Max/ Zbrush Displacement help :/
polycounter lvl 18
Right. I've been working on a highpoly head for a while now - trying to refine it to something I'm happy with. I've been having some serious headaches though.
The workflow Im using is to build the low-poly base in MAX, unwrap the object, import into ZBRUSH and detail the high-poly, then re-export the base mesh and a displacement map, back into MAX where I apply a TurboSmooth/ Meshsmooth modifier with a displacement modifier - supposedly bringing the mesh to the exact same geometry it was in ZBRUSH.
The first tries I had with this technique looked cool in ZBRUSH, but, upon exporting the base back out etc, I realised that, wherever I had triangular polys in the mesh, I would get wierd distortion when the displacement was applied. So, after alot of trying to tweak these out of the mesh, I finally gave up, modified the low-poly object to have no tris around any prominently visible areas, and went back into ZBRUSH and started again.
Now - what I've gotten at the minute is this.
You can see the high-poly, low-poly base and the rendered out displacemed mesh in MAX. Notice however, the weird artifact at the sides of the nostril where the cheek/ jowel fold meets - and notice how this isn't on the high-poly model.
Now, I've found that I can eliminate this by exporting the level-2 mesh from ZBRUSH and using this as a base... but this is a half-measure workaround. What I really want is the base to be as "light" as possible in MAX.
Does anybody know why this is happening - is it because of the order of the polygons or something? There is the same amount of polys for displacement using the level-1 mesh with 3 MEshsmooth iterations and the level-2 mesh with 2 Meshsmooth iterations I should think.
Any help would be great, as its definately going to be something to keep in mind on further MAX/ ZBRUSH attempts.
The workflow Im using is to build the low-poly base in MAX, unwrap the object, import into ZBRUSH and detail the high-poly, then re-export the base mesh and a displacement map, back into MAX where I apply a TurboSmooth/ Meshsmooth modifier with a displacement modifier - supposedly bringing the mesh to the exact same geometry it was in ZBRUSH.
The first tries I had with this technique looked cool in ZBRUSH, but, upon exporting the base back out etc, I realised that, wherever I had triangular polys in the mesh, I would get wierd distortion when the displacement was applied. So, after alot of trying to tweak these out of the mesh, I finally gave up, modified the low-poly object to have no tris around any prominently visible areas, and went back into ZBRUSH and started again.
Now - what I've gotten at the minute is this.
You can see the high-poly, low-poly base and the rendered out displacemed mesh in MAX. Notice however, the weird artifact at the sides of the nostril where the cheek/ jowel fold meets - and notice how this isn't on the high-poly model.
Now, I've found that I can eliminate this by exporting the level-2 mesh from ZBRUSH and using this as a base... but this is a half-measure workaround. What I really want is the base to be as "light" as possible in MAX.
Does anybody know why this is happening - is it because of the order of the polygons or something? There is the same amount of polys for displacement using the level-1 mesh with 3 MEshsmooth iterations and the level-2 mesh with 2 Meshsmooth iterations I should think.
Any help would be great, as its definately going to be something to keep in mind on further MAX/ ZBRUSH attempts.
Replies
One... that square poly on the nose doesnt have enough UVW data, so its giving you averaged points.
two... try subdiving that polygon and regenerating the displacement. Notice it happens on the sharpest fold.
Hey, you may like to take a look at that loop around the mouth on the low, you have it curving around the top of the lip and going down into the chin... you may find some expressions problematic. Try mate the loop go all the way around to meet under the chin.
Yeah, I'm not too sure about the validity of taking stuff from ZBRUSH into other programs...as things like this tend to occur if you don't know exactly the right workflow to follow. Trouble is, you've usually spent a hell of a long time ZBRUSHing some goodness onto your model and it's pretty infuriating to have to do it all again if oyu need ot tweak the base mesh.
I didn't know that MAX7 could generate displacement maps though, I've only got MAX5 here at work so I can't check, but is this the HEIGHT MAP option? This would be great as I can't really go altering the UVs or subdividing points on the base mesh to take back into ZBRUSH as it has a fit over that sort of thing!
I'll give it a whirl at the weekend and post my result