etc etc. Let’s rotate the model,shall we?..

The shoulder-blades aren’t chopped off now,but the overlook of them is even worse than in my first experiment. How come? The model itself has 26k polys and it’s very close the highest sub level (not the amount of polys,but the look of the model),so there is even no need to press “Cage”. And still there are problems: the spikes are even “bulkier” and there are less details on both them and shoulder-blades…

I’m getting so tired of all this stuff that I just want to quit all this displaement bussiness and continue what I was doing - enjoing the sculpting process in ZBrush…

#23

you can do it!
after being immersed into it for as long as you have…there is no one better than you to write this out. ride the wave brother!
take a break…and then paddle back out.
eddie would do it. :slight_smile:

#24

unknown artist,

could you please give more detail on what import and export tools you are getting the bug with in Blender?

I’m fairly positive you are not using dxf - since that is a cad format :slight_smile: So my guess is you are actually using some other format.

Since it is a bit off topic please email instead

LetterRip AT gmail dot com

and I will have someone look at it… (best would be if you could provide the file that you import into blender…).

Thanks,

LetterRip

#25

Hello there,LetterRip. Since there isn’t much happening in the thread now, I don’t think a bit more “off topic” will do any harm :slight_smile:
Unfortunately you are wrong,I am using DXF format to import the model in Blender.My guess is,there isn’t anything wrong with Blender itself,no bugs,it’s just that after unwrapping there is too much free space in that “unwrap square” (sorry,don’t know how it’s called) and that’s why I get such results in MAX…I might be wrong,though…

#26

Could you try exporting a format that is meant for meshes? OBJ, 3DS, Collada, or LWO are all formats that are commonly used for mesh data interchange, using DXF is rather bizarre and a format that is poorly supported in Blender (there is a new script this coming release with improved DXF support, but still far from ‘great’ - even if Blender had superb dxf support I’d still question whether it would be a good idea of using dxf for anything but CAD data exchange)…

LetterRip