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Edit Displacment map in Photoshop, view in Zbrush?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hey everyone,

Can I edit a displacement map in Photoshop, and view the changes afterwards and continue to edit in Zbrush?

so heres my situation, Im doing the head of a creature seperately from the body and exporting two different displacement maps that I then blend in Photoshop.

Im doing this becuase Zbrush wouldnt allow me to zoom in close enough to do the details I needed in the face, and the brush’s stayed the same from
size 14 to 1…

So what Im wondering is,

Can I edit a displacement map in Photoshop, and view the changes afterwards and continue to edit in Zbrush?

PS…Im on a Mac, so the whole maxing out zoom, and brush thing could be a mac bug.

#2

Scaling the entire model up in size should solve the brush problem (Tool>Deformation>Size).

I don’t see why you couldn’t edit your displacement in Photoshop either though–I think you load the displacement map as an Alpha then adjust the Tool>Displacement settings. I believe the Displacement Map Zscript tutorial covers it.

#3

What you can do first is in ZBrush crop and fill the canvas with the displacement map retouched there and then grab doc 16bits.
Andreseloy

#4

Marsyas: Scaling didnt seem to help, but thats okay, Im more trying to figure out the editing thing. I couldnt find that tutorial you mentioned…I upgraded from 1.55 to 2 so all the documentation I have is in the 1.55 folder and applys to version 1.5…unless you can be more specific about what its called? But I didnt see any tutorials on “Displacement” I looked in the Zscripts - Tutorials, folder and the only D’s listed are: Depth Masking, and, Drag_Rect_Stroke?

andreseloy Im not trying to retouch it, Im trying to blend two totally different maps of the same character (at different levels of detail) and view the newly created one in 3D or 2.5D…or whatever it is Zbrush displays when your sculpting.
:wink:

#5

I am not saying this to be mean in any way, you are the only person on this forum who is having a problem with zooming. That tells me the problem is probably not Zbrush. I would do some experimenting and see if you can find a solution. Maybe even make a zscript so others can see what it is you are doing or not doing. :slight_smile:

#6

Well, lemme see…heres how I begin to work in Zbrush…I model in Maya, in this case since Im doing displacement, I unwrap it and export the OBJ.

In Preferences - Since I have 4 gigs of ram, I set my memory to 2000
I set my Max poly’s per mesh to 10 (or whatever the highest in the slider is)
max undo’s and whatever the other slider is…( I dont have Zbrush open in front of me) I set to max as well.

Then I import the OBJ as a tool, draw it on my document and enter edit mode…right now my machine bogs down at about 5 subdivision levels which on this tool ends up being about 1.9 million polys. I can go higher but even at 5 the brush size max’s out, and zoom locks so I cant get really fine details in the face. I can get close…but not reeaally close…to do eye bags and such.

Again this could be a mac bug…wouldnt be the first, but when I exported just the head, and did the bust only, I didnt have this problem, it ran beautifully on 5 sub’s and and didnt lock anything. Which leads me to beleive that it is a Zbrush thing.

Its only happened on this model, usually Its something I can break up, with clothes or armour or…anything…Which is why I decided to cut the head off and do it separatly.

I cant show any pictures of it…oh and hiding areas doesnt help this problem.

But again the question was: Can I edit a displacement map in Photoshop, and view the changes afterwards and continue to edit in Zbrush?


Marsyas - “Displacement Map Zscript tutorial covers it.”


This actually sounds like it might work, but again, I cant find the tutorial on that…any other suggestions? Keep in mind the actual question of the Thread isnt about the zoom and brush size…

#7

i have this zooming issue as well, but there is a nice way to get passed this…Try to use the “set pivot option” button…it should allow you to zoom further…let us know if that helps…dont forget to clear the pivot once you’re done with it…

#8

At any rate…I figured out the question I was asking, with help from some other post…and the displacement tutorial Zscript.

It doesnt seem like its going to work, because Im using 4k displacment map, and it imports all rainbowy…and when I resize it to 2k there isnt enough resolution in the map to hold up (jpeg artifacting) even smoothing it doesnt work very well.

Oh well…back to the drawing board :slight_smile:

Thanks for all who helped.