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If you already know the underlying concepts and just want the technical step-by-step procedures, click here to skip right to it.ĭisplacement mapping is a method of taking high resolution geometry information and baking it to an image map that can be applied to low resolution geometry.
#Zbrush 4 normal map tutorial software#
And finally I'll provide the step-by-step procedures to make displacement mapping work accurately in your software of choice.
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#Zbrush 4 normal map tutorial how to#
Then we'll cover some of the common pitfalls that artists frequently encounter and how to avoid them.
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We'll first cover some of the underlying concepts behind how a floating-point displacement map works and how to recognize if you're getting correct results. But with a correct workflow you don't have to fiddle with settings or settle for 'close enough' - it'll just work correctly from the start to match your high resolution geometry as accurately as possible. You'll sometimes see artists load a displacement map onto their low resolution geometry and play with intensity and depth values until it looks somewhat similar to their high resolution geometry and assume that's it's as close as they can get. There's often a lot of confusion and misinformation surrounding displacement maps and how they're supposed to work. This tutorial attempts to cover and clarify the process of generating and applying accurate displacement maps from either ZBrush or Mudbox, to V-Ray for Maya, V-Ray for 3ds Max, V-Ray for Cinema 4D, or Arnold for Maya (MtoA).
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