ZBrush to Maya Texture/Displacement

[system]

First off…I totally agree that there should be an official step by step walkthrough tutorial from pixologic this seems like it would be a very common issue for users.

The best tutorial I have found is on cgbootcamp.com search the site there is a tutorial for maya 2010. Not much has changed from 2010 to 2011…if you use the steps/settings from that video in combination with my previous post where I detailed the steps that worked for me you should be able to get some good results.

You are right that the Subdiv approximation setting are very dependent on your model. So what I would do is start with the settings I recommend and test render…if you capture the detail you need great, if not adjust the settings and test again…Mental Ray in general is trail and error like this.

Goz works pretty well as long as you dont require an extreme amount of detail out of your disp…if you do you need a 32 bit disp map… for this I recommend to use the Multimap exporter plugin that is free.

Goz is meant to be one button and done…if you dont get good results then use the standard method of exporting and start from scratch. Don’t try to use Goz and then try to use a different disp map or change a bunch of stuff cause Goz sets thing up to work perfectly with the map IT exports. At least this caused ME a lot of confusion so I would think just start new and at least you will know what settings have been changed because you changed them.

If you still cannot capture the detail with a 32 bit map no matter what setting you use…use a normal map on top of a disp map.

So give it a try…and post back.

[TedG]

Thank you for responding with those links- my latest problem now is that GoZ is not launching Maya- no error, nothing but the prompt “export mesh to GoZ enabled”. I previously had ZB 3.2 & Maya 2008, and recently upgraded to ZB4 & Maya 2010, so maybe that caused a conflict. I posted that problem on the Forum and have gotten no responses so far. I’m getting the feeling most ZB users render within ZB, so maybe that explains the lack of clear Disp tutorials. There is a Digital Tutors tut that covers ZB4 and Maya 2011 pipeline which may be worth checking out. I merely want to texture and sculpt my Maya models to a higher degree, and ZB seemed liked a good bet- maybe Mudbox is a better alternative.

[system]

First off, I want to thank everyone for contributing to this thread. Getting a high-quality render in Maya out of a Zbrush sculpturecan be a little bit of a challenge for the ZBrush beginner. I think threads like these, exploring different setups, versions and solutions can really help people.

As for myself, I’ve come very close to reproducing the level of detail and quality from my original ZB Sculpt. I tried for a while to successfully build a layered Displacement Map + Normal Map render in Maya, and found that I could never quite get the detail out of it that I want, so I scrapped DP, and went with just Normal maps, which is actually closer to what I will be going for games anyways.

I also started using GoZ (ZB 4 and Maya 2011), which actually gave back great results right off the bat. All I have to do when using this method is adjust the Blinn settings on the materials in Maya before setting up renders.

PS: It’s interesting you referred to cgbootcamp, the founder of that site was my 3d teacher. Great site, lots of good information.

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