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Hi all,

the headline says it all... Anybody here tried to render a ZBrush4R3 Vector Displacement map with Maxwell Render yet? Any recommendations for settings in ZBrush while creating this map?

Thanks
Marco

no, not yet. No demo available.
By the way, I saw that we can now export fiber guide in .ma, .lxo, ... is that compatible with the new fiber render from maxwell?

I did try briefly on the the Calibration Test-File but then had to run.
Hopefully HalfLife or anyone else has some time to look into this and posts the required global Multiplier settings.

Ok, I don't get this to work thus far.
As soon a I hook up the Vec-Displacement-Map the Scene renders out all black, regardless
of the Vector Displacement-Flavour Maxwell offers. Seems to be the same in Studio and in the Rhino-Plugin.
Apart from that the Preprocessing seems to need quite a bit of time, even for the simplistic Test-Scene.
Did anyone have more luck?

I haven't had a chance to play with the new release yet -- it will probably be about a week before I get into it... but I will certainly be looking into any Maxwell application of the new features.

Best,
Jason.

I've just spend several hours with the ZBrush Diagnostic Files, testing every permutation I could think of, to get ZBrush Vector Displacement to work in Maxwell (as it should) -- I never got a perfect circle, in fact the closest I got was with a "world space" map, inverted in Maxwell and using "zero grey"... which suffice to say is just about as wrong of a combination of settings as you could try.

Did anybody else have better luck?

Best,
Jason.

Hi Jason,
what a pity that you spent so much time! So did I some weeks before .
In one of my last PM's I attached a quote by JD, which basically says that getting something
useful out of how Zbrush exports Vector-Displacement is currently impossible (for more than one reason).
It would be cool if NL chimed in to sort this problem out.

Well, it's always worth retracing the steps just in case something was overlooked along the way -- I'd say with all 3 of us going over it, there is no doubt there is an real issue which will probably have to wait for a patch for Maxwell.

One thing I will say is the files processed and rendered lightning fast for me -- so that's a nice bonus if we can get the proper output.

Best,
Jason.

For those who don't own ZBrush here's a MXS file with the relevant tester file: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/41250852/ZBrushDiagnostic.zip -- The object of the test is to have one of the colored shapes over the grid to be a perfect sphere... whichever number is directly below it is what you are supposed to set in Zbrush (to export correctly to your app) -- but as you can see that isn't happening.
Best,
Jason.

That map is a bit strange though.....checking by changing the exposure, it doesn't seem right to me. What are the export options from Zbrush?
Maps from Mudbox work perfectly fine, or 3DCoat.

Mihai wrote:That map is a bit strange though.....checking by changing the exposure, it doesn't seem right to me. What are the export options from Zbrush?

Well, one has Tangent Space or Worldspace Options both in 16 Bit and 32 Bit versions.
The Mxs to test had a tangent 32 map. As Jason writes - one of the Elipsoids should get a Sphere, this Field Number
then determines a Value on how to treat Tangents inside Zbrush. Apparently it was tested with Modo 501 and both
Maya and 3DSMax, probabably with native Renderers.

Maps from Mudbox work perfectly fine, or 3DCoat.

That makes me curious - I heared that Mudbox's Vector-Displacement works but I never ever got anything only remotely
useful from 3DCoat, Hervé made similar experiences.

To clarify the purpose of the numbers is to determine the flipping/RGB settings combination that will work with any given rendering app.

The export options themselves are pretty basic, most what Holger listed... I ignored world-space Vector Displacement maps in the upload since I don't believe Maxwell is intended to support world-space anything.

Best,
Jason.

But it still matters how that test file was exported right? What settings were used regarding Tangent or not first of all. Can someone re-export it, with Tangent on, no SUV and no SNormals probably, and 32b.

I can, I've already tried all those variations -- but if you'd like to see them I can export all the possible variations for you... I'm sure they mean more to you than to me.

Best,
Jason.

OK -- here's the link for the version you requested... I also put the 16-bit version of the same settings in there just in case:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/41250852/ZBrush ... nostic.zip

Best,
Jason.