ZBrushCentral

Problem with normal maps

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi all,

I’ve generated normal maps a few times and they worked fine, but lastly i’ve been having the problem you can see in the attached image.
I sculpt the details, i paint the texture with polypaint, create GUV for mapping and export my difuse texture fliped verticaly (its correctly mapped in 3dsmax).
But after creating the normal map for that, it looks good in zbrush, but in 3dsmax it looks weird…loks like a mapping problem. I fliped vertically the normal map too.

Any ideias? I tried this more than once and had always this problem.

Thanks a lot,

King Regards

Attachments

1_normal_and_difuse.jpg

2_only_difuse.jpg

3_only_normal.jpg

#2

what kind of normal are you using? raytrace or interpolate? what config settings are you using for MAX?

#3

I’m using 3ds Max7_TangentSpace_BestQuality. I’m using Raytrace.
These are the settings I always use…dont know why they are giving this problem now.:frowning:

Thanks

#4

I have the same problem with you drvox…
I use “3ds max8 tangent space best quality” configuration in ZMapper, and the normals look great in Zbrush! When i apply the normal map in Max, a lot of problems happened (in seams and others)…:frowning:
I read a lot in this forum about using ZMapper, I did all the things people suggested, but nothing seemed to work well. I’ve done a lot of tests in simple and complex meshes, but always have problems…I used Xnormal too, but the results are the same…
I don’t think i’ll ever use normal map properly…

#5

to generate normal map first ,a “tangent” map is created.
U can see this map if u hit tangents in zmapper. It shows the colors transitions based on uv seams.If there are hard transitions in tangent map when u create the normal map,the same seems are going to apply to the normal as well.
Having less uv seams (no guv auv) and increasing the slider in exprert pass 2
…on uv seams inside zmapper fixes the “problem”.

#6

tried that but still the same problem. I guess you mean I should unwarp in 3dsmax instead of using GUV or UVtiles in zbrush, right?
But isn’t there a way to make the normal maps work with the GUV? I also polypaint my texture in zbrush, so I needed to vreate the map there… the mapping works fine for the difuse.

Any idea what i can do?

Thanks a lot.

#7

GUVTiles has a large number of UV seams, and these seams are placed wherever the mathematics dictates rather than being strategically hidden out of sight.

With object space maps, this is no problem. But the math behind tangent maps forces normal flipping across every UV seam. That results in visible seams wherever you hit a UV boundary.

This is NOT unique to ZBrush. As I said, it’s the math behind the map type. If you want to use tangent mapping, you need to use your own UV’s so that you can hide the seams as much as possible.

#8

thanks a lot for the help.
I was now trying to use my own uv’s but get always the same problem, i export obj to max in a low subdivion, unwarp it there, bring it back to zbrush and when I go to the max subdivion level i loose all the sculping work i made before. More strange is that sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t… maybe i’m missing something.
Any help?

thanks