easy methods of zbrush normals to PSD?

capone

I've been discussing this on another forum but curious what people think here.

So if you want to create a libary of zbrushed details such as bullet holes/dents etc that can be overlayed in your PSDs



is this method considered unprofessional? I always seem to get odd results with this but apparently adding a R128,G128,B255 fill on top solves it?

Are there any tutorials out there about this method?

cryrid

There are some here which go into the method (also works good with zbrush's tiling document), and some info for blending maps together here

m4dcow

I think it would be better to generate this sort of library as displacement maps, so you could rotate them any way you like in photoshop and use xnormal or the nvidia plugin to generate a normal map, and you also retain the ability to use them as a zbrush alpha library.

capone

Thanks Cyrid, never seen all these tutorials in a handy collection like this before. Great link!

m4dcow, I always come across different types of displacement maps. Can you make details in zbrush and put a displacement material on them instead of normal? Anyone have any tutorial links where displacement maps are exported for use in photoshop?

m4dcow

capone wrote: »

m4dcow, I always come across different types of displacement maps. Can you make details in zbrush and put a displacement material on them instead of normal? Anyone have any tutorial links where displacement maps are exported for use in photoshop?

You would model your detail on a flat plane just like you have done in your example, then do a grab doc of the alpha. You can then use that alpha in zbrush as a stamp to duplicate that detail (repetive things like bolts, runes etc...).

In photoshop, you can paste those same alphas, and rotate them which you wouldn't be able to do with normal maps with as much control. You then use xnormal's height to normals filter to generate your normal map.

So you get the ability to use these stamps in zbrush to model, and the ability to rotate freely in photoshop eg: if you don't want all your screwheads paralell, or if you have part of something mapped diagonally and want to rotate a stamp to fit.