Another Zbrush/Studio question, help save my sanity. (thx for help so far)

SnowSultan

Oh don't worry about it, I didn't know it wasn't normally part of your workflow. Thanks, you've really been quite helpful.

MelissaGT

Richard Haseltine said:

MelissaGT said:

jestmart said:

Normal maps use the RGB channels of the image to give illussion of moving on all 3 axii.

Still can't deform a mesh to twist and turn upon itself.  

A normal maps doesn't change the shape at all, it changes the way the surface is treated as facing for lighting calculations.

I'm aware...further proves my point that maps can't replace true HD topology in all cases.  

Richard Haseltine

MelissaGT said:

Richard Haseltine said:

MelissaGT said:

jestmart said:

Normal maps use the RGB channels of the image to give illussion of moving on all 3 axii.

Still can't deform a mesh to twist and turn upon itself.  

A normal maps doesn't change the shape at all, it changes the way the surface is treated as facing for lighting calculations.

I'm aware...further proves my point that maps can't replace true HD topology in all cases.  

Displacement will move the geometry, and like HD morphs it works on the vertices created by SubD. However, in the available shaders it works only along the normal direction (in/out, no side-to-side): in principle it should be possible to implement a vector displacement shader that could read colour RGB values as x, y, z for displacement.

MelissaGT

Richard Haseltine said:

MelissaGT said:

Richard Haseltine said:

MelissaGT said:

jestmart said:

Normal maps use the RGB channels of the image to give illussion of moving on all 3 axii.

Still can't deform a mesh to twist and turn upon itself.  

A normal maps doesn't change the shape at all, it changes the way the surface is treated as facing for lighting calculations.

I'm aware...further proves my point that maps can't replace true HD topology in all cases.  

Displacement will move the geometry, and like HD morphs it works on the vertices created by SubD. However, in the available shaders it works only along the normal direction (in/out, no side-to-side): in principle it should be possible to implement a vector displacement shader that could read colour RGB values as x, y, z for displacement.

I don't see how even a displacement map could create something like two spines that protrude from the chin and then twist around each other, coming to a point.  

Richard Haseltine

An HD morph would have problems too - both are limited by the available mesh density, and increasing that affects the whole model so it isn't possible to add local additional density. For the sort of thing you describe a geoGraft would be the more practical solution.