I have noticed on ZBC that some users of ZB do not use ZB for generating NormalMaps, and they claim that other standalone apps do a better job.
If you use different Normal Map Programs, please list your reasons here.
IYO, What exactly is the problem using ZBrush to create Normal Maps?
Zbrush doesn’t have a true raycasting method. Something like xNormal or Max, Maya, etc can produce quality normals that cross multiple meshes at once. Zbrush will have projection errors that can be a pain to clean up while other pieces of software will simply generate a good normal in one go.
You can also generate AO, cavity, etc during your baking session in another application, something you can’t do inside of Zbrush.
Zbrush doesn’t have smoothing groups either so you can’t set one face to a different normal than another, everything is either 0° or 180°.
Zbrush also uses its own tangent space so it can be difficult to get the result you want in any specific engine.
You can’t check normals inside of Zbrush either. So even if you use Zbrush you have to kick out the map and view it somewhere else. Not a big deal, but in Zbrush you also have to clone the map, then export it. Other applications will just overwrite your previous version and update inside your software without extra clicks.
my 2 cents.
Hmm…that’s about it
Beta sums it up for me. I like that xnormal gives me control over the projection cage, how the vertex normals of the lowpoly mesh are handled, and has plugins for to change the tangent basis to match various renderers such as Unity. There’s a newer program called Handplane which might be able to correct that portion and take some of the importance off of the tangent basis and smoothing (by baking an object space map and then converting that), but even still it seems faster and easier to be able to bake the detail between completely different meshes rather than trying to subdivide a triangulated mesh and project actual geometry onto it without noticable errors. It can also come in handy if I’m using floating islands to create details instead of modeling everything into the mesh.
And in very rare cases, I don’t have to worry about the UVs touching the borders.
You can also generate AO, cavity, etc during your baking session in another application, something you can’t do inside of Zbrush.
Doesn’t the Multi Map Exporter plugin allow this? AO and cavity at least, nothing near the options a dedicated baker like xnormal allows.
Yes, but not as well as xNormal, you also loose convex, height, etc as well.
Thanks for the insite.
Seems like the older ZBrush normalmap plugin (Zmapper?) would be a useful assest to new versions of ZB?
ZMapper lost its usefulness, which is why it was dropped to begin with.