Hi, Uwe
You said nothing wrong, just in our opinion the things have “another focus”. Practically human sees what surface normals show him, thus 50% grey would be a very little help here (see posted images).
We also don’t share Alonzo’s opinion that 16-bit displacement and/or micropolygon displacement would be really helpful for EI user
Have you been able to test this in Modo? It’s only 201 that will do it, no? You a beta-tester then?
edit: I guess you’ve been watching the Modo video then. Very nice BTW how they allow you to set a minimum and maximum displacement: simply set it to -100% and 100%.
Hey igors, thanks for your reply.
If i may ask: What is the focus?
i don’t really speak about the human perception. as all of you know, it can be cheated soo easily. thats half of the buisness 
my concern is mostly accuracy, ease of use and a possible cause for unwanted artifacts.
one map is better than two! 
if this means simple tone-remapping (like in the modo video) great! the math behind it should be pretty straight-forward (take this with a good amount of salt, as i don’t have any clue about programming, hehe).
well i can see where micropoly displacement and 16bit can be usefull.
saying 8bit is enough reminds me a little at the time when 16 mb ram was enough
(just half-kidding here. there will allways be projects that call for the least bit available amount of control (really needed or just wanted is another discusion), and why not give this control to the user? otherwise this user will turn to other programs which have the ability, first just for that project and over time completly) just my opinion
To be honest, there’s no getting around Zbrush. I don’t know why anybody could look at the Zbrush Site and not hear the stampede? Like it or not, ZBrush offers a solution for what programs promised but never delivered. A true 3D digital paint and sculpting solution. It works on many levels to the degree, that I was to slow my pursuit of animation just to do digital paints, sculpts as stills. I have been seriously considering only using ZB for the next 3 months.
Yes, Zbrush can teach EIAS a few things about how time waits for no one. Evolve or Die. Life means change. I’m not going to make excuses why I shouldn’t be a part of the future. No one in this feild can afford to be bogged down with adverse thinking, words or conditions that stunts growth.
ZBrush has so many uses, I can’t begin to count them. It’s excellent for morphs targets, texture painting, modeling, on and on. I’m not letting my own biases sabotage myself in an industry that relentlessly reaching higher and wider abroad.
EIAS is not the early train on the ZB railway. We are currently behind on this. With even modelers like Modo supporting the correct nuetral gray displacement paradigm (note it is address before the 16 bit, subpixel is addressed in the video), we can not sit back and deny in the face certain force of foreboding change in the 3D landscape.
Never again will I think adapting to change will take away from my growth as a 3D artist. Resisting change and insisting to live in the past is surely stagnation. Life is change.
Other artist are creating artwork, the likes have never been seen by the old masters.
OK, I will put the megaphone away. I will do test instead of typing.
Fritz, you will need Encage by Igors (konkeptione) and Obj2Fact by Ramjac.
Igors Encage has many uses. They are brilliant programmer. I don’t understand they refuse to see our need.
Last thing.
I think subpixel or micropolys, high frequency, 16 bit renders without unified, intuitive nuetral 128 grayscale, dynamic range displacement map is moot.
It should be first.
very last.
Igors are good. I love them. period.
yes, feel my pain. Render test on a dual 500 mhz
Believe me I know how important this is. It’s life changing. I’m hoping to do an artshow over the summer. Return to my painting roots. Only do Zbrush and render in EIAS for a few months. Sit in the park and sell paintings. 'Tis a dream I have.
Igors I’m not asking for 16-bit renders or micpolys, I’m asking for one unified displacement map workflow in EIAS like all the other programs.
Separating the one map in PS is slow and doesn’t work well.
Still I am only asking…ok…pleading, no…begging but trying to be clear at the same time.
And they all have different ways of handling it i expect, just like HDRI, GI, etc, etc.
Regarding the grayscale “mid-point” or +/- displacement feature, i always think about the way SoftImage handles it, example -
Add a “change range” node -
Settings-
Old range 0.0 to 1.0
New Range -0.5 to 0.5
This is a math node added to the material tree, applied to the displacement map, looks simple huh, but who knows what goes on under the interface :hmm:
I’ve already shown the Igors a screenshot of this setup, not that its much help, just trying to understand how it works in other apps i guess.
I seem to remember protesting at the suggestion of a plugin or “helper app” to solve the prob, (yes a common moan but at this point i’d take it without question, plugin, shader, whatever…
Reuben
whatever helps to sort this out.
the best solution would be if EITG includes it into v7. who is resposible for this? matt?
like i already suggested a preference switch would be the best to support older projects.
No i think Igors are right, the default adaptive and group uv tile projections are very difficult for the renderer, no bluring, no texture AA is allowed and the alignment has to be so accurate, sure, there are ways around the prob as you have found, but uv mapping the model outside ZB defeats the objective IMO.
There is another mapping method in ZB called simply “uv tile” which produces a seamless uv map, unforunately i found this to be buggy as hell :banghead:
But since this topic came up maybe l’ll take another look at ZB and maybe its time to start asking Pixologic for helpfull features and more importantly bug fixes.
Reuben
Return of the undo-less workflow! Bliss.
To be honest, I can’t even figure out what this topic is about anymore. All I know is that conversations between artists and programmers can be very, very difficult. We use the same words but talk a different language. For me, the whole conversation is about workflow, but the Igors may be thinking more about implementation.
i think you nailed it down!
i am sure the igors understand completly what we all want, but at the same time do the math:
time to implement the features / (benefit for the programer + benefit for the user) * buzz feature factor = x
as you can see, i know my math 
Hello, gentlemen
Yes, the thread looks totally disorganized (Alonzo is here :)). Let us say summary what we think about displ. probs (it’s also an answer for Uwe’s questions)
50% grey. The feature with “micro” eventual effect. We’ve nothing to add to what we wrote/showed before;
16-bits. Actual for terrains with both: mountains and micro-details are created with a single map. For characters etc. 8-bits works quite well. Note: 8-bits does not mean that only 256 displacement values are possible, it’s only a range of source map;
micropolygon displacement. “Hard weight” feature. We are not familiar with its theory, but we know:
UV seams. IMO it’s the really actual and important problem. Though we don’t know either other apps really solved it (quite possible) or only talk they solved (also possible). We’ve experimented with ZB maps in Max - seams too (but Max renders normal maps seamlessly - we don’t know how)
btw: maya has also adaptive displacement and we like it much more than the micropolygon one;
That’s all
Whatever Igors. Anytime you want to clean up my apartment…Bring it! LOL
[left]Anyway. Sorry Manuel, I used this forum as an opportunity to request enhancements to EIAS ZB compatablity.
Rueben, I agree. Yes I have found a UV editing workflow that completely eliminates seams and it works very dependably but with more compatablity between EI and ZB it shouldn’t be necessary. With AUVs and Zapplink there’s no need to UV edit. I only did it because I wanted to paint my texture in PS. Now, with the application linking module in Zbrush, I can.
I still have to check the UV “Fix seams” options to see if AUV works or not. I am not sure right now but regardless, knowing that UVs are conquered and not a real threat to my process…I would hate to see precious programming time put towards something that is not a problem…not at least until I test it or can say for sure.
Lastly, I believe EI can render quality displacemts with an 8 bit render. IMO, It would be enough to deform geometry edges correctly. My concern is displaced geometry edges and why I am not concerned about Bump maps. Bumps maps in EI are fine but without accurately displaced edges bumps look fake. So personally, that is why I am not so interested in precious programming resources put toward changing Cameras quality to 16 bits, microspolys, or bumps.
I am very concerned and am asking that some effort be made to remedy the workflow issue which includes the use of Photoshop to cut up a single greyscale map into halves so that these two separate maps can be loaded into EI as positive and negative values when it should be simply imported into EI and rendered. (whew)
Long as it’s simple and fast, I don’t care out. One input box for the displacement texture to change the gamut range.
Without out handling this bottleneck first, the rest is inconsquential anyway. I would not care anything about 16 bits or subpixel without this peliminary procedure in producing the correct 16 bits subpixel render effects. Though it would be nice, but who cares if it’s not correct or a big hassle with manually converting each test map. I just want my surface edges to be remeniscent of the form.
Yes, Rueben. The other apps all handle the nuetral displacement mid-point grey value differently. Instead of zero it’s push up to half but they still have control over each map.
Is it a whole version change when other apps just have a text input? EI 7? golly. No offense, but I hope we dont’ need a new release for such old news.
Rueben I will do the pixolator test in Maya and post the number shift.
Thanks for listening everybody…and Igors.
Again Rueben I appauld you and all the testing you did. It started to wear me down. Talk about brain-strain.
[/left]
Heheh, no worries Alonzo keeps things interesting.
I’ve never used ZBrush, I’ve stared a few times at the interface and that’s about it.
I was thinking the following: at the moment in Animator, you have a setting for the amount of displacement. You could say this the maximum setting. What you really want is a second input-field with the minimum setting. At the moment the minimum setting is always zero (=sea-level). So to create a 50% grey situation, you would type in Min: -0.5 Max: 0.5 and you’d have a displacement of 1. Old project would simply come in with Minimum set to zero. It would also give you a lot of control if you wanted the minimum to be less than the maximum…
Hi, Alonzo
We think a person who can clean up your apartment isn’t born yet The creation of full chaos is not near last in list of your talents. You always write about many themes in one post, some of them are interested, but it’s impossible to answer for you, cause you talk about absolute all
LOL. Very Funny. Maybe I should be a writer? :)
Someone once told me I was a genuis at messing up my apartment.
I just took what I needed out of her statement. "Genius".
So let's apply this rule to your paragraph. " Hi. Alonzo. Creation. Your Talent. Many Themes. Interested. Absolute All" In other the same words, you are absolutely interested in all the many themes of my talented creations.
I will contemplate on these encouraging words Igors. Thanks.
Anyway, for your benefit I will try to be more focused instead of chaotically bouncing my talent on the many themes of absolutely interesting creation of 3D.In Maya, using Pixolators video for Mental Ray render
the settings for the nuetral displace offset is an very simple expression in Alpha Offset input box.
there’s two input boxes.
Alpha Gain
Alpha Offset
in Alpha Gain you put this.
=-file1.alphaGain/2,
The file number is what your current file name is.
Then any setting in the Alpha Gain, which tells the render how much to push displacement in and out will be offset by negative half.
So yes, Manuel, two boxes to control it is whats needed.
However I can’t get mental ray to render a good image yet…don’t know what I’m doing wrong. It won’t smooth it.
Sucks
MENTAL RAY RENDER DIAGNOSTICS:
Textures