ZBrushCentral

ZB 3.5r3 - displacement exporting mid value isnt middle grey

Hello guys!

In the new zb i have noticed that if you extract your displacement map from the tool menu(is there another way to do it now?) and leave the settings as they are u will get a map in which the middle grey value is 149 and not 128, so when you leave the MID=0.5, you actually get a middle grey of 149. After some testing i have found that the appropriate value for me was 0.415.

My question is, why is this happening? and why is it that when i apply an ‘incorrect’ displacement map to a mesh in zb it doesnt swell up the mesh(what would normally happen if middle grey isnt 128). Does the displacement map depend on the scale of the model?

Thank you!

I noticed this in several versions of ZB.

Its slightly disconcerting but you can export in several ways.

  1. Create and export button = mid grey 149
  2. Clone Disp button > sends to alpha > in Alpha menu export = mid grey 149
  3. In alpha menu make Tx > in Texture menu export = mid grey 127

Then there is this…
https://support.pixologic.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=42
Which relates to 32bit export, but doesnt appear to be related to 16bit as far as I can tell.

Its a little bit of a quandary as to why this is happening, and I always feel like I am missing something while using the 3rd the method I described.