Beginner zbrush/maya map frustration

Adamp34

so I’m learning how to use zbrush and I’m at the end of my first mini project. I want to export the Usual maps but nothing appears to be working correctly. I remember having a hard time with the same process in mudbox so I’m pretty sure it’s easy to solve.....I hope

my displacement map seems to not be displacing at all. I’m rendering in Arnold- I’ve outputted a 5k map as I’m going in close. Flipped v, smoothed Uvs and exported a 3 channel exr 32bit. It doesn’t seem to have any effect on my model at all. I’ve increased subdiv levels to 2/4/6 in the Arnold settings. When I uncheck use alpha as luminance on the file node it goes from 0 to marshmallow so I have to decrease the scale on the displacement node to stupid small like 0.01 which basically had no effect on the model again. During ‘marshmallow’ stages my model does not show any signs of actual detail either, it’s like I’ve just put a solid white square as a displacement and it’s all equally puffing up. If checked the file in photoshop and it looks ok. I’m running out of ideas.

also...ha..... my normal map seems to have the low res poly mesh in it as well as all the high res detail.

Adamp34

quick up date -the displacement map works fine in mental ray. so I just have to work out wy this is nuts in Arnold. oh... and why the normal map  is still crazy

Adamp34

Ok turns out that for for some reason zbrush had cut my uvs in to shells of four polys each.....I have no idea why......not even sure what the functionality is behind this. The fix was to select mrg when exporting the geometry so I only have one shell instead of 100. 

Brian "Panda" Choi

For future reference, images will help.  I recommend using tthe Snipping Tool on Windows for quick screenshots.