super quick zbrush ?...poop!?!?!?!?!?

fritz

OK. i really want to try poops method of getting high poly models into max from zbrush. however...when i get to subD6 in zbrush...and try to export as obj...i always get this "insufficient memory" before the export completes. anybody? anybody?

ironbearxl

If you imported the object in pieces you could ctrl+shift areas of the mesh to hide/show them and export them piece by piece. And Even if you didn't you could just mask hide a part of the mesh > export, then invert and export the other half. You probably wouldn't notice the seam once imported to max.

MoP

If your models are that high-poly, you're probably better off baking normals (which is what I assume you want to do) in ZBrush itself using ZMapper.

fritz

i have zmapper...haven't tried it yet. i checked out the tutorial on it written by the pixologic dudes. but there is still something i don't get. like...i built a low/med rez over my exported zbrush model(like sbuD3). now...do i unwrap that low/med rez model. then just use zmapper to bake normals into that UVset? i guess i'm just stuck in doing it the max way where you have both models on top of each other to bake stuff in. do i have to bring both models into zbrush for zmapper? or just the UV set from max?

thanks!!!

ironbearxl

Here's a zmapper tutorial video: http://206.145.80.237/zbrush/zbcfiles/ZMapper_walkthrough_web.zip

fritz

oh dude...i feel stupid. i've seen that one before and didn't even realize that the head model at the end was brought in from another program. that's just what i need. thanks for bringing it to my attention again ironbearxl!!!!

FAT_CAP

I still find MAX's normal-maps to be superior to ZMAPPER generated maps though... I get the same memory error when trying to export a too high polygon object aswell... I have 2 gig of RAM in my work and home machine and still end up getting these errors... no idea how POOPY could export an 8 million poly model!!!

fritz

wow...i have always heard(and this happened to me once) that max creates some really nasty seams w/normal maps....that's why i wanted to try it w/zmapper. fat-cap...why do you think zmapper gives poorer results?

MoP

Max doesn't create seams when rendering normal maps, it shows up UV seams really obviously in viewport though.

I've rendered normalmaps in 3dsmax that look kinda crappy in the viewport, and perfect in other external viewer apps which correctly render the normalmaps in real time and hide the seams better.

I've tried ZMapper on a few different objects, using their settings presets which are set up to produce normalmaps like max8 - as far as i can tell they've been pretty much identical every time.

FAT_CAP

I couldn't find a decent anti-aliasing setting which compared to the Hammersley super-sampling in MAX's normal-mapper... this was especially evident where I had a character head and its eyes as seperate objects within ZBRUSH and projected them onto a low-poly head with no eye objects - just flat polys where the eyes would be (bad explanation - lol) with zmapper.

I was also getting some ray-casting errors under the eyeball region but this could just be due to me not messing on with it for long enough.

SuperOstrich

We've used Zmapper and Max's normal map rendering workflows extensively here. Unless someone here has found some magic settings for Zmapper here, the seams it creates are unavoidable. Everywhere your UV's aren't welded, Zmapper creates a seam in your normal map. Period.

Max8 does not have this problem. I get perfectly seam-free normal maps (using any FX shader, even in the viewport). If I use Zmapper, I have to paint out the seams.

FAT_CAP

Theres a setup/ configuration file for ZMAPPER which does a pretty good job of mimicking the seams stuff that MAX 8 does... you should be able to find it on the ZBRUSH central forums somewhere. Its just the anti-aliasing/ supersampling thing I cant get to look anything like MAX's unfortuanately.