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Normal Map Problem - banding patterns displayed (Maya 7)

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hello there,

I’m having a normal map problem. In Zbrush I created wrincles on a shirts I created in Maya and exported a normal map by using ZMapper. In Zbrush, the model looks like as follow.
shirts_zbrush.jpg

I also tried hooking it up to the material as “other” and then selected “Out Color” + “Normal Camera”. In this case the weird pattern didn’t show up but all the detail that’s created in Zbrush wasn’t read well…

I know this is a known problem in the past but past topics didn’t lead to the solution. If you could give me any pointers that’ll be great. Thank you very much for your time!

Spec:
ZBrush 2.0 + Maya 7.0
PC, Windows XP 2002 service pack 2
Pentium 3.20GHz, 200GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2
217GB Free space

Attachments

shirts_rendered.jpg

weird_pattern.jpg

#2

Im having the same problem, how are you converting your displacememtn map in photoshop im exporting from zbrush as a PSD then flipping converting to rgb and then exporting as a Tiff, but I think the problem lies in the tiff compression im doing some tests at the moment to see if the other Tiff Formats still produce the banding…Have you had any further luck figuring this problem out?

#3

When I used Maya 8 it worked… I have no idea if it’s just a bug in 7 because I never had the same problem in 6.
Only thing is that I made a little change in maya.rayrc file due to my friend’s suggestion and it worked becautifuly when I rendered it in mental ray. Not quite sure how much it effected though.

#4

I have the problem too. It is banding. It is most noticible when you don’t use 32 bitbitmaps, RGB images. The best way to hide it is to add noise to your file so the pattern is not as notible. It looks like maya s reducing the bit dept for some reason. My guess is that may a is converting the notmal map to whatever i8s used internally for a bump map and loosing color bit depth info at that time.

#5

are you rendering in maya hardware, software or mental ray? try mental ray, it cleared up the problem for us.

#6

I am also experienceing this problem when using a displacement map created in Zbrush as a bump.

Switching to mental ray doesn’t seem to help for bumps, any thoughts?

#7

Yep I to am having this problem although I’m getting it in Renderman. I’ve used this workflow many times. But this is the first that I’ve seen it do this. Here is my render.

Attachments

TestRender.jpg