I was wondering if anyone had any advice on baking displacement maps when it comes to taking a 3d model and trying to get it over to another program for texturing.
I created a model in Cinema 4D a few years back and thought about re-visiting by bringing it into ZBrush and adding more detail, then exporting the displacements so I could bring the model into something like Substance Painter for texturing.
I’m fairly new to modeling and ZBrush, so my pipeline knowledge is fragmented with a mix of people’s tips and YouTube. I’m starting to get a good handle on sculpting, but I’m having a heck of a time projecting higher details on a lower poly mesh (whether I retopo the sculpts in Maya or use ZRemesher or already have a low-poly sculpt from another program), and then exporting to other programs. It would be really nice to get input on a solid workflow to export maps so a lower poly mesh can be textured and eventually rigged.
What I did for my old model was take the UV’d model (did the UVs in Maya) into ZBrush and tried to use the projection tools in there to make a displacement map. Although I don’t see it in ZBrush, I get these ugly little ripples everywhere I sculpted on an edge when I attached the maps in a different program (ex: C4D).
For good measure I tried using the UV master on all my pieces in ZBrush to see if I just messed it up and then attempted to export a displacement map. It didn’t make a difference.
Current workflow:
(The first steps differ a bit if I’m taking a mesh made in a different program into ZBrush)
- Sculpt high poly mesh.
- Export out subtools to be retopoed and add UVs in Maya.
- Re-import retopo subtools, this way there is a high and low poly version of each piece that must get exported.
- Divide lower poly subtool until count is close to the high poly version
- Set a morph target and turn on a new layer for the low-poly mesh
- Go to ‘Project’, adjust to the PA blur to 0 (more settings may need to be fiddled with, but I’ve mostly been trying to stay at the defaults since my knowledge is limited), and with both the high and low meshes visible (and nothing else) press project.
- Use the morph brush and smooth to take out all the grubby messed up spots.
- Hide the high poly mesh
- Drop the low poly mesh to its lowest subdivision level.
- Go to Displacement Map
a. Adaptive is off
b. DPSubPix is scrubbed to 4
c. SmoothUV is off
d. Flip V is on - Then click ‘Create and Export Map’ to generate the displacement and export out a base mesh as well.
- For seeing how they look I usually open it in Cinema 4D since I know how to attach displacements in there.
Unfortunately, my results are always hit or miss. Or I end up having to export out a mesh that’s way higher in polys than I want because it keeps the detail better. I should also note that I’ve also tried baking using xnormal too, using ZBrush subtools as the high-poly pieces, but the results came out horrible.
I’ve also heard of cage baking but that seems so much more complicated than it needs to be.
So, any advice on a workflow that will be more consistent with results when it comes to getting a model ready to be textured would be phenomenal.
Thank you!