ZBrushCentral

Projection settings for displacement map generation?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Long story short, I am trying to use a 32 bit displacement map that I make in ZBrush and use it in Maya, and it works perfectly except for the fact that there seems to be this glitching around the crease between the eyelid and the head.

If I understand correctly, ZBrush makes displacement maps using projections and so this looks to be a problem related to vertices appearing overlapped in the projection.

If I could, I would just edit the displacement maps directly in photoshop and just manually polish any extraneous detail out of the map directly, but photoshop has no capability to even touch, really, 32 bit files.

Where would I find the settings for the projection that ZBrush uses to make these files?

Alternately, how else would I fix an issue like the one that appears in the included image?

Attachments

demo.png

#2

There aren’t any settings for displacement map generation beyond what is in the Tool>Displacement Map sub-palette. Of these, Adaptive is probably best avoided so if you had that on try without.

For editing a 32 bit map in Photoshop what you can do is this:

  1. Open the file.
  2. In the Layer menu choose New Adjustment Layer>Levels.
  3. In the Layer Properties panel press the Auto button.
  4. Now select the Background layer and carry out your edits. The adjustment layer will mean you can see what you’re doing.
  5. Delete the adjustment layer before saving your final edits.

Attachments

levels.jpg

#3

Hmm, I’m suspecting that there might be something wrong with my installation of photoshop cs6 since I tried to follow your advice but absolutely everything was grayed out in the layer menu and in many other places. So, that sounds like a photoshop problem that I’ll have to look into elsewhere…

I’ll try playing with the adaptive function and see what’s possible, thank you for the tip.

#4

In case anyone else has the photoshop problem, from what I’m reading, CS6 needs to be ‘extended’ in order to have 32 bit editing capabilities…

#5

Oh wow, turning off adaptive did the trick!

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction. The interesting thing is that all of the youtube tutorials just say, automatically, always leave adaptive on.

#6

Well, I’m glad that worked! Adaptive should produce better results but for some reason it generally doesn’t…

#7

I was comparing the two and I would say that adaptive actually does BUT for those glitches. So, I’ve got a photoshop CC trial and I’m just going to composite in the “healthy” parts of the non-adaptive displacement map into the adaptive displacement map.

Thank you for your help!