Anyone here use 3dsmax… and try the Displacement and normal mapping between Z2 and Max…?
thx.
thx for tha link Cezar, I saw it but that is only Dmap Vray can’t use the normal map.
my asked questions is to compare Z2 result in max (and differents way to use them into max) with Nmap and/or Dmap
For exemple actually I work with Kaldera plugin in max and that is the result…
the lp model made in max improved in Zbrush 1.5 and the normal map was generated by Kaldera.
Low polygon wire
Low polygon (smooth iteration 0)
High polygon (improved in Zb1.5)
Low polygon with normal map extracted by Kaldera.
What is your Max’s version?
that work made on max5 …
Max 6 has Mental Ray included, which can also do displacement… I think you will have to acquire a renderer that supports displacement… otherwise I think the only way for you to make it in max is to use the displacement map slot of the material you’re going to use (in material editor’s maps rollout) along with Displacement Aprox. and Displace Mesh modifiers. But that can be really heavy on your computer… Sorry This is as far as my knowledge goes… 
Mental Ray in Max 6 is powerful, but doesn’t do displacement very well IMHO. From what I understand, it’s calculations deforms the physical mesh when rendering. This causes renders to be fairly slow, and what you get tends to look pretty bad. Tweaking settings in the shader and render menu can improve things a bit but then your looking at really really slow renders. What I don’t understand, based on my research, is why Mental Ray displacement seems to work well in other 3D applications (like Maya) but so terrible in Max. Anyways, Vray is truly great for doing displacement and am hoping a good number of features will be added to v1.5 in the next month or so. I believe it does subpixel displacement. This means fast and accurate renders that look fantastic.
Now, regarding normal maps (sorry for going off topic). I’m going to play with this tonight and see what I can come up with. Look forward to seeing what others have to say regarding your questions as well. Be back soon. 
Ugh! Generating a normal map, no problem. Lot’s of info and tools out there reagrding that (plus ZB does it, so we don’t actually care about them). Trying to put one on a model in Max and actually render it? Ugh!
I feel like my head is about to explode. Think I’m going to just stick with displacement maps instead for now. They’re so much easier to use. Sorry I wasn’t able to help at all.
Edit: To clear up something… converting the normal map to DDS format and using that with DX9 rendering for Max’s viewports in order to preview the effect of the normal map was easy enough with a little bit of fiddling (though still not sure if I did it right, just looks like a regular bump map to me), but trying to render the model is what is proving difficult. Or are we even supposed to be able to do that?
for normal maping in 3ds max you can use mentalray’s displacement shader. the normal map in mr is called “direction map”.
i did not try it yet. i am still trying out displacement using finalrender and mentalray. it’s a bit of tweaking but it works now. the problems with the missing faces in 3dsmax where because of using the smoothing of 3ds max. when you deactivate smoothing the render does not miss faces (but it is not smoothed, lol).
when i have news i’ll post them.
all the best,
daniel
Ah, good old Mental Ray (yes, sarcasm). Gave what you suggested a try. Render times were really long and despite that, no displacements will render. Think I’m going to see if normal map rendering abilities are coming for Vray in the future… :rolleyes:
Hi guys.
Ok listen… I tryed many plug or software with max to test differents way to make what I want… actually … the better result (for me) is Mankua from Kaldera plug in…
I tried With Vray … since one years… (may be more) I postef something here … (I can remember where/when) but Vray actually … work as micropolygon technology with a plane face… but with a 3d model as you saw in your post Zeddicus you must to smooth many time your model… ( that is not the objectiv we search the lowpolygon).
about mental ray … I tried but no good result … that is the reason of that post… to see what other does.
that will be good think if you can post the process flow with mental ray to see how you setup your shader, and about max6 I read in discreet site that function but impossible to find any informations about that, then if you tried yet… show me how please.
thx for your answer guy.
ps: the rendering with DDS technique (nvidia) apprear to me very bad (not what I want so far)
I’m curious to see the Nmap generad by Z2 on max… ( I will test that the next week if anyone tested yet that… I’m happy to see that)
I saw your other post about Dmap and you talk about Contour map have you a tool or method to work with that in Max ??
I want to know more please.
After much research, it looks like the only options for rendering normal mapped objects are Kaldera (a whopping $395 US for Max 5 & 6), and gNormal (free but for Max 5 only). The makers of Kaldera say they will be adding support for other renderers in 2.0 from what I can gather reading their forums. For viewport display, using the DirectX method with DDS files works, but it’s not all that great and can’t be rendered. Oh, and the problem I was having before with the DX method was because the object mush be an editable mesh and not an editable poly.
Regarding displacement mapping, all the major renderers support this it would seem. Each tend to do it their own way and your results will vary. At the risk of sounding repetitve, Vray is probably the best at the moment. At least as far as Max is concerned anyways.
My take on displacement and normal mapping? I would stick with displacement mapping and a good renderer if your going to work with your Zbrush models in Max and don’t plan on going beyond that. For normal mapping I would save that for creation of game content, where you can easily see your normal map in action in the game. Hopefully as time goes by things will improve. With games coming down the line that use these newer technologies (looking forward to seeing HL2 and Doom 3 in action for example), the need for better support will becomes more and more important and I’m sure companies like Discreet and others will take notice and eventually give us what we want.
Edit: By the way, when I mentioned “contour map” in that other thread, it was in context with distortion I was getting in my genrated displacement maps. Just a bug, which I think I’ve got figured out.