Zbrushing deco onto flat planes

capone

Was trying something out today because soon I'll need to be making wood carvings for a box. I tried out this method...

1) Sculpt carving on a zbrush plane
2) Export to Max
3) Overlay plane on top and render to texture a normal map



Left is high poly zbrush, right is a low poly plane with baked normal map applied

Any advise?

Eric Chadwick

Looks like you don't have Supersampling turned on for your bake, I see some stairstepping. Turning Supersampling on will give you anti-aliasing wherever the high-poly mesh overlaps itself.

Rhinokey

could you skip steps 2 and 3 and just put the zbrush normal map material on it and take a screen shot?

Steve Schulze

Or export a normal map from ZBrush, alternatively.

For that kind of detail, you might like to look into the decobrush which you can access when you go into projection master. It's particularly nice for doing that kind of fluid art nouveau typed detail.

capone

Thanks all,

EricChadwick, I have it on super sampler: Hammersley , quality 0.5.

Rhinokey, Tried that but it didn't look smooth enough

I think perhaps the reason for both of these things is that my zbrush sculpt is too rough? This is it on my highest division, 5. (about 250k)



Jackablade, I've exported a normal from zbrush before but it's been a while. It involves using z app or something doesn't it? If I can find it am sure I'll remember what to do but I can't find it in zbrush 3.5. As for deco brush, just gave it a whirl, very interesting indeed! Only appears to be a 2D brush though so not sure how to bring it out? Trying to look for some tutorials to show how to use it correctly.

JohnnyRaptor

ZMapper.

try xnormal aswell

Steve Schulze

Only appears to be a 2D brush though so not sure how to bring it out?

You'll need to switch the brush setting from RGB to ZAdd or ZSub to actually sculpt with it. From there it's just a batter of choosing a nice alpha to work with.

If you're still dealing with ZMapper you really, really need to upgrade to the latest ZBrush. It won't cost you anything.

In the current version, making a normal map is just a matter of selecting "Normal Map" -> "Create NormalMap" in the Tool menu. Once you've got a map, you need to press CloneNM to shift a copy into your texture palette from where you can export it.

Eric Chadwick

That sculpt looks really rough to me. Depends on what rez you're baking it to though, low enough and the roughness won't matter.

Rhinokey

when you used the normal map material did you use high quality render for the shot? seems like it would work fine if all you are doin is mappin it to a plane

DarthNater

Rhinokey wrote: »

when you used the normal map material did you use high quality render for the shot? seems like it would work fine if all you are doin is mappin it to a plane

Hey, STFU and go finish Gordan.....

But yes, that does work. I have done it a few times before