I meant ZMapper. That was a bad typo on my part.
ZBrush 3.12B has the following options in the Tool>Normal Map menu:
- Tangent (on for a Tangent map, off for an Object map)
- Adaptive (on to use adaptive calculation mode, off to not use it)
- Smooth UV
- SwithRG
- FlipV
- FlipR
- FlipG
- FlipB
- Create Normal Map
These various settings let you create any normal map you should need. There aren’t any presets, but once you know the particular settings that are correct for your rendering engine it takes no time at all to duplicate those settings again. In fact, because this is within the core of ZBrush rather than a separate interface you can even record a macro that sets that up for you. And you can even assign a hotkey to the macro!
To create your map, simply do the following:
- Import the model, divide and detail.
- Go to level 1
- In the Tool>UV Map menu, specify the map size and seam border. Assign mapping if necessary. (or store a morph target and import a UV’d version of the model)
- In the Tool>Normal Map menu, choose your settings and click the Create NormalMap button.
- In the Texture palette, export the map.
That’s all there is to it. Nothing complicated.
Aside from providing new map calculation algorithms (which have now been incorporated directly into the core of ZBrush so that you don’t need to manually select them anymore), the two other main purposes of ZMapper were: 1) To let you use bump maps in the calculation so that you could get more details than your model could be divided to. 2) To project details from one model to another in order to create a normal map for a different model from what you’d detailed. Both of these features are now obsolete in 3.12B:
Bump maps are now useless in calculating normal maps because 3.12B can easily handle models in the 10 to 16 million poly range. A 4K map has no more than 16 million pixels of data. That means the most detail it can possibly hold is equivalent to a 16 million poly model. And that’s with 100% of the texture space actually used. Most UV maps wasted about 25% of the texture space, which means that a model of 12 million polys holds the same detail that a texture of 4096x4096 can hold. So a bump map can’t add any more detail than what the model can already support.
As for projecting details, you can now do that through the SubTool menu thanks to the Tool>SubTool>Project All features and the ZProject sculpting brush. In fact, 3.12B has improved the projection routines and added new features such as PA Blur. With ZMapper, what it projects is what you get. There’s very little control, and there’s nothing you can do afterward to fix issues. With 3.12B, you have more control AND you can clean up any problem areas after the projection, before you create your normal map.
The bottom line is that ZMapper has trained everyone to think that it’s the only way to create normal maps. But the fact is that its features have been steadily rolled into ZBrush itself. To put it another way, PC users should be clamoring for the features that Mac users already have, rather than Mac users clamoring for ZMapper. 
Hope that helps!
