ZBrushCentral

Normal Baking w/multiple or different high rez

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

First off, thanks for such an awesome release with v4 Pixologic! Some of the new brushes are sooo nice and other features like multimap exporter are fantastic additions to the workflow!

That being said, i was wondering if there were any plans on implementing the ability for Zbrush to bake maps via a pretty common methodology of having the low rez mesh point to a different (or multiple different) high rez meshes.

I know, i know, there is xnormal/max/xsi/maya or reprojecting the high rez detail onto your newly retopo’ed mesh…but often times…the newly retopo’ed mesh is full of tris and such for us game modelers. The reprojection doesn’t always come across so great, but having the aforementioned ability to point the newly retopo’ed mesh to the old high rez sculpt(s) for baking purposes would be fantastic!

#2

seconded! where has the functionality of zmapper gone??!?!! i bought zbrush 4 and today is my first day using it for work. i happily made my hipoly models, get ready to bake them and tell the client ill have them done tonight - and OMFG ZMAPPER NO LONGER EXISTS

i search the web and i get a nice lil article all about how zbrush 3.5 - 4 now has all the zmapper functionality in its own normal baking routines… but nowhere does it mention how to bake onto new topology?!

it does mention using the zproject tool - am i to understand that instead of using the zmapper method of baking onto new lowpoly geom, we are now to go and subdivide that new low geom and use the projection tool to get the detail on the subdiv of the new low model?

tHATS INSANE, very hacky and most probably will not work in half of the situations i have to use it in. low models are not optimised for subdiv!

so i set about trying to find out more about zbrushes normal baking routines, but your docs are vague. all ive turned up are threads like this going where’s zmapper?!

stuff like this should be on the FRONT PAGE of your wiki where idiots like me can find it and be reassured.

now im just going to have to export objs and go back to zb3.1 to bake - because i just cant find the information on your product that i need to use it. thanks a bunch. my nice expensive new zbrush 4 is now rendered as useless as a childs toy for serious production until i can find out how to replicate the functionality of zmapper.

#3

I wasn’t aware you could bake a low poly pointing at another high poly in any previous version of zbrush! There ARE other ways of getting around this using xnormal/xsi ultimapper/max bake etc…but it’s definitely a workflow killer. The functionality has been in almost every other 3d app for years now so not sure why ZB, which rightfully has the crown for creating game production assets, does not have this much needed feature after all these years. Perhaps in a couple point releases it’ll make its way in. fingers crossed

#4

zb 3.1 still has zmapper >.<

#5

zmapper never had the ability to take a low rez mesh and point it at a different high rez or multiple different high rez meshes for baking purposes…at least I don’t remember it having that ability but I could be wrong. Not having the ability to do this means I have to leave zbrush to accomplish the task, which again, is not the most optimal workflow.