DW4 Help: Baking Zbrush normals to the original mesh

fearian

Hey guys, Im been speed learning Zbrush for Dominance War, but I've run into a mental block here.

I've got my model all sculpted in Zbrush, and I want to back the normal maps to the low poly mesh, however I can't find out how to bake to my original mesh - the one in Zbrush has been deformed and I need to use the original for the competition.

I hope this makes sense, maybe I'm blind but I can't find any tutorals that deal with this specifically. Most just use Zmapper with the distorted mesh.

Thanks for any help! Time is of the essence!

FAT_CAP

If you open ZMAPPER, click on "Projection" and then click on "Capture current mesh" your highpoly mesh is saved ready to project onto whichever lowpoly you choose.

So now if you go to TOOLS> CLONE in the main ZBRUSH window and then click DEL HIGHER under the subdivision slider and import the object you wish to project onto, opening ZMAPPER again you should see two objects- one being the new object you have just imported and the other semi-transparent object will be the highpoly object you originally captured.

You should now be able to click Create Projected Normal map to create the normal map of the original highpoly being projected onto your new lowpoly mesh.

Hope this helps

fearian

balls. I can't go back to the orginal subdivision level because at some point I must have 'deleted lower'

any way to get around this?

FAT_CAP

Well with this method I don't think that going back to the original subdiv level really matters as the highpoly source is captured and then the lowpoly re-imported. Why are you wanting the lowest subdivision level anyway? You would usually want this to project your normal maps onto but if you are wanting to import a new lowpoly to project onto you don't really need the lowest level anyway.

You could always try the RECONSTRUCT SUBDIV option in the geometry rollout of the TOOLS pallete - this attempts to recreate the lower subdivisions but won't work if you have tris in your mesh as fara s I can remember.

Failing that you could import the base mesh as a seperate subtool, append it to your mesh with multiple sudbivision levels, subdivide it up to the same level as your original highpoly object and then use the PROJECTALL function or the ZPROJECT brush to apply the highpoly detail onto this new mesh.

Andreas

You could also use XNormal for this.

fearian

Thanks for the help! I really apreciate it!

Well I seem to be running into walls every step of the way here. Two of the most significant ones though:

for starters, I get this message going into Zmapper, which I follow (the model is split down the middle, for a mirrored UV map)

But once I'm in Zmapper, I get this mess when I capture the mesh


@Blender, yeah looking into that too, I have no clue how to so much as get from Zbrush to xnormal at the moment though :P
Downloadng xNormal now.

FAT_CAP

The first problem is due to you having UVs outside of the 0-1 UV window. If this is on your highpoly for capturing then this doesn't matter at all you can simply use ZBRUSH to automatically generate UVs for this mesh using GUV or AUV tiles. Since you wont be needing to paint on these UVS in any external app the automatic UV tiles will be fine.

The second problem looks like the sort of effect you get if you have parts of the mesh hidden or seperate objects hidden and then try to capture the mesh. Unhiding everything before going into ZMAPPER and capturing your mesh should fix this if that is the problem.

fearian

hmmm seems like a neverending loop here! I get errors because part of my mesh is hidden, but it wont let me in Zmapper without highting part of my mesh! hah

yes, half of my UVs are offset by 1, and this is on my low poly model. Its been unwarapped in Max so I dont want zbrush to automatically unwrap it - I don't know if I'm making sense. This isn't my own model to start with so its probably not even the best way to start learning Zbrush anyway.

http://www.antonkozlov.com/Tutorials/xNormal.html this tutorial looks helpful, I'll try it later.

fearian

xNormal is working fine! I'll tackle Zbrush another day

PixelGoat

When you capture a mesh in Zmapper, you can import a completely new tool (the original lowpoly in this case) and project the captured mesh onto that.