How to remove noise from mudbox/zbrush stamps?

ariofighter

I have a question for the forum. I am working on pulling several stamps from images for my next project. I have been able to get some cool shots and am happy with what I have so far, but when I test them in mudbox I get a lot of noise from the stone itself. This is killing the details that exist in the rather detailed image.

So I guess my question is, does anyone know a way to remove this "background" information without ruining the more prominent details?

tristamus

You'll either need to smooth them out carefully, or just fix up the image your using for a stencil / alpha in photoshop to get rid of the noise. I know that in ZBrush, you can modify the smooth brush's curves to allow for different kinds of smoothing, but no one will be able to know what you'd need for something specific to what you're making.

tharle

a quick and dirty way to get the large shapes without the small detail is just to apply a quick blur in photoshop. theres also the despeckle and reduce noise filters which might help.

tharle

divi

do it in 16bit though or you'll get stair stepping.
you will most likely need to do some manual work though and paint out some stuff.