ZBrushCentral

Blobby Normal Map

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hello World,

I would like to get some help from you about Normal Mapping issues when I go from ZBrush to Maya.
I hope some of you could help me to get rid of this problem !
I saw tons of tutorials about that, turned and returned a lot of forums and google pages, and unfortunately I still cannot figure out and still cannot understand why my normal maps appear so blobby and messy when I use them in Maya.

I will try to explain my workflow in order to enlighten some probable future questions, may I’ve done somthing wrong at this stage ?

  1. I model my mesh into Maya and UV it
  2. Import this OBJ into ZBrush
  3. I divide and Sculpt as precise as I can be
  4. As I guess I tend to move vertices during sculpting, I export the low division mesh to re-optimize UV in Maya
  5. Once done, I import this low UVed mesh into Zbrush
  6. I project the High sculpt on the imported low mesh.
  7. I export my normal maps with Multimap exporter tool.

Here are my settings :

On the zBrush viewport, I have something like this, sharp :

And here is how Maya (rendering with Arnold) out, overs-moothed and blobby :

And when I see my generated normal map, I can see that it seems to be kind of blurry, un-sharp… Here is a piece :

A friend told me to try with xNormal, the problem is I have some UDIM, and xNormal don’t support them.
I guess the problem is about exporting my maps in zBrush according to my Normal Map. But what I did wrong ?
If someone could give me some clues, it would be a great pleasure.

Thank you very much in advance, have a good day, and sorry for my english !

Take care

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#2

what resolution is your map?
check to make sure you’re using the proper Y tangent for your render.

You can still use xNormal for your baking if you choose, you’ll just need to set up the objects to bake for each UDIM.

#3

Hello beta_channel,

Thank you for your answer.

My map resolution is 4096.
Do you think it’s too small ?

For my soil, as it’s only one object, I have two UDIMs for this single object. And xNormal doesn’t allow me to get 2 UDIMs for the same object. Or I need to organize differently.

#4

you need to break each object up by UDIM.

And yes, a single 4k for all the terrain you have is very low. That should probably be tiling blended materials that each are a 4k source and can probably be mipped down to 2k or 1k depending on your tile rate.

My main guess is you’re actually trying to push extra detail with the 4k as well though. A UV map with 100% used space at 4k will require ~16 million points to gather all that information correctly. If you’re using 2 UDIMs each at 4k then your sculpt needs to be at least ~32 million points. How dense is your sculpt? You’re also going to be fighting Anisotropic Filtering using a map instead of geo which could help explain why your sclupt is clean but your render looks blurry.

#5

16 M for an 4K 100% UV Map ?!
I am so far far away to the final count ! This soil is sculpted at 5 M of point.

I didn’t know this information, I will try it now !

I want to put the extra details with no tiling map, because I want precise informations in some place of the ground.

I’ll also try to break each object up by UDIM, and look after how I can do it without make a seam appears.

Thank you so much beta_channel ! I guess all of that will be very useful.