■ Cavity and Ambient Occlusion Maps 335- To create a map from this masking simply open Tool → Texture Map and click New
From Masking. This will generate a texture map from the current masking. Export
the map as per the steps we discussed in Chapter 5.
Figure 9.71 shows a cavity map used in the diffuse channel of a Maya Blinn shader. The
cavity map is perfectly suited to help accentuate the rendered details by governing how light
is reflected back from the surface. The dark areas reflect less light, so they appear darker; the
lighter areas have the opposite effect. This effect helps accentuate the recessed areas by limit-
ing the amount of light they reflect, giving them a darker, more shadowed appearance.
Figure 9.71 This character head was rendered in mental ray using a displacement map and a cav-
ity map in the diffuse channel. The first image is the render without the cavity map; the second
image is with the cavity map.
Creating Maps Using Multi Map Exporter
Multi Map Exporter is a plug-in freely available from Pixologic that enables the artist to gener-
ate and export multiple file types from ZBrush with a single button click. It will save and load
options so your favorite settings can be saved and recalled for later use. Figure 9.72 shows the
Multi Map Exporter plug-in interface. You can download the plug-in from http://www.pixologic.com.
Simply extract the contents of the zip file into your ZBrush4/ZStartup/ZPlugs folder.
The interface can be divided into two sections. The top panel allows you to select which
files will be generated by the program whereas the bottom section allows you to set map-specific
settings for each file type. These menus expand and reveal several options each. You may also
set your favorite settings and save a preferences file for future use. In this section we will look at
the menu options and their functions as well as how to use the Multi Map Exporter plug-in.
The plug-in will create the following file types:
Displacement Maps We saw what displacement maps are and how they work ear-
lier in this chapter. The plug-in offers several options to control the type of map cre-
ated. Figure 9.73 shows this menu.
The SubDiv Level slider allows you to determine which subdivision level the
displacement map is generated from. This is useful because a displacement map gener-
ated from level 1 carries far more form than one generated from the higher subdivision