creating displacement maps for trim sheets

jordank95

I created a trim sheet that I would like to create a displacement map for so my trim pieces can have some depth in UE4. What would be the best way to go about this? I tried to bring my HP trim sheet layout into zbrush, but when I click "create DispMap" it gives me a really bad looking map. Am I missing a step? What would be a good workflow for this?

Eric Chadwick

What software did you model the HP in? It's dead simple to bake displacement/parallax in Maya or Max.

jordank95

Eric Chadwick said:

What software did you model the HP in? It's dead simple to bake displacement/parallax in Maya or Max.

I got it to work in Maya. I was initially trying to export as a Targa, but that wasn't giving me a correct displacement map. Switched to TIF and it worked fine. Not sure why?

But now Im coming across another issue. My trim sheet has some bolts and other things on there that is also used with an alpha map. When I hooked this up in UE4 (tried both PN Triangles and Flat Tessellation) it completely distorts the mesh. Like warps it in some odd directions and it looks completely broken. If I lower the displacement to 1 or lower, its fine, but its barely displaced at all. Am I doing this wrong?

Eric Chadwick

Moving this from Technical Talk to the Unreal section, where you're more likely to get responses from those who know Unreal.

Obscura

jordank95 said:

Eric Chadwick said:

What software did you model the HP in? It's dead simple to bake displacement/parallax in Maya or Max.

I got it to work in Maya. I was initially trying to export as a Targa, but that wasn't giving me a correct displacement map. Switched to TIF and it worked fine. Not sure why?

But now Im coming across another issue. My trim sheet has some bolts and other things on there that is also used with an alpha map. When I hooked this up in UE4 (tried both PN Triangles and Flat Tessellation) it completely distorts the mesh. Like warps it in some odd directions and it looks completely broken. If I lower the displacement to 1 or lower, its fine, but its barely displaced at all. Am I doing this wrong?

Show a screenshot of how it was looking like. Also show the material setup. The reason for the tif working better is because of bit depth. Displacement usually requires 16 bits per channel and tga can only have 8. But sometimes that can be enough too. Personally I rarely end up with a 16 bits displacement map.

Mink

The incorrect displacement directions are because you need to mutiply your displacement map by a vertexnormals node.

jordank95

Mink said:

The incorrect displacement directions are because you need to mutiply your displacement map by a vertexnormals node.

This solved it! Thank you

Also thanks @Obscura for the input!