ZBrushCentral

Rendering ZBrush Displacement-Maps In External Renderers (May 9th: 2nd file added)

:smiley: Hello,Kostas Mavrommatis student from greece,new to z-brush.Trouble rendering with softimage|xsi,just cant get the detail from z-brush when rendering displacement in xsi,any tips please?

:slight_smile: Hello!My name is Kostas Mavromatis,student from greece,new to z-brush,terrific thread rray,would you have an xsi rendertree detailed example?i just seem to do something wrong!!!thanx in advance

Hi Everyone. This was a quickish test done with the new Rio version of Brazil RS for Max 6. Having problems with the hair and high frequency detail in the flesh although I can’t tell so far if people are using bumps for that. Sorry the pic isn’t a bit bigger but those are the limitations of the demo.

If anyone is still reading this thread and wants to see an extreme close up then reply and I’ll upload one with all the stats etc.

DispTestHead_Render

Attachments

DispTestHead_Render.jpg

Yyyello
Houdini Apprentice 6

Import obj file. As one previous Houdini user pointed out, the file extension must be in lower case so rename it from OBJ to obj.

Scale the model down to about 1/100th of it’s original size to avoid shadow bias problems.

Apply the shader and set the model to ‘Render As Subdivison Surfaces’ in the object render parameters. You can also set the displace boound and turn up the shading quality if desired.

zbrushhead
zbrush_sword1
zbrush_sword2
zbrush_disp

Attachments

zbrushhead.jpg

zbrush_sword1.jpg

zbrush_sword2.jpg

zbrush_disp.jpg

Photoshop
I opend the texture file in Photoshop - under image i used Auto contrast to bring the value to black and white
change the mode to RGB and save as to a new texture file
now you have the option to flip it or do it in maya , I just done it in maya

Maya
import the Obj
Rotate it 90 on the X
in the hyper shader apply a new texture and use the displacment mamp that you just created (the RGB one MR will give an error if you use the orginal one)

in the color balance of the texture file I used the following
Alpha gain 1.670
Alpha offset -0.865

As for the object
get the Att Editor and under displacment map
turn of feature displacment
and under tesselation make it 4

i took it a littel bet further and used SSS shader and htats what i got

head_test_SS

Attachments

head_test_SS.jpg

I’m a new member and I’ve been watching the results that Zbrush produces with displacement maps , I’ve tried to download your head sample , but the second it finishes , it immediately opens dreamweaver with text nonsense, do you know what can I do ? so I can experiment with your object and lightwave on a mac.

Thank you.

Is this THread a dead-born child?
Where are reactions from the threadstarter about this nice thread?
Or is there a Plugin out with the 3D-App export ??

Hi, administrator: Do you know how can I download your head files? I downloaded a zip file but the result is that dreamweaver opens it immediately and displays only the code text… I’m using a mac and explorer, and pretend to test your models along with the displacement maps in lightwave 7.O, so Do you know how can I convert this files , or is there another link to download them.
Thank You

Hello Ruy,

The problem is that when you installed Dreamweaver, you allowed it to change the setting for zip files so that Dreamweaver opens them instead of WinZip or Stuffit. The particular steps that you need to do at this point are different depending upon whether you’re a PC or Mac user.

If you’re a PC user, right-click on the link and choose “Save Target As”. Then specify a location for the file to be saved to. After it has downloaded, go to that location and right-click on it. Choose the “Open With” option and “Choose Program.” In the list that pops up, you’ll be able to find WinZip (if you have WinZip installed). Select that, and also check the box to always use this program. From then on, this problem will be solved.

If you’re a Mac user, you should click and hold on the link, then choose “Download Link to Disk” from the dialogue. Then you can open it using Stuffit Expander.

Hi guys, I just learnt about the wonders of Displacement and Normal mapping from the Unreal Engine 3 demos. So I’m thrilled to learn ZBrush might be able to give me these effects shoould I ever start an Unreal 3 Mod. I also have Poser 5 and I want to eventually sell poser stuff online, so I thought I’d strat there.

Here’s my Poser 5 render…

Here are the settings I used in Poser…

Now I tweaked the map in Photoshop - inverted its colour, flipped it vertically and upped the contrast to about 75%. Hope this gives a good starting point for other Poser artists trying to make this work.

I don’t like the guy’s ears in my render… And there’s just a smidge of banding creeping in on his shoulder. Can’t wait to see how this looks with a texture as well as displacement.ZB_DispMapTest01.jpgZBDisp_Settings.jpg

Thank you ,I was able to download the model and the 16 bit map.

Now the question , I flipped verticaly the image in photoshop and saved it as a 16 bit grayscale tif , but lightwave can’t open the new file from photoshop , any suggestions? I also convert it to rgb and had no results, I used it as a bmp but the displacement only makes the image bigger or smaller…

Ruy

Sorry ,know very little of Lightwave, but those posts explained a lot to me.
I rendered both with Max native displace and V ray .With V Ray , had to
convert to Edit Poly and used extremely low Amount and Shift values(less than 0,3. Well, Max dispacement is maybe less acurate ,didn´t try with 4x Meshsmooth, however.Surprise to me is Default Scanline renderer and display
combination rocks.The fastest.
But had to struglle to get Vray better results.
:roll_eyes:
Regards

V-Ray_African
African

Attachments

V-Ray_African.jpg

African.jpg

This image is the frustrating result. Had to smooth it in lightwave modeler and apply the shadows as a texture. Lightwave’s manual on displacement textures only covers half a page from a total of a thousand pages all over the book , and even in that case it doesn’t has a tutorial on how to use it accurately . I’ve revied the lightwave posts and tried them all.

Sorry , maybe I need an upgrade or something .
headHDRI

Attachments

headHDRI.jpg

you need 7.5 I think. You also need to down load a plugin that is free from a third party forget the
name but it works were the built in one seems to fail. go to flay.com and do a search
for a displacement plugin or go to the newtek forum and do a search. I know personally it works as I
have done four different model displacements with zbrush into lightwave 7.5c-d and 8 mac. You need
to convert the 16 bit gray scale to 8 bit gray scale to use it on the mac. You loose some detail but
usually its not bad.

hope this helps
strongarm

Why do you need to convert it to 8 bit on the Mac? Is that a LW specific thing?

actually lightwave doesn’t handle 16bit grey scale tiffs but someone has written a plugin so it imports
them for the pc. the code is available but no one has made a mac version. so there is a way, it
just hasn’t had anyone to make it available on the mac. but natively the answer is no, it doesn’t support
them on the pc or the mac. I am not sure it uses the extra data anyway. Lightwave is a little behind
in this regard. It does work well though, don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t have bought zbrush without
testing it in lightwave first.

strongarm

Hello strongarm,

Please check out this thread: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?p=173134#post173134 It contains a complete tutorial for getting great results in LightWave using the Lynx plugin.

FYI: This thread is also linked to from the FAQ>Other Apps>LightWave section here at ZBC. There is more info there for you, as well.

Thanks for the info but again its a pc only lightwave plugin. If your on a mac and lightwave
you have to convert to 8bit grey scale to get displacement maps to work. I wish it wasn’t that way but until some
one compiles the 16bit tiff loader for the mac its only for the pc. they come in as garballed garabage
and don’t work unless you convert them before hand. Until the mac version of zbrush 2 is released
witch is suppose to be now, you really didn’t need this plugin but its becoming very important. I can
get by with 8bit for now. It works well enough but this is important info for mac people upgrading.
thanks again for posting the links as I had forgotten were I had picked them up.

strongarm

Is the source code available?, and do you need a LW dev kit to compile it?

[edit]
I checked it out. It looks like more work than it’s worth. There is no source code for the “loader” if that’s what it is. But there is the libtiff library which I have used a few times.

Hi all can anyone tell me the settings for max6 final render plugin?
I noticed there was 2 people rendering it with this plugin,
where do I put the displace map ?
do I use the regular displace modifier
or I have to do something in the render window options Thans all for the help:lol: