Zbrush, messiah, lightwave displacement

[chikega]

I know there was a lot of talk about LW's displacement mapping needing to be re-worked over on the LW forum. See this thread in particular:

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=137550&highlight=displacement+mapping

I'm not sure if this would solve your problem - But would it be possible to use the old work-around - Metamation? Essentially, it allows you to animate a low-res proxy mesh and then render the high-res one it's place.

In case you didn't want to search through the docs - here it is:

The Metamation effect was designed to let you work with the low-res version but render the high-res one.

This image shows the high-res object being deformed by
the Melt effect, which is applied to the low-res mesh.
Metamation is what makes this possible.

How is it applied?
Basically, all there is to it is to load the Metaformed object (high-res) and add the Metamation effect to it, then load the low-res version as a "cluster". Put your bones or other effects into the low-res one and animate with that. Here's a little more detail:

1) Load the high-res mesh.
2) Apply Metamation to it.
3) On the Cluster Create block, use Load Cluster/Object to load the low-res mesh.
4) Set the visibility of the high-res object to N (hidden).
5) Set up the low-res character with whatever effects you want (if any) and animate it.

What about when it comes time to render?
If you're rendering in messiah, set the low-res mesh so it doesn't render. You do that on the Object block, which is on the Surfaces sub-tab on Render.

If you're rendering in another package, you would load only the high-res mesh into that program and use messiah to deform it. Each package has its own quirks, so take a look at the information for your render package in the Using messiah with 3rd Party section at the bottom of General Info.

Things to keep in mind:
1) Make sure that after you've got a Metamated object set up that you create your character rig on the low-res mesh, not the high-res one. The high-res one will, because of Metamation, automatically conform itself to the deformations of the low-res mesh, so you don't have to touch it.

2) If your low-res character can work with MetaNURBS, you might not need to use Metamation at all. Load your low-res character mesh and press TAB on your keyboard to see if MetaNURBS works.

[fritz.arn]

Thanks alot for the answer. I will try this. But I don't have a high res object it is just a displacement map from Zbrush used on the low res object.

Fritz

[fritz.arn]

I think I found a solution for the deformation problem.
When I set the subdivision Order in lightwave to after bones, then the object deforms as in messiah and the displacement map is also rendered onto the object.

[chikega]

Superbe, genial!!! :)

[fritz.arn]

But this one works only with the messiah.displace plugin in the object properties deform tab. With the point oven reader plugin in the object properties deform tab it won't work.

Fritz

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