I’m having a problem with my bump map in maya. It shows tiny bumps that I never put there. I rendered out a displacement map from zbrush and used it as a bump and displacement. I converted the map to a targa before using in maya, and made it an 8 bit grayscale image. (that may have something to do with it?) Any help would be great.
Try using a 16 or 32 bit TIF and/or convert the TIF to a Mental Ray MAP. This may help.
try 24 bit
Thank you for taking the time to post your work!
I tried converting my bump map to Tiff, but my only options are 8 bit and 16 bit to convert it to in Photoshop. I’m using Photoshop 6, so it may be just too old. If I try targa on the other hand, I can export it as a 16, 24, or 32 bit. It’s a bit confusing. Any advice?
If I want to use a displacement map for a bump and a displacement in maya usually I create my displacement from the lowest SubD level, convert it to a .map file, and load it into the displacement channel. For bump I will step up the maybe one or two levels down from the highest and generate a new map. This one I will also convert to .map and load into the bump channel.
Make sure filtering is off on both file nodes, this can sometimes cause issues but they usually manifest as blur and not noise. You may also check the filter setting on your bump 2D node.
I hope that helps!
Scott
Thanks for all the advice. I tried converting the zbrush displacement to a .map file in Maya and using it as a bump. Still getting the same results with all the bumps. I’m running out of ideas.
Hi. I’m guessing from your tag that you go to SCAD were I went (a long time ago) as I know Scott did as well. 
Is this your first attempt at Maya displacement with maps generated from Zbrush? If so, try to isolate and reverse engineer your problem with a different file – something simple like a sphere (geosphere/subd-cube minus the poles) with a simple displacement map. Once you build your workflow/pipeline then proceed onto your more complex scene.
Thanks for the suggestion Jbuck, but I have done several other character models with zbrush generated maps before. I never had problems with the displacement, but I always used normal maps and not bump maps like I’m doing here. For this model the bump really helped pop out the detail vs. the normal map. When I tested a normal map on this model, it didn’t have the bump problem, but it was not nearly as crisp as the bump map.
This might be a Maya 2008 issue. Have you tried rendering in a previous Maya version if it is available?
Are you sure the bump map is 32bit and not 8bit?
S
I did another test and used the zbrush DExporter to make sure I output a 32 bit depth displacement. I guess that is the problem because neither Maya or Photoshop would read the 32bit tif. Photoshop said it was an unsupported bit depth. I guess I need a better computer or newer Photoshop version. On the other hand I used zbrush to export an 8 bit displacement(bump map) and Photoshop and Maya would read it. The 8 bit map in Maya cleared up the small bump problems, but caused really really jagged swirly problems in the bump map. I’m 95% sure that is my problem, but I’ll have to wait until I get to try this on a better computer to confirm it.
RE: Scott
I am using Maya 2008 now because that’s all I have at the moment. And I’ve been using a 16 bit bump generated from the general displacement tool tab in zbrush. I then have to convert that to an 8 bit in Photoshop in order for Photoshop to let me save it as a .tga or something Maya can read.