ZBrushCentral

How to Sculpt by Displacement Map?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hello everybody! This is going to be a somewhat long question, so please bear with me.

I have modelled some façade in XSI (Autodesk Softimage) and have fully textured it and made displacement map for the same.

After doing all that, I realized some edges and places are too clean so I need to break’em up a little bit, or sometimes a lot.

Thought I think Zbrush is the ideal tool for this, I do not really know Zbrush. I know some basic theories but not much about the details of usage tricks.

I want to import the facade mesh to Zbrush along with the diffuse texture and I also want to deform the mesh permanently inside Zbrush using that displacement map I created. After that, I wish to sculpt on top of it and finally get one resultant displacement map out of it that has the combined final result.

I did try to use the displacement mode option with standard brush. But as soon as the brush is changed, the displacement is gone as well, so that is definitely not what I wanted.

In a MudBox tutorial, I saw there is a feature called “sculpt with displacement map”. What that does is, it reads the displacement map and deforms my mesh permanently and if I make a displacement map of the mesh afterwards, I will see all the deformations baked in there.

How can I achieve this in Zbrush? Please help me!

#2

I’m a little confused from your question. Do you have a displacement map that you want to modify? Or do you have a color map and want to sculpt a displacement map that matches it? The steps are different depending on which approach you’re trying to do.

Also, have you watched the video tutorials for ZBrush or read the online documentation? The links are in my signature.

#3

Thank you for you reply! Yes, I already have. Not only that, I have also gone through the Gnomon Intro to Zbrush DVDs by Meats Meier.

Yes, I want to modify the displacement map. I initially handpainted my displacement map based on the diffuse texture. Now I want to sculpt on the actual object in Zbrush and want my displacement map update accordingly.

So I was thinking, if there is a way to deform my mesh using a displacement map, and then sculpt on it further, and make a new displacement map using multidisplacement plugin, then all changes (handpainted and sculpted) will collectively be reflected through that displacement map. Now I can use it in my final 3D scene.

I saw a tutorial here in ZBrushCentral on how to use a displacement map object to actually show the bump using the mode option under displacement map preferences. That does show me the handpainted displacement on screen, but it does not actually deform my geometry. As soon as I get a new brush, it’s clean mesh again.

Have I been able to explain it clearly?

#4

Import your map into the Alpha palette. Be sure to flip it vertically so that it wraps right in ZBrush. Then use Tool>Masking>Mask by Alpha to apply it to your model. Now you can use a deformation such as inflate.