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multiple UV displacement - mutli map exporter (answered)

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi guys…ok heres an interesting question about multiple UV maps within ZBrush.

When your mesh has one uv map, you are able to create a displacement map under the displacement map options under the tool menu (Tool > Displacement Map)…and this works fine.
You can then set your export options, and export the whole scene as a Maya ascii file, where the mesh and shaders are all setup nicely for you and it gives you an alpha gain and offset value for your displacement settings.

OK so far so good, now onto the multi-map exporter (which works really well for multiple UV tiles, although I have no idea why pixologic removed the option from 3.5r3 to specify and actual tile to create a map from using that 1001 four digit code…really bad idea to remove it guys, plz bring it back, or if someone knows a workaround plz reply).

I create all maps required using the multi-map exporter but hit a problem… how do you export an ascii out once maps are created to find out the alpha gain and offset values???
You cannot use the displacement map option under the tools menu as this creates a map with all tiles on top of each other.

I assumed (possibly incorrectly) that the ‘get scale’ button and ‘16bit scale’ button where kind of replacements for this, so that you could leave the alpha gain and offset to 1 and 0 in maya!!!..but this doesn’t work for 32bit maps!

Does anyone have any knowledge or workarounds/suggestions about this?

Thanks

Arvind!

#2

It is best to use 32 bit maps, in which case the Maya alpha gain and offset values will be 1 and -.5

Automatic creation of a Maya ascii file with MME maps plugged in will be considered for an update to MME.

You can create a displacement map for an individual UV tile by:

  1. Using Tool>Polygroups>UV Groups to creat a polygroup for each UV tile.
  2. At level 1, Shift+Ctrl+clicking on a group (with polyframes showing Shift+F).
  3. Creating the displacement map.

The 16 bit scale button provides the same displacement range for all maps, rather than the full range optimization that is the ZBrush default. This means that you can use a single Alpha Depth Factor (Intensity) for all the maps. This is written into the file name. The Get Scale button provides a way to approximate the Scale setting when using 16 bit Scale but note that you may need to adjust this to get the results you want. Using 32 bit avoids these issues.

HTH,

#3

Hi Marcus, thats a great explanation, thanks for that, was starting to think that no one had any answers on the subject.
The addition of the maya ascii export would be great in a future MME plugin… and the return of the four digit code to select which map you need would be a big bonus too. Gets a bit long winded to split out by polygroups and creating displacement maps like that, if you have 10-15 maps.

What i’m doing at the moment is using the 32bit displacement and converting them to exr files inside nuke…this works really well, and reduces an 8k 32bit tiff from 250mb to 9mb!

Thanks again

Arvind!

#4

Thanks everyone. I been searching all over the internet for an answer to splitting out multiple UV tile displacements in Zbrush.

LC