Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=805665&Start=1&Sectionid=1&filter_genre_id=0&WhatsNe

There have been a few msg's on ZBrush, displacement mapping and how it could be used to add detail to Poser models. Thought I'd give it a try, and 2 weeks later, here are the results.....

This is my best effort....see hlink above. It's Don in P5. Some points....

1. The Technique described in the ZBrush forums and manual does not seem to work. You cannot create a displacement map between a morph target and a lvl 4 mesh without getting ugly distortions. I think it's they way the Poser models are put together - maybe it's because they are not all quads or tris. I never found out why.

2. The way to do it is export your model from P5 - making sure you only export body parts that will result in non-overlapping uv's. Overlapping uv's will crash ZB2. Then inport into ZB2 (don't store as a MT), subdivide 3 times (to around 1million poly's), sculpt the model. Then return to lvl 0, create a displacement map (use DPix 2, 2048x2048). Don't use adaptive or smooth uv's. Save that alpha map. Then save the lvl 0 mesh as an obj. Now import the new mesh into P5, and displace as per Quinlor's node setup (remember to convert the psd in photoshop).

3. If the above instructions don't make sense, then I suspect you will have trouble and need to do the ZB2 tuts.

4. Because of the overlapping uv's issue, and the fact you have to render the modified Lvl0 mesh in P5, that makes it infeasible to use ZB2 as a way to create general displacement maps for the base V3, M3, etc models. If anyone has found a way around this, pls let me know.

Oh, and that's to Quinlor for the 16 bit texturemap node setup.

Message edited on: 11/07/2004 20:37

You can get around the overlapping uvs issue by creating props for the body parts you want a displacement for. For the head, use the grouping tool in P5, selecting only the Lips, Skin scalp, and Skin head. Group those materials together, and create prop. Export as a wavefront object file, and import into zb2. do not add the teeth, gums, eyelashes or eyebrows to the head prop, or the uvs will overlap. The same can be done for the rest of the body.

Good idea ashes2clay. I just exported the figure minus the head and eyes, but your way is nicer. I noticed your gallery image uses ZB2 - but it's very dark, so difficult to see if you found a solution to the main issue listed above.

Interesting discovery! Did you try to reimport the original mesh (instead using a morph target) on level 0 befor making the displacment map? Thats what I did, but i only tried it which much simpler objects.

Yep Quinlor, tried reloading the obj insted of switching to the MT. Same result. What is happening is that ZB2 is creating a displacement map that assumes the mesh will not be smoothed before rendering, so the displacement map compensates for poly edges - so when you render in P5, the poly edges show in any area that has been displaced. It doesn't happen if you do the displacement map for the smoothed Lvl 0 (instead of the MT), and then export then cage into P5 and displace. But I think I have a workaround - save the smoothed base mesh from ZB2 as a full body morph for Poser, then apply that morph plus the displacement map to the base model (say V3).

Thats a very useful discovery! Thank you for sharing!