Zbrush: Normal Map Over 500k polygons

ralusek

So I've finished detailing model at 1.2 million polygons, want to normal map for low poly. This will be my first attempt at normal mapping, and i found a pretty decent tutorial for doing so on zbrush. however, when i open up zmapper, it closes and says model has over 500k polygons. i dropped it down to 400k, basically lost all the detail i put in, and got it to work. it still gave me a warning that i was operating over 250k though.

is there a way to normal map very high poly figures? do i need to divide it into polygroups or what?

any help would be awesome, thank you

rube

This may not be the answer you're looking for but you can download xNormal and use that... it will have well over 1.2million polies just fine

Gav

Why not use xNormal? Easy to use, fast, no viewport loading.

http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=41776

Edit> Damnit, rube!!

Though, it sounds like you are trying to normal map a model at your highest subdivision level. you'll need to drop it down to Level 1, the level you imported it / created it and bake from there.

Unless that's what you want....but 500k is far from "low poly" and I'm not sure why you'd even consider a normal map for 500k model :P

Gav

Krynn72

ralusek wrote: »

So I've finished detailing model at 1.2 million polygons, want to normal map for low poly. This will be my first attempt at normal mapping, and i found a pretty decent tutorial for doing so on zbrush. however, when i open up zmapper, it closes and says model has over 500k polygons. i dropped it down to 400k, basically lost all the detail i put in, and got it to work. it still gave me a warning that i was operating over 250k though.

is there a way to normal map very high poly figures? do i need to divide it into polygroups or what?

When you use zmapper you drop it down to a low subdivision, but zbrush still takes into account the higher divisions when baking. Just drop it down to the first or second subdivision and bake it anyways. You'll see what i mean.

Kovac

What Gav and Krynn72 said. Also, if your mesh ever is that high and needs to be normal mapped, try running Decimation Master on it:

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=71265

Reverenddevil

Xnormal for the win! There really is no substitute. I take my high poly stuff straight from Zbrush anywhere 2 to 4 mil tris and bake those in xnormal. To me anything else is really asking for headache.

ralusek

awesome, every single post helped. zmapper fixed, looking into xnormal now