Displacement Maps - ZBrush2

iZigoo · Post by **iZigoo** » Sun Mar 25, 2007 9:25 pm

Hello,

does anybody know if displacement maps work in Irrlicht ?
What kind of displacement maps are supported ?

There is great feature in ZBrush2 to create displacement maps
to create low poly models.

Did anybody here try ZBrush2 ?

Here is a link to the ZBrush demo site.

http://209.132.69.82/zbrush/zbrush2/displacement.html

Thanx

izigoo

Luben · Post by **Luben** » Sun Mar 25, 2007 11:32 pm

I think you are looking for parallax mapping, which is supported by irrlicht. Check the PerPixelLighting example if you don't know what i mean.
Parallax mapping is as far as i know the most advanced displacement mapping technique irrlicht supports. Is it what you want?

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 2:59 pm

isn't there already true real time 3d displacement map?

I have zb...

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 3:01 pm

btw, you can achieve them with Blender Sculpt and ORB or a similar utility. Of course rarely something beats zbrush in its specialized area...Yet tho I like way more Blender UI, sure it's me.

iZigoo · Post by **iZigoo** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 8:33 am

It looks like it is pretty complicated to use ZBrush for my models.
Actually i wanted to load my hires models into zbrush and make
hiquality lopoly models out of them.

With the displacement maps it looked like this is possible
with ZBrush.

Maybe somebody has an idea how to create hi quality lowpoly
models from big 3ds files.
Usually polygon reducers look horrible so i think displacement or
normal maps are the best way to create impressive models.

Maybe somebody has experience with this already ?

iZigoo · Post by **iZigoo** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 8:36 am

vermeer,

do you know good 3ds importers and exporters for
the actual blender version ?

Or how do you export your models to irrlicht from blender ? .x ?

omaremad · Post by **omaremad** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 8:51 am

It looks like it is pretty complicated to use ZBrush for my models.
Actually i wanted to load my hires models into zbrush and make
hiquality lopoly models out of them.

You can use normal blender for that, just take the high res mesh uv unwrap it, and bake something (either normnals or displacement) the new blender has baking option so look up the tuts)

then use the poly reducing script under scripts->mesh it should conserve the uv map and loer your poly count.

franklyn · Post by **franklyn** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 5:35 pm

you could just import your hires model into max use texture projection to output a normal map for your low poly model and then import that into irrlicht.
http://206.145.80.239/zbc/showthread.php?t=32119

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Fri Mar 30, 2007 5:19 pm

Maybe somebody has an idea how to create hi quality lowpoly
models from big 3ds files.

Silo was sort of the first big known one to do this (100$ software) with its topology brush. It allows to paint a wires flow of lower res over the already done hi res model. Uv maps though, if you want to keep them..for doing it well is much a more complex thingie...I'd redo em...

Blender has since 2.43 retopo feature , together with sculpt. which suposedly does this of letting you "paint" a lower res wire over the hi res one.I havent tested tho. Vizup freeware imo is great fro reducing stuff, but sure you'd have to retouch a lot and have certain converters...

displacement maps do exactly the oposite, are usually used for rendering: you load a low res mesh, apply a displacement map -a bitmap- over it, and the render clculates bump over it, but real volume, not ye old bump of the elder 3d applications.

today, what is done is use normal maps or parallax maps, dunno if more techs are available, that is: this needs to have a hi res version of the model, fromwhich you extract a normal map or parallax map -a tga, a bitmap- and apply it to a low res model: result is if the engine or viewer supports 3d realtime feature, it generates a faked "hi res" appeareance using th elow res model.

Import into blender: I recomend OBJ and low. Mostly the first.

export from blender: a collection of possibilities:
OBJ , x, b3d, md5...
My own preference is md5 / b3d(once it's ready) for animated characters, and OBJ for statics. B3d, again, for lightmapped levels (also, once it's finished)
there are more, those are my favs.

Retopo PAINT feature in Blender:
http://www.blender.org/development/rele ... 43/retopo/

Silo Topology Brush (clik the video and u'll understand all am talking about in a second):
http://www.nevercenter.com/silo/new_for_14/

But of course...would be much more exciting to do it with with Blender

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Fri Mar 30, 2007 5:21 pm

you can import *.3ds files into blender. But really you better use Max obj plugin from habware.at , unless latest max versions have obj native, now I dont remember, even when I use it often in jobs..

franklyn · Post by **franklyn** » Fri Mar 30, 2007 8:58 pm

max 7 and above have obj import/export built in.

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Sat Mar 31, 2007 9:02 am

oh, thanks. You see, at jobs, I never remeber when if i added or not the habware plugin..

omaremad · Post by **omaremad** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 2:08 pm

Ok i found that blenders normal baker is useless for games (or moving objects) since its object space normal maps.

so now you need this script:
http://www.blender.org/forum/viewtopic. ... 1ccf0fd8d9

and ati's normal mapper tool:
http://www2.ati.com/developer/NormalMapper-3_2_2.zip

here is a little experiment i had with it and blenders new sculpt tool.

pretty amazing, now us coders can just use this new brush feature in blender and only paint simple diffuse colors for the texture map and the normal maps do all the work that used to be done by skilled 2d artists .

edit: i modelled the head in low poly first then subdivided sevral times and just used sculpt mode with a perlin noise texture as a brush.

Then baked the normals with the above tools.

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 2:26 pm

I think I read the "good" normal maps mode is gonna be added soon..

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 2:27 pm

btw u can also use orb, and certain other alternatives.