Aurick,
The ability to extract normal maps from one arbitrary mesh to another quickly is what was key to zmapper. I work in games and in a games pipeline you are constantly having to iterate on your high res and low res and drop it into the engine. Models change, geometry limits change, etc. Projecting the mesh details from the high mesh to the low cage then extracting your maps is a time consuming process because of the amount of clean up involved. Also compounding the issue is the new low resolution game mesh frequently are at a very low poly count, with potentially bad geometry (triangles in odd areas, long polys, etc) creating a mesh that isnt very conducive to subdividing the way one would want so you can project from one model to another. With zmapper none of this was an issue. Im a fan of projecting model information from one model to another when im sculpting but using this solution as a replacement for zmapper is not an option for production.
-Ricardo
there’s no reason why Zmapper needed to be taken out. the ability to project normal maps from different mesh onto low poly models was great.
the people saying you can just project detail, havent worked with doing that in production with tight deadlines or constantly changing low poly models. its a HUGE pain in the ass to deal with projecting high res detail onto a mesh that wasnt intended to be made into a high poly model. i would rather just export out to Xnormal instead of dealing with all the crap of projecting high poly detail in Zbrush.
on a side note isnt import and crease also missing from this release?
i must add to that that zmapper optons allowed us (video game developpers) to set up different settings that would wokr for different purpose (head, jackets etc…) you might get decent result for some models, but when you get into more complicated and tricky ones, zmapper was the best solution to avoid dark edjes, or weird results…
on top of all that is mentioned above, the ability to create normals that work for different type of model has gone…and it’s the most annoying part 
so PLEASE, make our lifes easier and bring back zmapper, or put all its powerfull options in the new normal generator…
This seems like a dumb question, but How can I check my UV’s to see if there are any overlapping? I do not see the UV check button any more in 3.5
Also, I saw that to create Cavity Maps, we now mask by Cavity and turn that into a texture, or use AO masking.
That method works, but I prefer the Zmapper sliders and options more.
It is too bad things were removed, it would have been better to just add more and leave all the tools everyone is used to.
i agree that zmapper had some features that may be missed, but if you’re working in games and need to project a normal map from one mesh to another just use xnormal. it’s free and extremely powerful. i always found i got better looking maps out of xnormal then i did out of zmapper anyway…
I gave Xnormal a shot, it has a small learning curve but is very simple in general. I actually had issues with my maps, probably due to the cage since i let it auto generate instead of using a mesh.
Could you explain your x normal workflow (briefly). My maps always come out messed up.
I just posted about this, and then I saw this thread. We need the functionality of zMapper back. I don’t care if it’s called “Zmapper” anymore or what, but we need to be able to project from a lowres lowpoly mesh to the high source mesh to get our normals. us game Dev’s would be doing double the work to retopologize a source mesh, makes sure it’s quadded up nice (which is what we don’t want, we want it to be low polys possibly all triangles) and then project to the original and clean it up. That would take over an hour, when the old process could be done in a matter of minutes. My ideal workflow would be to build my source mesh high poly, save it, clone it, decimate a clone, select my decimated and select my source and map my normal map. I think that would save us all tons of leg work and makes perfect sense for us game devs working in a strict art pipeline. Please Pixologic, we need this, your product is amazing, but don’t cut out the stuff that we loved from previous iterations!
@aberrant: i really don’t have to mess with too many settings, actually. i load up my low poly mesh, load up my hi poly mesh, and usually i’m good to go. if i get projection errors i start increasing the “maximum frontal/rear ray distance” until i get clean results. i’m a character artist so generally i’m working on organic stuff and don’t need to mess with cages to get precise projections, etc.
also, i always take my normals into photoshop afterwards to do cleanup–that’s just part of the process.
Please guys, If you are making such a big change in ZBrush by taking out Zmapper at least you have to release a video tutorial explaining how to do the same things we were used to do in ZMapper and explaining why is that the current tools are so superior.
I was really shocked when I realized that ZMapper was gone, it took me a while to get used to it and it was a very important part of my pipeline.
Cheers!
Explaination why zmapper is no longer needed.
https://support.pixologic.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=39&nav=0,13
Displacement Maps http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/Displacement_Maps_in_3.5
Normal Maps http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/Normal_Maps_in_3.5
A Video Tutorial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7QfdijYPJY
Richard
Thanks for the answer Richard but I still have no idea in how to achieve the same results I was used to when using ZMapper in this new version of ZBrush.
I think is imperative to release a video tutorial proposing a new pipeline and comparing it to the old methods.
Cheers
There’s not all that much that can be shown in a video tutorial. Set the UV map size in the Tools / UV Map palette, go down to lowest subd, set parameters in Tools / Normal Map palette, press create normal map button, press Clone Txtr and save out map from texture palette. Im not sure what else you could show.
Richard
good god, was that guy stoned when he made that tutorial?? It’s excruciating, constant rambling about cracked Zbrsuh, ugh!.. :rolleyes:
…bottome line…There’s still no way to raycast from a low poly completely different mesh, to a high poly completely different mesh. That was one of, if not the biggest, advantage to Zmapper that 3.5 cannot accomplish. Therefore it is not obsolete and we need this feature back. I don’t know how else the professional community can state this.
worst thing about it…i cannot get seamless normal maps any more… with ZMapper, i was able to get very clean results…i had a preset that was so good that whenever i worked inside of unreal, i would get my normal maps looking very clean.
I think, for legacy purposes. ZMapper should make a return with this so called upgraded algorithm. I get really pissed when my normal maps look horrible…and even with xnormal, i don’t like all of the fiddling with the controls to get my clean normal maps. and at least with ZMapper i can see how it would have looked.
After generating your normal map are you using the make seamless button before exporting? That, or the seam overpaint might help that issue.
In Zmapper, i used to set the seam overpaint… and I don’t see this make seamless option in ZB 3.5 r3
Hey friends!
I have the same “sea- problem” with normal maps, baked with zbrush 3.5.
In Zmapper I used the seam overpaint function and when baking normalmaps in 3d studio max I use the edge padding function in the render to texture menue.
I tried a lot to fix those seams and I really don’t want to fix them by hand in Photoshop.
Today, I found a slider under the UV Map properties in Zbrush that is called “UV Map Border” (This function allows you to apply an overpaint to your UV Borders…) I played around with that but I was not able to fix the seams with it
Any other Ideas?
In conjunction with that setting, are you clicking the fix seams button before saving the texture out? From my understanding this will apply the overpaint to the texture, so if you do not click it before exporting it will not take effect.
I’ll try this real quick on an older mesh to see if that works… and post it…