ZBrushCentral

normals and displacements from an unchangeable base mesh

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Question for any that might experience with this. I need to use a standard base mesh which I cannot alter, to create numerous variations via normals and displacements and other textures only(for Massive stock characters). I took the base mesh sculpted it out and at the last stage imported the original base mesh back in to strip normals and displacements. It creates a significant amount of distortion however.

my options are to try to:

*use morph targets when I first bring in the mesh, and switch as a last stage

*try and bring in the original mesh on a separate layer, and then see if that will eliminate the distortion.

I figured someone has worked through this problem before though, and thought I would ask.

One other issue was that some of those base meshes have ngons. As far as I know Zbrush won’t let you bring in ngons without splitting them into tris and quads. Any work around on that?

Thanks!

#2

I’ve used this technique by saving my (now deformed) level 1 as a morph target for the rendering engine before applying normal, displacement, texture, and other maps. If the engine doesn’t permit morphing the base mesh, I then use xNormal rather than ZB to generate my maps because you’re getting into more “extreme” projections of deformations.

If I’m generating “pure” maps (e.g. no morphs) I will use ZB since UV space is UV space, even if the n-gons get split into quads and tris. Otherwise, you’re going to need some special tools for “translating” a quad/tri morph target to n-gon driven morph target. I’ve not see much luck with this. Best to see if the TD will provide quad-tri only base meshes. (This doesn’t usually mess up rigs, so it may be a possibility–depends on the project.)

If I’m stuck with n-gon base meshes, I will do the sculpting for displacement/normals/textures in ZB and then use xNormal to generate the best maps I can get. In general, I don’t try to fight creating morph targets for n-gon based systems in ZB because of point-matching issues.

-K

#3

Thanks for the help, Kerwin. I have never used xnormal before. But good to know that the Zbrush pipeline might now be ideal. I’ll look into xnormal(the free plugin/program I assume you are talking about). I’ll also look into seeing what happens if I use maya’s native mapper.

Thanks!

#4

xNormal is handy as a projection tool. Be forewarned it can be a finicky, so you may need to spend with time with it to get the results you want. :wink:

It’s available here: www.xnormal.net

-K