Hi, this is the first model I created in Z2. I spent the last week trying to figure out the best way to integrate Zbrush into our Lightwave animation/modeling pipeline and I believe I’ve succeeded. The base model was created in Lightwave modeler, detailed in Zbrush and imported back into Lightwave.
These images were rendered in Lightwave at full HD 1920 X 1080 resolution using true displacement. The only post work was in After Effects to add film grain. I hope you like them.
Very nice sword. 
What was the pre-ZBrush model like?
Hi Dewey,
nice detail. I would be really interested to see more of your worflow, particularly the displacment side of things in Lightwave.
Can you explain exactly what you mean by true displacement.
Did you export the resculpted model from ZBrush and use that in Lightwave?
I have had no success at all with Displacment maps generated in ZBrush 2.0 and used in Lightwave.
Regards,
Glen
Looks very good indeed but maybe a bit too dark.
I notice a lot of detail. Can you show an untextured version of the sword. Love to see it.
Hi All,
Thanks for your kind words.
I will try to answer everyones questions. If I miss something let me know.
A little background first. Stormbringer is the demonic hell blade of Elric of Melnibone as described in the books by Michael Moorcock, and it is black. Just in case anyone was wondering why the hell I would make a black sword. 
The Elric books are my favorite fantasy books, and Stormbringer was the first thing to come to mind when I decided to put ZBrush to the test. If you do a Google search for Elric in the Sinking City a painting by Michael Whelan you will see where I got the design from.
Jay, The model the I first imported into ZBrush looked like the sword tutorials starting point, kinda boxy. This was because I used Lightwave modeler to make a rough outline of the blade while I had a scanned image of Mr Whelan’s art work in the background. However, I reshaped it in Zbrush before exporting it as my true base model of about 30,000 polygons.
Glen, the final model in ZBrush was about 3.3 million polygons, too much for even the mighty Lightwave.
I’m not crazy about the NormalMapper plugin as it seems to do strange things to the quality of my surfaces and I have had no luck using it on my render farm, which basically makes it useless to me.
What I do is generate both a positive and negative displacment maps in ZBrush at 4K resolution using GUV mapping. I can’t seem to keep my Lightwave UV mapping, maybe someone could explain that to me.
Then, in Lightwave, I apply the positive displacement to the surfaces bump channel using normal blending and apply the negative displacement using subtractive blending. You can use pixel blending to reduce noise, but must turn off texture antialiasing for this to work. Then turn on bump displacement for the object and set it to 300mm. You can control the displacement depth with the layer opacity in the bump channel.
Here are the basic tests that I did using this method:
They are low poly, so the displacement map picked up some of the stair stepping that was visible in ZBrush as well. But you can cleary see both positive and negative displacment taking place.
The displacement on the sword would have worked even better had I used my intended base model, however, not knowing what I was doing at first I accidentally deleted the first two subdivision levels from the tool so I could no longer import my intended model into ZBrush to generate ideal displacement maps.
I tried cage to generate a new model but it would spin it’s wheels and then nothing would happen. I was forced to use the lowest subdivision level model I had which was about 209,000 polys which was somewhat distorted due to the sculpting process so the displacement map was less than optimal.
I had to “cheat” on the grip: if you look closely at the grip there is a dull section where I used both bump displacment and the NormalMapper because the displacement map would not dig deeply enough into the handle for reasons stated above.
Fets, here is a render of the sword from within ZBrush. Please excuse my poor ZBrush rendering skills.
If anyone can think of ways to enhance this process please let me know, as I’m sure there are creative ways of blending layers in Lightwave surfaces as well as better settings for ZBrush displacement exports that would work even better.
Very detailed sword. I like it a lot. A bit dark though, was that caused by the normal mapping issue you mentioned?
Thank you very much for the displacement technique in Lightwave. I am going to try that ASAP.
To keep your Lightwave UVs simply apply the UV to a surface before exporting as an .obj. No need to set a texture just select the UV map and export.
I know a few people have mentioned the images as being too dark, however the monitors that we use here have been carefully calibrated and you can see detail in all of the images.
Most people tend to set their computer monitor way too dark and with too much contrast, however this is not an accurate representation of the image. I suggest using Adobe gamma, if you have it, to get you in the ball park.
What I neglected to mention above is that Lightwave seems to have a hyper-sensitivity to the seems in the displacement map probably because the bump channel was designed to work with seamless textures and procedural. So use the highest resolution setting and also the scale of you model plays a role in this as well.
For this reason I prefer using the GUV mapping method as it tends to keep the surface continuous. I actually prefer ZBrushes UV mapping techniques but it seems that using Lightwaves UV mapping would likely cause fewer abrupt changes in the displacement map.
Thanks for this, I am off to try it right now and I’ll post any success I have.
I rank the Elric sagas as my favorite fantasy novel and have done so for years. I re-read them every year or so as I find then a form of escapism. In fact, I just dsecided to read em all again so thanks!
ps. your sword is awesome.
G
I do see the details on my monitor, having already calibrated it, but it’s still pretty dark. Just a suggestion: Have the detail on top, such as the runes, glow with a similar ultraviolet glow as that from below the sword. That would actually make the scene more consistent, indicating from where the bottom glow is emmanating.
(Now we need a cavity Glow shader in ZBrush 
)
Glen, Thanks.
I re-read the Elric novels pretty often as well.
Jay, I’m not sure if you are familiar with the Elric saga, but the sword is evil with a capital E and is often described as giving of a black radiance.
In my mind I see the effect as similar to that of black light used to make posters glow. So that’s what I was going after. In other words it’s a form of negative energy that can’t be viewed directly but you can see its effect on other objects. I guess it doesn’t totally come across that way.
ps. Michael Moorcock is a British author but he currently lives in Dallas Texas. His Elric saga has been optioned by Universal and is currently in early stages of pre-production. So I guess he’s in your neck of the woods, Jay
Hi Dewey,
even with luminosity and contrast at 100% your picture is still too dark on my 19" IIyama. I must say that one is the darkest monitor I ever used.
Wouldn’t you have shown the Zbrush rendering I would have missed the nice details.
Perhaps your calibration settings are too professional for the average user :rolleyes: so in some way not correct 
From moorcock I read recently gloriana and the Von Beck serie that I find very interesting, probably more mature than the elric saga. The XVIII century is also an interesting but underrated source of inspiration.
I’ve got 2 different monitors i’ve viewed this on now, one a NEC 19" and a viewsonic 17" and on both you can’t really make out any details on the top images. Had the mesh only image not been rendered i wouldn’t have seen any detail. Both monitors are calibrated with adobe gamma as well.
Hi All,
Thanks for your feedback, I believe I know the answer to the gamma issue: We are on PC’s but we use Apple Cinema Displays and they where calibrated to the Mac default output gamma of 1.85 instead of the Windows default of 2.2, until I got my hands on them.
Anyway, after recalibrating our displays I was able to see the images the way the rest of you have been. Alhtough I guess if you are on a Mac your wondering what all the fuss is about.
Here are the recalibrated images let me know if this helped. 
Much better (although still a little too dark, I think).
When I wrote my post I suggested at first that the gamma of the mac display or CAD calibration was responsible of the darkness of the picture but I realized that Z2 was not yet released on mac so I deleted that part of the post.
Now I understand : Apple displays on PCs, LOL !!
Outstanding masterpiece¡¡¡
Congratulations
Andreseloy
Very, very cool sword. Also thrilled to hear there’s a movie being made. I just hope they don’t mess it up too bad.
For “black radiance”, you might try an effect in Lightwave of setting a series of lights set to a negative value along the blade, and “illuminating” the blade with some sort of ramped luminance map to only show up in the crevices. But that would just be more work, and might not look good anyway. It’s great as it is…
/off to Google for Universal’s “Elric” flick…
I’m back. It’s optioned by the same people that made “American Pie”. I’m going to go cry…
Were you able to load 16 bit displacement maps in Lightwave? I haven’t had any luck with that. Could you give the details of how you are getting the maps into Lightwave?
Thanks, and great work. I was starting to think I wouldn’t be able to use Zbrush 2 with Lightwave.
Hi,
The problems is that the 16 bit maps must be RGB not Grayscale.
I suppose you could just move the displacement map to the texture palette and then export it, but I wasn’t sure if it would be degraded in anyway so, to be safe, open the displacement maps in photoshop and just go to Image>Mode>RGB. Do not, however, change it to 8 bit.
Remember, you need two maps, both a positive and a negative displacement in the bump channel of you surface. Apply the positive displacement with Normal blending and apply the negative displacement with subtractive blending. Activate Lightwaves built in bump displacement from the objects properties and set it to around 300mm. Then fiddle with the displacement layers opacity to get it to look right.
This approach is very, very unforgiving, use the 4K res for your displacement map. If you make your UVs in ZBrush choose GUV for the method, but, if you can get your UV’s in from Lightwave try to keep them as continuous as possible. Lightwave seems to be very sensative to the seams in the displacment map.
I hope this helps. I’m hoping others investigate this further so we can work out the best way to do it.
Thanks much, one more question, when you create the positive and negative maps are you creating two seperate diplacement maps in Zbrush. I’m not sure I understand what you mean.
In the alpha palette you need to pull up the alpha adjustment curve, there you will have the option to load some predone curves for exporting modified version of your displacement maps.
You need to export a postive map ( make sure the ep button at the top is pressed ), hit reset and then export a negative displacement map by applying the scripted curves.
There is also a tutorial that explains the various ways you work with modified displacement maps as part of the online help. Check it out, it’s very helpful.