ZBrush Character Creation - Advanced Digital Sculpting 2nd Edition

302 chapter 9 ■ Normal Maps, Displacement Maps, Maya, and Decimation Master

Figure 9.11 Turn off the normal map.

3. To generate a displacement map, select Tool → Displacement Map. In this submenu,
   turn on Smooth UV, Flip V, and 3 Channels. Smooth UV will smooth the UVs when
   generating the map, Flip V will flip the map vertically so it matches Maya’s texture
   space, and 3 Channels will create an RGB map (the preferred format in Maya). The
   latter two options are only used by ZBrush when generating and exporting a 32-bit
   map, GoZ takes care of RGB and flipping in V.


4. Click Create DispMap (Figure 9.12).
   These basic settings will generate a 16-bit displacement map. Notice that when a
   displacement map is active in the Tool → Displacement slot, it will display in Preview
   mode on the surface of the mesh in ZBrush (Figure 9.13). This is a convenient way to
   check your maps before exporting.
   Click GoZ to transfer the model back to ZBrush. Your model will open in Maya with
   the color and displacement maps linked.

Rendering Displacement in Maya with mental ray

To understand what’s happening “under the hood,” we will look at how to set these connec-

tions up manually later in this chapter. For now, let’s just look at how to render this scene

using mental ray as the renderer. For the best results, I recommend that you render displace-

ment in Maya with mental ray.

1. Select Window → Settings/Preferences → Preferences to open the Preferences menu
   (Figure 9.14).

Figure 9.12 The
Displacement
Map settings in
ZBrush