Texture Baking Displacement from Voxels

[ekunzendorf]

Hello All,

I have posted another tutorial video in the Jedidiah series. This concerns exporting a displacement map directly out of the retopo room. Special thanks to michalis and especially digman whose persistence made unlocking this problem possible.

The key is to have NO geometry in the paint or sculpt room. Any geometry or maps present in the paint room will screw up the Texture Baker's displacement. Also, I found that a 16-bit tif 0 is black, not normalized works great for Maya Mental Ray! You don't have to correlate the Alpha Gain and Offsets to the scale of the object (although you may have to on other objects mileage may vary). Find the link here:

The image below is the imported low rez geo with the default phong rendered with displacement and normal map applied.

Let me know what you all think!

Excelsior!

Eric Kunzendorf

Jacksonville University

users.ju.edu/ekunzen

[Lawson]

Thanks for documenting these techniques as you discover them. And congrats on getting that process working.

[digman]

Sweet, The tutorial series is very helpful especially to new 3Dcoat ussers...

In all 3DCoat versions if there are objects in Painting Room you will get incorrect maps.

"3DCoat will always bake what it can see in any room."

Now, Andrew has been changing the way things are hidden because even though they were hidden from the user in past versions, 3DCoat saw the hidden polygons/voxel object and would bake or unwrap the mesh.

That is changed now for at least "creating multiple uv maps" in the retopo room before baking/merging into the paint room.

You were correct on the mapping errors causing some problems...

[michalis]

OK tell me what is wrong here, except the displacement map - where are these details? This isn't a displacement map (mine). It seems that it works in all other OSs and machines.

This makes me sick now, I haven't seen it before.

[Andrew Shpagin]

OK tell me what is wrong here, except the displacement map - where are these details? This isn't a displacement map (mine). It seems that it works in all other OSs and machines.

This makes me sick now, I haven't seen it before.

Please use "Merge for microvertex painting" instead of texture baking tool.

[michalis]

OK thanks Andrew, but the tutorial shows how to do it with tex baking tool. It doesn't work for me though. I don't see anything wrong.

Not an offense but I need a reasonable explanation.

Here the results of MV method, first time I exported decent displacements. Not as sharp as the voxel but its fine. Thanks.

[digman]

Michalis, I ran some more test even before seeing this post and had some of the same type looking texture maps with no details using the texture baking tool in the retopo room. Not every 3Dcoat file had the same problem so it must be an bug that rears it's ugly head at times. I sent Andrew a bad file and a good file for him to look over to help figure out the cause.

[michalis]

Andrews suggests the MV method and this works perfectly. Some hi quality maps this way. The use of a 4096x4096 is interesting. As a blender user, I used the non maya format. Its the default, grey for 0. I didn't even tuned the blender disp settings. Boom.

I don't intend to spoil ekunzendorf's nice tutorial but It didn't work for me.

To write a tutorial is always a great help for the writer and the community. For the writer especially because this is the best way to explore the darker places of an app.

ekunzendorf, my suggestion is to use 2-3 subdivisions for disp. But using normal maps also for more details. It should be enough.

Usually I use another method for blender via shrinkwrap as this allows me to modify and sculpt some more. There're some cases (like between thighs and hip in some poses) where MV shrinhwrapping via topology is messy. Thats why I prefer to export the voxel decimated mesh and re-project the topo mesh. Again similar problems in these areas but easily fixed as I'm in a multi-res sculpt room of zb or blender. And once again we come to my wish (lol). Andrew please a post-topo multi-res sculpting room. The right place to bake displacements. Its almost there. Blender has it though, modo 501 has it also.

[digman]

I normally use the MV method but the question that Eric posed was could you bake displacement maps from the retopo room. In past versions of 3DCoat there was no problem in doing this. It had been awhile since I used the baking tool in the retopo room so I was unaware of the bug problems till I was helping Eric and started to discover them. I did further testing as stated and sent off the results to Andrew...

The MV method gives us greater choices in ways to export the diplacement maps but baking from the retopo room had been a working non buggy feature in past versions but for now I will avoid It.

Thanks again Eric, Your tutorial still is correct but right now the feature in question is buggy...

[ekunzendorf]

Hello all,

I haven't posted for a while because I haven't had much to add to the conversation. It seems that high frequency details aren't getting handled by the Texture Baking tool. However, my understanding is that most people added that type of detail in the paint room anyway by extracting normal maps from the voxel mesh at merge time. It handled Jedidiah's beard pretty well though, so I never thought to add wrinkles in the face.

I don't use displacements all that much, but I remember hearing that if the silhouette isn't effected, use a normal/bump map. But if the contour of the object needs changing at higher resolutions, use a displacement.

michalis, thanks for the advice. The mental ray approximation editor offers not one, not two, not three but FOUR (count'em FOUR!) methods of subdivision. Four very poorly documented methods! I just picked one that I saw used in a tutorial somewhere and fine tuned it to meet my needs. I WISH it were as easy as Blender, believe me.

Anyway, poke holes in the tutorials all you want! That is one reason why I post them! That is how we learn.

Excelsior!

Eric Kunzendorf

Jacksonville University

users.ju.edu/ekunzen

[michalis]

Please ekunzendorf, do some more tutorials if you like this. These help everybody and its good. I should write one also. And lets comment these. You're absolutely right, this is how we learn. I learned how to export great displacements because of your tutorial. Even this way. Democracy way

Someone could say that this goes too far now, does it?

[ekunzendorf]

Thanks michalis,

I'm on break now, so I am going to try to continue the painting tutorials. Have a great Holidays!

Excelsior!

Eric Kunzendorf

Jacksonville University

users.ju.edu/ekunzen

[michalis]

BTW any suggestion for video capturing? For OSX I mean. Except QTX of course.

[ekunzendorf]

Hi michalis,

I use Snapz Pro X from www.ambrosiasw.com. If you can fit it into 5 minutes, Jing works nicely and is free. We at JU are soon going to try Camtasia because it lets you add keystrokes to the video, or so I 'm told. But Snapz Pro captures screen, voice, audio from the mac. Then it uses QT to compress the video to whatever codec you want. I strongly recommend using QT pro (if you have Final Cut Pro, you have it already) to recompress if you need it.)

If you have any more questions, let me know. Have a great Christmas!

Excelsior!

Eric Kunzendorf

Jacksonville University