Normal map help

#1

HI everyone.
I’m trying to finish my first lowpoly character trying to keep it around 9Kpolygons, i did the low version in Softimage and after that i exported the models into Zbrush and started detailed them as you see below, i set it back to the first level and exported that version of OBJ back to softimage, since it was alittle bit different than the original xsi version and i did the normal map thing inside zbrush, i flipped it and use a bump generator inside XSI to apply it to the obj getting those artifact everywhere, any help or suggestion?

#2

You can’t use the regular bump map generator for a normal map, and Normal maps can be a pain in Softimage.

I suggest taking the low rez model, make a duplicate of it that will you delete in a moment. On the original, apply ultimapper, then select the duplicate as the source. Generate a super low rez normal map, just so Softimage applies all the proper settings to your model, and then in from the ultimapper, generate a mental ray preview which will set up your shader for you. Now you can freeze it off, delete the duplicate and plug-in your normal map from ZBrush into the shader it made for you.

#3

Thanks Jetta, since I’m kinda of new in all this about normals in XSI and Ultimapper, could you please post a more detailed step by step work flow, probably you did a nice explanation but i dont get a lot of thing and i have been searching on internet about it and looks like a lot of people has this problems between XSI and normals.thanks in advance really aprettiate all this.

So fa i import the lower res version of my head to XSI and duplicate selected the old one (original) and i went to Property>Get>Ultimapper I picked the as source the identical low res copy i did after that i got lost, my bad :frowning:

#4

eh… normal maps aren’t a pain in XSI, i’ve never had a single problem applying a normal map from zbrush.

easy steps:

  • export your normal map from zbrush (I use the maya tangent space high quality preset)
  • load your mesh in XSI, put a normalmap node on the material, plug it into the bump slot in the material node
  • apply a tangent to your mesh (get->property->tangent)
  • connect your image clip (normal map) to the normal map node, select your UV set and tangent and uncheck “Unbiased Tangents” in the normal map node

done like dinner.

edit: read testure’s posts here: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=67101&highlight=xsi

more detailed directions and pictures

#5

Hi, again, well i found that on the Artist Guide that DT did, they explain how to use the ultimapper and works perfectly so far. Thanks in advance.

#6

Didn’t see the Eldee message but i will try that way, ultimapper works fine, which could be the difference between this 2 methods? anyone better than the other ?

thanks

#7

ultimapper is slow, that’s the biggest one. and zbrush can handle higher poly meshes with virtually no slowdown, that’s the other.

#8

I don’t know exactly myself. Just that, Eldee is correct, but that sometimes, I follow those same steps myself and it works nicely and sometimes I get less than perfect results. But when I do it the Ultimapper way, I don’t get the weird results. That said, I would rather do it the manual way as Eldee describes, as if you already have the normal map, technically, you shouldn’t need to touch Ultimapper at all and it’s faster but again that doesn’t always seem to be the case for me. I don’t know what step or setting Ultimapper is or may possibly be doing that I skip when I try the manual way. But I do get really irritated seeing the normal map being displayed perfectly in ZBrush and not looking at all as good in Softimage and this seems to fix that for me.

#9

Hi again well today I had time to try using the Zbrush method and Im getting way better results than before using the same method (i didn’t apply the tangent), but im still getting all that dirty and artifacts in the face, and I know that Ultimapper works fine for me but as you 2 said this should be faster and i want to learn how to do it in that way too.
Any suggestion about how to fix this more than welcome.

I exported the OBJ of the low level and first i applied the Zmapper following pretty much everything the tutorial said and I did the Tangent thing in XSI.

#10

This is the Ultimapper version.

Since I’m here, which is the best way to apply differents colors to a cape, for example black inside and red outside, i already did the UV layout, should i create just clusters for one side?

thanks again

#11

Just out of curiosity. What happens if you plug the ZBrush generated normal map, into the already working setup in XSI that Ultimapper generated for you?

#12

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