Post Your LW zBrush studies here...

[SplineGod]

Cool Poli! Thanks.
Im very intersted in seeing what you come up with. :)

[Hellbring]

Of course out of all the images posted on that other thread the LW one pales in comparison :( hopefully displacement will be address in the next revisions.

[roguenroll]

Originally posted by Hellbring
Of course out of all the images posted on that other thread the LW one pales in comparison :( hopefully displacement will be address in the next revisions.

yep, sadly, its by far the worst one. oh well. hopefully future versions will address some of these things. Because lightwave is great.

[SplineGod]

Had to give it a try myself. :)http://www.3dtrainingonline.com/examples/test_head2.jpg

[digones]

very nice thread...

I'm waiting for the mac release of zbrush 2 :thumbsup:

[roguenroll]

Im not too big on the bad end code stuff, but is there any chance that LW's API (??) being a little more available, a plugin can push this to be a more workable thing.

Or is this something deep in LW that only they will be able to make it functional.

curious.

I've been playing with the new Z2, what it can do is pretty amazing.

good luck, its good to see the LW / Z2 stuff being talked about.

[kretin]

Here's what I've done with ZBrush. I also can't wait until normal displacement is fixed so I can render this guy properly in LW...

http://www.zerogravity.com.au/temp/ZGE-SpawnZB.jpg

[MitchVFX]

policarpo/Splinegod,

Hey guys. Would you mind posting some of the detail of settings and manipilations you used to get these results? I've been trying for a couple of days and can't get the displacement to work. I've only had success in the bump channel. So, if there's something you've done to the image or some settings in the displacement (Also, which type of displacement), I'd love to hear.

Thanks,

Mitch


Edit: Just saw that you used Bump too, D'oh!

[policarpo]

my models are looking like Frankenstein once I activate Normal Displacement...

Ho hum...

I was having some more fun, this time with instancing...and C4D 8.5 on my lowly 1ghz PowerBook with 768mb Ram.

Eventhough C4D doesn't support subPixel displacement, it seems to be doing a pretty good job of handling it.

If NT would fix the UV Seam problem, I figure it would be smooth sailing to do this sort of thing.

Let's hope an 8.x point release will resolve it, cause zBrush is just going to become more and more important in our workflow.

http://www.policarpo.us/samples/displace_instancing.jpg

[SplineGod]

Basically I see two things when doing this:
1. Which deformations are practical to do with actual displacements.
2. Which deformations are more practical to do as bump maps.

I tend to go by what I need to see in silhouette and what I dont need to see. Very small details arent seen in silouhette until you get very close.

You can setup a mesh to change its subpatch level based on the distance to the camera so that the geometric detail changes based on distance but the bump maps are still there.

The problem with LW is that if you set the subdivision order to first you kind od lose the advantages of using SubDs for their strengths. Youll get slow updates and bone deformations that arent as good as they could be.

One possibility would be to use a lower rez proxy and create an mdd file thats applied to a higher rez mesh. Another would be do simply not worry about the details until the very end at rendertime. If nothing else a stop gap would be to have robust normal map support.

Policarpo,
Man, thats really impressive!

[policarpo]

I really hope someone releases a proper Normal Displacement plugin for LW, cause it is really needed now more than ever.

If anyone is reading this, please do so for OSX and PC...

If not , we'll have to wait for NT to do so, and they'll finally fix it once they fix the .PSD exporter.

:thumbsup:

[Julez4001]

Originally posted by policarpo
If not , we'll have to wait for NT to do so, and they'll finally fix it once they fix the .PSD exporter.

:thumbsup: [/B]

hAHHAHAAHAH tHAT WAS A GOOD ONE,
Lux and PMG is just gonna listen our gripes and do something about it.

[SplineGod]

Normal displacement is an actual displacement of the geometry along the NORMAL of each vertex. Bump displacement is similar but not along the vertex normal.

A normal map is generated off very high rez geometry. Its similar to a bump map but the vertex NORMAL information is baked into a map. This map allows a lower rez mesh to appear to be much higher rez then it is. The lights and so forth react to the normal map like it was the high rez mesh.

Read up here:
http://amber.rc.arizona.edu/lw/normalmaps.html
http://www.soclab.bth.se/practices/orb.html

So again, the first is actual geometry being displaced and the 2nd one is a fake.

[policarpo]

couldn't resist.

look what i can do ma!
:twisted:

http://www.policarpo.us/samples/gi_animation_18m53s.jpg

[SplineGod]

I would be very interested in seeing how long it would take to do in LW8 with and without FPrime. :)

[policarpo]

well, first we would need to get true geometric displacement to work in LW...

I really hope that is in the next point release.

zBrush is just amazing for this type of detailing work, and being unable to truly benefit from it natively in LW is just crappy.

So far all the tests being conducted on the zBrush forum are pretty impressive.

I hope someone builds it for LW, and I hope it's someone with Worley's vision, cause having a feature like that integrated in fPrime would totally rock!

Ahh...to dream!

:applause:

[Arte]

zBrush is just amazing for this type of detailing work, and being unable to truly benefit from it natively in LW is just crappy.

So far all the tests being conducted on the zBrush forum are pretty impressive.

:applause:
I posted this on the Zbrush forum today too. If you use Fusion to generate the 16 bit flipped UV (I used Open EXR as Lynx's tiff loader won't read the Fusion file) whatever with Lynx's plugin, you can use Zbrush for detailing with LW. As soon as things go 16 bit, Lynx's plugin handles the displacement perfectly. I used the flay Open EXR loader to load the map. Remember Fusion can also paint on the 16 bit files. Not much use with the Zbrush Uv's yet:)

For the disp head scene, you can really push things by also adding a bump map. There are no seams or issues but it's a fairly easy shot. You do not get the noise your image has btw.

I am still working on the sword scene and am getting results close to Zbrush but have the odd area where the displacement is acting weird. I haven't toyed with the file in Fusion yet but will do.

Marious.

X

[policarpo]

I posted this on the Zbrush forum today too. If you use Fusion to generate the 16 bit flipped UV (I used Open EXR as Lynx's tiff loader won't read the Fusion file) whatever with Lynx's plugin, you can use Zbrush for detailing with LW. As soon as things go 16 bit, Lynx's plugin handles the displacement perfectly. I used the flay Open EXR loader to load the map. Remember Fusion can also paint on the 16 bit files. Not much use with the Zbrush Uv's yet:)

For the disp head scene, you can really push things by also adding a bump map. There are no seams or issues but it's a fairly easy shot. You do not get the noise your image has btw.

I am still working on the sword scene and am getting results close to Zbrush but have the odd area where the displacement is acting weird. I haven't toyed with the file in Fusion yet but will do.

Marious.

X

That's cool.

Most of my concerns were addressed when the Lynx3D plugin was released (well, for a hack to get what we want until we get subpixel or micropolygon displacement)...but it's good to see people exploiting things.

Cheers.

[Wegg]

Gregory Glezakos posted this on a ZBrush forum. Messiah 2.0. Close cousin to Lightwave. . .

Link to the thread. (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=016381)

http://209.132.69.82/uploaded_from_zbc/200407/user_image-1090193144zul.jpg

[policarpo]

Subpixel displacement rules!!!!

Beautiful image...but is Messiah really a cousin? It's more of an autonomous vision questing rebel in my book! :bounce:

[Wegg]

There are so many things about Messiah that scream out it's LW roots. Using HPB for rotations instead of the more industry standard XYZ. Seamlessly importing not only LW objects. . . but all their layers UVs, Morphs, Sub-D settings etc. You even hit F9 to render. . . I'd say they are related. Using them together is far more rewarding/productive than either on it's own. . . put it that way.

[Alan Daniels]

I posted this on the Zbrush forum today too. If you use Fusion to generate the 16 bit flipped UV...

Arte, do you have a link to Fusion's home page? I've heard a little about the app, but can't seem to find a link. Since the word "Fusion" is so common, searching around in Google, the CGTalk forums, and the ZBrush forums have not produced any useful links. :hmm: :cry: I'd really appreciate the help. Thanks.

[G3D]

I picked up ZBrush a couple months ago and had to set it aside. I'll get back to it after Siggraph. Getting over the interface led to these to tests:



Link 1 (http://www.G-3D.com/ZBrush_Stuff.html)

Link 2--animated (http://www.G-3D.com/ZBrush_Test_03.mov)

[sooon]

hmm... this is my version of displaccement test.

i run a few test:

1. fprime with only bump map:
http://www.sooonism.com/fp.jpg

2.fp with bump map and normal displacement.
http://www.sooonism.com/fp3.jpg

3.LW renderer with bump map:
http://www.sooonism.com/lw0.jpg

4. lw with texture displacement:
http://www.sooonism.com/lw1.jpg

5. lw with normal displacement:
http://www.sooonism.com/lw2.jpg

lw with only bump displacement:http://www.sooonism.com/lw3.jpg


hmm... i actually cannot differenciate the different. it seems to me if u just put up the bump displacement it works quite good already.

anyone want to share some knowledge here??

by the way, fprime not working with that??

[sooon]

ok, i found the solution for fprime.

check this out:

http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=016208&p=

seems like many people already know:P

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