The Last Rite - video production blog #5.mov

[Bloodsport1]

Please respond pal, what type of desktop or laptop is good for mudbox? Im interested in getting in 3D modeling.

[SpectralInk]

@Bloodsport1 Well, the newest Mudbox promises to perform better, but we'll see. In general, you need RAM and VRAM. I have 12 gig of ram and 1 gig of VRAM, and I wish I had a lot more VRAM. Any intel i7 processor would currently be fine.

[vencugar]

there is one really annoying thing that i cant work out. Is the extraction process for Vdisplacement maps supposed to take your paint layers aswell? Because in the past when useing normal dispacment maps I gat all my detail but no colours and I cant get my paint layers. I am working purely with Mudbox 2012. I havent really used Zbrush but I dont think the rules could be that differnt?

[SpectralInk]

@vencugar No, the VDM is a separate process. You can extract your paint layers directly from the paint layers tab as a Photoshop file. Also, Zbrush doesn't have VDM

[JavierMoreno3D]

thaks for this tutorial! but i have some trouble at 05:02, i dont understood how do you "fix" the scale in Maya, could you explain it more detail? thanks!

[SpectralInk]

@JavierMoreno3D You're welcome, and thank you for watching the tutorial. We;re hoping to do more soon. We have a lot of raw video we just haven't edited yet.

As far as fixing the scale, the model originally came from ZBrush, which doesn't honor scale the same way Maya and Mudbox does. Export the file from ZBrush and in Maya it can be a fraction the size it was supposed to be. There's a scale factor in the exporter in zbrush but if it isn't set just right it can cause issues.

[Emrys7]

You sir, are a fucking hero for making this tutorial.

[vencugar]

thanks for explaining this. I just switched to 2012 and have been pulling my hair out because everything has changed.

[SpectralInk]

@vencugar Not a problem. I hope it helped.

[Dragos25]

Very cool of you to create this tutorial. Well done. Have you tried running a test with vector displacement using ptex? Just curious.

PS: Wicked creature!

[SpectralInk]

@Dragos25 To the best of my knowledge, Mental Ray 3.9 doesn't yet support PTex. I tried it, Mental Ray couldn't get it to render. I'd be more that happy if you could prove me wrong though. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before someone figures it out though - PTex is open-source after all.

[Jinseeker15]

are you going to upload the subsurface scattering tutorial that you intend to do after this video? I'd just like to ask how would the setup be different for making grayscale displacement maps work inside maya for 32 bit floating point tifs? I know you would need to adjust something in the tessalation attributes of the shader and the mental ray approx editor right, could you please do a tutorial for that one too for maya 2012. Also is .exr better than tifs for mental ray maya 2012

[SpectralInk]

@Jinseeker15 All the videos for the fast skin shader are uploaded.

vblog #3 - displacements

vblog #4 - fast skin shader part 1

vblog #6 - fast skin shader part 2

As far as using tiffs, I think you just need the tiff reader plug-in loaded. Tiffs and EXR weren't really supported until Maya 2012, and from then I used vector displacements instead, but I don't think it's much different.

[SpectralInk]

the setting on the displacement node has to match the map you created - you simply cannot switch from object to tangent space, you have to first re-bake the vector displacement maps as tangent space maps.

[ventilcek]

Thanks for answer, but what do you mean by "rebake"? I exported 2 different maps from Mudbox, one Absolute tangent and one Object vector space map. For each of them I sat in Attribute Editor in displacementShader atributes proper Vector space. (I also tried in Extra Attributes menu change Displacement Mode from normal to proper one for each, but it seems that didn`t has efect)

[SpectralInk]

@ventilcek You only need one vector displacement per UV shell. If the object is going to deform you need the absolute tangent map. Plug that into the vector space channel. Remember to ensure that the displacement shader's "vectorDisplacement" attribute is plugged into the shading engine's "displacementShader" attribute (I think that's right, I don't have it up in front of me right now). By default its usually the "displacement" attribute which you don't want with vector displacements.

[ventilcek]

very nice tuts, thanks. I have one question. You say, that for deforming object is better to use Absolute Tangent vector space, instead of Object space(same thing is in mudbox help). But when I use Object vector displacement I get exact result when rendering in Maya like is my model sculpted in mudbox. But when I use Absolut tangent vector space when exporting the texture, I get weird deformed rendered model in Maya. Any suggestion?