ZBrushCentral

Transperancy turn off and Decimation Master triangles (answered)

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Dear all,

Is there a shortcut to turn off transperancy in zbrush. I ask because for some reason I cannot view the transperancy button in the viewport. I know where its supposed to be located (i.e. on the right hand side, not in the tool palette, but more centrally located on the side, near the bottom of various other icons like perspective). If there isnt a shortcut, would anyone know of a way of being able to turn it off.

Secondly, I’ve been playing around with decimation master, and i love it. However, as a result of it converting my mesh into triangles I am no longer able to reduce the subdivision levels. Is there any work around to this. I work in a production environment, requiring low base meshes to be imported into blender and then displacement mapping to be applied to them.

In additon, as regards for my previous UV unwrapping thread, im still working on it.

many thanks in advance,
Ash

#2

anyone?1

#3

  1. The Transp button is also in the Transform palette.

  2. Decimation Master will not work with subdivision levels as it has to use triangles to achieve its results.

Normally you would import a low base mesh, or create it in ZBrush, and subdivide before sculpting high res detail. You would then return to the low level before generating the displacement map.

If you need to create a low base mesh for an existing high res model you can use the retopology tools.

#4

cheers marcus for the response :+1:

So for my wants in relation to imported low meshes and adding displacement mapping onto them, decimation master would not be able to do so.

I.e. Would i be able to copy uvs from an unwrapped uv mesh and paste them from uv master to the decimated high res scuplt. This would be then to be able to generate and export a displacement map from the decimated scuplt?

thanks in advance,
Ash

#5

I’m not sure why you want to use Decimation Master when you want a displacement map. There is no need.

Can you explain exactly what you’ve done so far? I will then better understand how to help you. I assume you have a high resolution mesh with lots of detail? Does that have lower subdivision levels, and if so can you use the lowest one of those in Blender? (You can then generate the displacement map for that level.)

#6

Hello marcus,

Apologies for my confusion. This is the first time i’ve ever attempted to produce a model and import it into blender for useful purposes!

The reason why i’m so OCD over displacement and memory sizes, etc, is because i’ll hopefully be using a gpu render for the final render.

The gpu render that i’ll be hopefully using will be octane render. Octane render, is limited by the vram size of gpus that you use. I’ll be using a gtx480 that has 1.5gb of vram. Thus when it comes to scene sizes, I’m limted by memory size.

Thus, because of memory limitations, i’m simply trying to scrap off any excess memory i can, without compromising on detail.

Currently, i’m polypainting on a model with 753,151 active points.
Tbh, im pretty confused on what to do next now!

The final product in an animated skit using this model.

Hope this helps! :slight_smile:

#7

I have to say that it doesn’t sound as though you really know what you are doing. :slight_smile:

  1. How did you start this model in ZBrush? Did you import a model? If you did, do you need to use this original mesh in Blender?

  2. Does the model have UVs assigned?

  3. How many polygons does your model have at its lowest subdivision level?

#8

;_; i dont think i do :cry: but thank you sooo much Marcus for your help and support

  1. I made the mesh completely in zbrush using zspheres.

  2. yes using uv master

  3. Umm when I drag the sdiv to 1 in the geometry palette the number of active points is 11,823

In addition, i did a retopo pass before i started to polypaint. I did the retopopass in zbrush.

Thanks in advance, :slight_smile:
Ash

#9

OK, good. This is what you do:

  1. Go to the lowest subdivison level by setting the Tool>Geometry>SDiv slider to 1.
  2. Set the Tool>UV Map>UV Map Size slider for the size of displacement map you want. For your mesh probably leaving this on 1024 will be OK, or if you want larger set it to 2048.
  3. Press the Tool>Displacement Map>Create Displacement Map button. This will create a displacement map of the high resolution detail.
  4. Make a note of the value in the Tool>Displacement Map>Intensity slider. You may need this to get the correct amount of displacement when you render in Blender.
  5. Press the Tool>Displacement Map>Clone Disp button. This will create a copy of your displacement map in the Alpha palette. Press the Alpha>Export button and export the map in a format suitable for Blender.
  6. Finally export the level 1 mesh by pressing the Tool>Export button and saving as an OBJ.

Import the OBJ into Blender and apply the displacement map. At render time all the detail of your high resolution sculpting will show on the low resolution mesh.

HTH,

#10

thanks again for the reply marcus,

however, im getting issues. Because of this i’ve opened a blender thread too here, that shows the problems im getting.

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=205327

I include this here because of the fact that this may be an issue that im doing in zbrush, as opposed to blender.

Help from blender zbrushers would be great :wink:

Blenderzbrush link

thanks
1Help1.jpg

#11

The Issue Has been resolved; In blender for some reason my model’s uv’s where flipped upside down. In addition, for me it werked when i used tiff formate vs psd format. This woas by clicking on the create and export button, vs the create dispmap button.

Thanks for all the help guys
Squigs

HOWEVER: when I apply the displacement map, there are visable mesh lines all over my mesh: visable in the sense that they seem to be show up as thin lines. Is there a simple solution to the problem?

#12

any suggestions on the line problem? Its as if the zbrush topology lines remain all over the model. :cry:

#13

I’ve not heard of this before. A screenshot of the problem would help. Also a shot of the displacement map - do the lines show on that? It may be a Blender problem, in which case you’ll need to ask in the Blender forum.