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mudbox 2009 displacement in Maya 2009??

49 REPLIES 49
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Message 1 of 50
varek3d
742 Views, 49 Replies

mudbox 2009 displacement in Maya 2009??

Autodesk has made big changes! YUCK!

Okay, I made a woman in zbrush, nothing complex, however I was just trying to get a proper displacement in Maya 2009.

Now here's where things get weird!

Using several Zbrush methods I got the weirdest displacement (see grey woman) as supposed to the nicer version (red woman) in zbrush. So I had an idea to bring it into mudbox for a better result thinking that mudbox 2009 and Maya 2009 would work well together!

Anyway, I (after trial and error) successfully imported my character into mudbox and TRIED to generate a displacement 32bit tiff. According to what i read on these boards, Mudbox generates it with a LZW compression that Maya can't read (why would mudbox do this??) so, I generated an .EXR (whatever that is) and, according to the info, change it into a 32bit uncompressed tiff. Well of course, I thought this would work!? NOPE!, the map is the wrong kind or different than usual (see map pic) so I tried some tweaking in Maya to make it work but no success. I even made the tiff into a .MAP file. (The map should be grayish according to what i have seen.) SO far the best results from mudbox so far is an 8 bit PNG file, however this looks baaaaad (low rez) So I've taken my zbrush knowledge and seen some old mudbox tutorials that MAAAY shed some light on this without success.

So does anyone know how to take a 32 bit displacement from mudbox 2009 and bring it into maya 2009, I wish this wasn't so difficult there are a vast array of settings to go through to try and make it work!

Thanks in advance!

49 REPLIES 49
Message 2 of 50
Anonymous
in reply to: varek3d

Dude, don't blame mudbox for that. Mudbox generates maps that are way more acutate than ZB. The baking process is always complicated becuase every renderer has it's own standards. Mudbox has many different options and so does mental rays displacment. Look around the forum. I am sure you will find something. I would love to help, but I have worked out a nice pipe in max vray... Not your package.
Message 3 of 50
Anonymous
in reply to: varek3d

varek3d. The maya pipeline works fine, try not to blame mudbox until your 100% where the problem lies.


Wayne...

PS take a look in the tutorials section you'll find hours of free tutorials.
Message 4 of 50
varek3d
in reply to: varek3d

Thank you, your right I'm very frustrated... however, I was hoping for some answers or at the very least a nudge in the right direction? I have done displacements in the past fine with ZB, and I enjoyed working in it, I haven't tried mudbox as much but I'm still learning, however I'll keep looking for answers on this site if they are there.

DarthWayne, love your tutorials and honored you responded... I'm not such a bad guy but working 2 weeks in finding answers tends to get one VERY frustrated!

Please feel free to share nudges or hints?
Message 5 of 50
Anonymous
in reply to: varek3d

I dont have maya on this machien right now, but I'd sugest posting your mase mesh so that others can try and replicate your problem. thts the 1st step to finding a solution to it. I do now how frustrating it is to look for weeks for an answer to stuff. Don't worry we'll get you a solution.

Wayne...
Message 6 of 50
varek3d
in reply to: varek3d

LOL, funny , I was just watching your video on displacement/normal maps... I think what I really need is to know what ingredience I need and the proper settings in MR for Maya, however I'm rather stumped on it.

I"ll see if I can zip up the base mesh for download... However I'm not sure what they can do with a OBJ to find a solution, but at this point I'll try anything...

Thank you!

One student said to me once..."some problems should come with a bottle of aspirin" 🙂
Message 7 of 50
Anonymous
in reply to: varek3d

Export a 4 channel EXR image from Mudbox. (Maya will support our tif next version so we codded things this way. Also most other apps support this tif compression) The reason to use a 32bits per channel image is so you dont need to mess with multiply settings to get an accurate reconstruction of your highRes at render time.

Import your low res to Mudbox

Assign a Blinn shader

Select the shading group for that Blinn shader

Assign a file texture node to the displacement channel in the shading group node and import the EXR from Mudbox

---

Go to Window>Rendering Editors>Mental Ray> Approximation Editor

With your head mesh selected press create under Subdivisions (mid section) not Displacement

Edit the node and set the Approximation Method to Spacial.

Set Length to 0.1

Set Mental Ray as the renderer

Render.

**For very fine details in the map you may need to use different approximation settings.

**Also I recommed you use the Maya automatic mapping for the UV as those Zbrush UVs away to fragmented and could cause you pain later.

Let me know how it goes.
Message 8 of 50
Anonymous
in reply to: varek3d

Also consider using the bump map from Mudbox and render as a bump in Mental Ray for fine details. Its much faster to render than actual displacement in Mental Ray.

If you need fine displaced details in MR you could try settings like these.

Message 9 of 50
varek3d
in reply to: varek3d

skycastleMud!!!!

YOU ARE AWESOME! THANK YOU!!!! 😄

WOW!!! the render way better than I could have expected! I wasn't looking for perfection, but wow!!!

I owe you a drink!!! 😉 YOU DA MAN! *does the dance of joy!* (tosses the aspirin)

Hooray for skycastelMud!!!

I've included a pic of a simple render... wow, now I can go on with my life!

Message 10 of 50
varek3d
in reply to: varek3d

BTW, DarthWayne,

I can admit when I'm wrong, I was a tad over the top... So I altered my question so ti's not as bad as it was 🙂

At least now I can continue with my project...

V
Message 11 of 50
Anonymous
in reply to: varek3d

BTW, DarthWayne,

I can admit when I'm wrong, I was a tad over the top... So I altered my question so ti's not as bad as it was 🙂

At least now I can continue with my project...

V


No Problem Varek I'll tone down my reply accordingly. I'm glad you got resolution, I told you we'd get it sorted for you. 🙂

Wayne...
Message 12 of 50
Anonymous
in reply to: varek3d

Hi Skycastle, when I tried to render bump in mental ray with subdivison approximation on the model it doesnt render properly, the bump just distorts and you can't see it, but it works when I turn subdiv approximation off.
I'm using Maya2008, mental ray.


wondered i you had any solution?
Message 13 of 50
Anonymous
in reply to: varek3d

I asked the Maya team for you.

Try this script it does it all for you.

area.autodesk.com/forum/index.php/tutorials/tutorial_index/multi_channel_setup/
Message 14 of 50
varek3d
in reply to: varek3d

Hmmm,

I've seemed to hit a snag with that process, and I have been trying different methods to correct the situation however I"m still rather stuck. In Maya 2009, using mental ray and the process listed above AND the process (that works poorly now) I know from Zbrush, I rendered out 2 version of this flying lion. As you can tell I'm still getting the blown up areas and the mudbox version is nice accept for the mouth? Is this a UV thing? Over lapping geom? I'm not too sure?

Help! (again)

TIA!

Message 15 of 50
tomcushwa
in reply to: varek3d

I asked the Maya team for you.

Try this script it does it all for you.

area.autodesk.com/forum/index.php/tutorials/tutorial_index/multi_channel_setup/


Hey Dave,

This script works great for displacement and bump but it doesn't seem to work for Normals maps in a multi channel setup with multiple UV regions.
Message 16 of 50
tomcushwa
in reply to: varek3d

Hmmm,

I've seemed to hit a snag with that process, and I have been trying different methods to correct the situation however I"m still rather stuck. In Maya 2009, using mental ray and the process listed above AND the process (that works poorly now) I know from Zbrush, I rendered out 2 version of this flying lion. As you can tell I'm still getting the blown up areas and the mudbox version is nice accept for the mouth? Is this a UV thing? Over lapping geom? I'm not too sure?

Help! (again)

TIA!


Hey Varek,

Check your UVs in Maya. Make absolutely sure that in the UV Texture Editor in Maya that when you hit the Toggle Shaded UV display icon in the upper right corner that you have no areas that are red in shading. This indicates that they are flipped UVs and you need to flip them ether horizontally or vertically. This is different than having reversed Face normals and should not be confused.
this could be your problem, I'm not sure but Mudbox does seems to be touchier than Maya about having flipped UVs...
Message 17 of 50
varek3d
in reply to: varek3d

Well the UV's are fine according to Maya... all blue. The UV's were generated in Zbrush however. I could change over the UVs in Zbrush to ones generated in HeadusUV or Maya (BTW if mudbox this what Headus does,I would adore mudbox) but I don't think that would improve the situation either.

Thanks anyway or the help!
Message 18 of 50
varek3d
in reply to: varek3d

I tried the multi-dsplacement, as I like the simplicity of importing, ti still does a strange thing with the jaw of my lion. Perhaps I"ll redo the UV's I'm just confused why a mudbox displacement and a zbrush displacement work so differently...

Thanks anyway...
Message 19 of 50
ashaiad
in reply to: varek3d

Can you pack your MUD file into a zip and either email it to me , or place it somewhere ..I can look into it for you if you wish
Message 20 of 50
ashaiad
in reply to: varek3d

I got the files ,Here are my thoughts
A- The file was created in Zbrush (I won’t be able to trouble shoot it cause I don’t use Zbrush)
B- From Zbrush create a low poly OBJ and a high Poly OBJ
C- Open low poly in Mudbox divide it the number of times to match the high level, then import the high
(for more detail regarding this process look at Mudbox docs on how to imprt mudbox 1 files)
D- At this point compare the final result to what you had in Zbrush
E- Let Mudbox generate the open EXR file for displacement
Hope this helps

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