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Where Is ZMAPPER?!!

ZBrush Usage Questions
#41

I just tried the fix seams button and checked both normal maps in photoshop. There is no difference between them and both normal maps have overpainted seams. (The Zbrush help says, the fix seams button “re-draws” the edges of disconnected polygons…im not sure, but I think it doesn’t help us with our normal map problem)

I checked the normal maps with different directx shaders in 3d studio max (and with the green channel flipped) but the seams are still visible. The normal maps, rendered with edge padding in 3d studio max are working fine :frowning:

Anybody else had success with that problem?

#42

That fix seam button does nothing for me… i tried this with one of my older sculpts and it did noting… :frowning: now when i used ZMapper for my unreal models, everything was seamless and nice and detailed… i love ZBrush but i think they should bring back ZMapper (by popular demand) since we always had such ultimate control and can tweak our normal maps without worrying about baking it fully just to see it… and we don’t get those tracing errors either that we have to clean up in Photoshop.

#43

Im sorry the Fix seams was of no help. I would be willing to bet V4 of ZB will have Zmapper back.

#44

I love using zb 3.5 but having seams like that forces me to use xnormal (which is good also) but i would have to spend hours fiddling with all kinds of crap to get a good normal map…

#45

I posted a question about this elsewhere but this is probably the right place.

How can you get nice, clean cavity maps when using the new masking method? I tried doing this and the alpha saved out looks like crap and there aren’t enough controls in the masking section to give the map gradations between cavities and higher points of the model. Blurring in photoshop or in ZB would blur out the detail completely.

Any advice on how to make the cavity maps better with the masking tools or if there is a workaround using other ZB tools?

#46

First of all, I love Zbrush, its my main brush modeling software, and I think they make it better and better each update, but

1 - whats the problem with giving options to people? why they cannot just keep both proccess, so people would be able to choose which one to use. I guess old users would use the zmapper proccess (cause they were used to) and new users would try both. Are pixologic trying to impose it?

An example of this was what Autodesk did in 3ds max 2010 with polyboost, changing the whole interface of it, couldnt them give options of what interface to use, new or old one?

2 - I used to use zmapper, but went to xNormal even before zbrush get rid of zmapper. I couldnt bake occlusion and normal from multiple objects at once with zmapper, tell me if Im wrong. So, just go to xNormal if youre baking organic models for games.

3 - If they bring zmapper back, please, make it able to back occlusion and multiple objects at once

PS: an unwrpa tool built in would not bad at all, but maybe GOZ can handle it, I just hope it will be flawless

#47

Great fix for this is to just stick with 3.1 :slight_smile:

#48

Unless you’re on a Mac – they never released ZMapper for V3 on Mac.

It’d sure be nice to at least have the option.

#49

Kravit: Great fix for this is to just stick with 3.1 :slight_smile:

that would be missing on many cool features on R3… Although at the moment i have both on my machine (3.1 and R3) but at home, having vista and w7 on two seperate hard drive (as i am in the process of moving to W7) i cant get 3.1 on W7 as Pixologic dont give licences for it anymore!so basicly i have to keep Vista on my other hard drive to use 3.1 which is a pain! But i guess its just me lol
To the workflow where you are meant to recapture your mesh to create a normal map i say:
It is very slow and create tones of extra cleaning work (might be easy for organic stuf, but try for clothing etc…that contain hard edje as well as weavy bit…a pain in the backside) even with heads you have to go and clean areas like eyes,mouth etc…In comparison to the zmapper workflow, its really bad. I still use recapture for other purpose, but this methode don’t justify getting ride of Zmapper.

this new normal map calculation routines might be superior, and get you good results in some situations, but in most case, it gives useless results, and there is nothing you can do to sort it out as there are no more options to fiddle with the normal map generation! xnormal is ok, but have same issues when dealing with some models, so really…
Please bring back Zmapper, and if not, put all its options in a new R4 release!

Also, considering the ambiant occlusion creation in Zbrush, is it just me or it can be very long and very slow as still dealing with polys? I use Xnomal for that as it is tones faster but would be great to use only one soft…

#50

so there is no Z-mapper in Zbrush…? as i unterstand properly.
:frowning: bad.
“Project all” - not realy help me, with it’s unreal amounts of artifacts.

#51

I don’t have any problem when generating normal maps in 3.5 but
the more control = more power. I also want to get the ZMapper back.

#52

I know this has nothing to do with production, but ZMapper was just cool to work in. I mean the flatten process, moving the light around etc.
It went to 11.

After cloneing the Nmap, Where is the “make seamless” button?

Any Maya useres out there have a ZBrush to Maya pipeline working yet?

#53

The new pipeline is quite simple. You can now save out .ma files for displacement i believe.

For me I just export my base mesh, create displacement maps, and then generate my normals and textures and whatever other maps I need.

Inside Maya 2010 its very simple to set up. Drag the displacement node onto your shader and connect it to the displacement slot. Make sure the default maya displacement is disabled and that you are using Mental ray to do all of it. The approximation editor makes quick work of the displacement at render time.

#54

That seems to be quite a disadvantage, but you can import a low res to a lvl 1 subd of the hires and it projects the details automatically and does a really good job (unless your low res is really different). Project all also works, the key is to project one subd at a time starting from the lowest, cleaning up a little with the zproject brush and going for the next subd lvl for both meshes.

#55

" How to change R3’s transparent option back to what 3.1 used, so that you can use an image plane for sculpting

Turn off Ghost on the right shelf.

About the ZProject brush:

Version 3.5R3 contains the core functionality of ZBrush 4. However, not all features that make use of that core have been completed yet. This means that some features of R3 are different from previous versions but are waiting for ZBrush 4 to unlock their full potential. The ZProject brush is one of the areas that will see a significant boost in functionality with the next version. See the movie about the upcoming SpotLight. "
http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/Tips_and_Tricks

#56

Hi guys.
This afternoon i’ve tried to get some decent AO with masking AO within zbrush 3.5 and i must say it sucks a little bit…in my opinion.
Masking AO depends on polygon amount for making a decent mask while zmapper works I don’t know how but it works fine…so I did the two maps to make a comparison and I can only say the the guys at pixologic will find a nice solution. I don’t care if it’s zmapper or not but I expect the same quality.
cheers!!

#57

This is crazy that you cant project normal maps from an arbitrary mesh. I don’t get pixologic sometimes. And like everyone else, we don’t want to reproject details, that is time consuming and pointless, especially working in games, like people have said, meshes change all the time. Everyone at work doesn’t really get it. doesn’t make sense in production.

Anyway, just use xnormal, it works a lot better anyway, and is way fast. Hopefully with zbrush 4 they will bring it back. Please do!

#58

I work at a major game studio and we no longer use zbrush to make our normal maps. It no longer a program to get normal maps from. Try xnormal if you cant the mesh into max.

#59

I suspect you’ll be taking a few dimes off the price of your software now for having cut out a major feature, yes? I mean who the hell tested this “project all” method… who went through this much labor to recreate a sloppy rendition of a model you ALREADY FDFWEFING HAVE… and say… “ya… works great, no bugs, SHIP IT” say you wanna map a pole… simple cylindrical pole… well your low poly can’t handle that many verticle divisions without hackin it up to suit zbrush’s proprietary (but much improved!) mapping methods… get with it guys, for our sake… WE are YOUR customers… Listen!

#60

Yeah, that we never received a working ZMapper for V3 Mac is one of the big reasons I feel like we never received the product we were promised at the time of ordering (that, and that we received no real docs). Their “replacement workflow” just isn’t equivalent – poorer results, and requiring more effort.

More importantly, though, I just wonder if we’ll ever see any further releases from Pixologic for Mac at ALL. The situation’s looking kind of grim.