i hope i didn’t miss another renderers try at this…
3 subdivisions to get to the mesh on the left, then the application of the reduced bit displacement map on the right…
i guess mentioning the application i used for the render is in order.
strata 3d CX
I did the same stpes as before in my post
Auto contrast in photoshop , flip it save it as RGB
in maya i did 2 tests with Maya aproximation
ashaiad, this is why I don’t use MR. If you were to install Liquid to export from Maya to REYES (Renderman complaint) like Pixie or 3Delight or Renderman it will render in less than 40 seconds, especially under 3Delight even with a 450MHz system and 768MB RAM. This is for the maximum detail you will ever ask for. 
Very nice, would you like a step by step XSI/Zbrush2 in Radical Magazine?
Maya ->Mental Ray 43 seconds:
Not the best quality - but workable. No approximation editors - simply one extra level of poly smoothing to give the displacement some better normals to work with.
i’ve been using this method on some recent work, and although you can see some of the poly edges - it’s a workable method for the time being for me.
i tried experimenting with all sorts of approximation settings, but like everyone else, felt they were too slow on the render. ahh, the days of prman…
-sunit
with 2 levels of smoothing. renders at 1:27 sec
-sunit
Hi Sunit,
Given how nice your Mental Ray results are, do you think you could share the settings? It would be a big help to the many other people who are struggling to get really good results with Mental Ray renders.
yes, I second that.
Hi aurick - sorry i’ve been a bit delayed, but a tutorial now exists here:
http://archive.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=22176
cheers,
-sunit
Thanks, sunit! I’m sure people will find it useful.
Here’s another test - this one took 30.67 sec:
2 levels of smoothing.
cheers,
sunit
Here’s a Carrara 4 Pro TestRender using Anything Grooves from Digital Carvers Guild:
I Converted the Displacement Map to 8 Bit and fiddled around with the Levels. BTW: Is the Format of the ZB generated Displacement Map open or somehow documented?
Eric
When importing the .obj head in max6/max7 and applying the displace map as a diffuse component to see how it map, I got a totally weird result:
Have you done something in particular to get the good UVs ? Seems it’s totally wrong here…
edit: ok I found what was wrong…
SkyCastle, can you elaborate on your technique get from zbrush to prman…
many thanks
craig
Just in case anybody is interested I created a Tangent normal map shader form Maya render. It’s really easy to use just plug the normal map in and connect it to the normal camera attribute of your shader.
Just make sure to set the flip vertical flag under export settings in Zbrush.
you can download it from my site www.alexcarboneros.com just go to my Mel and Mll section and download my menu.
here is a conversation going on @ cgTalk
I hope someone do the same for Max 6.0/7.0 I do not ever have good
results with Normal exported maps or even native 7.0 Normal maps.
Using Vray displacement , Default scanline, displace modifier, not that simple
actually.I may be missing someting, for a long time, already.
Luiz Eduardo
Not many offerings here from 'Wavers, so here’s another…
LightWave 8.01, rendered using FPrime 1.02.
-: Deux :-
Yeah I would like to move onto normal mapping other then your black and white displacment maps, this feature can be achived in 3d max 7, if there is any other packages out there post it with the normal map results. how about projection mapping in max 7? heres a vid on how to do it http://mtlstream02.discreet.com/streaming/qt/normals_300k.mov
would like to seee these results 
enough renders shown already, but i just wanted to show the render speed of max7
3times meshsmooth on a imported .obj converted to editablepoly. Mesh scaled to 25%
standard displacement modifier with disp. map saved in rgb mode. lumiance center .05 and strength set to 10cm
2 sec. on 2.8ghz P4 with 1 gig ram!
wicked! 
scanline render. default lighting. 640*480
