harford
03-21-2010, 01:00 PM
When creating a character for animation how do you go about the use of displacement maps? and how do you set them up in your software?
When we create a character in our software using polymodeling or whichever method we choose to use, then hand it over the riggers ( or do it ourself ) it's important that mesh doesn't 'change positions', Too much, so the weighting and rigging of eyelids and lips are well defined and accurate.
This is one of the reasons why we use a low resolution or not overly dense mesh for the rigging and animation process. Either skin wrapping or using displacement maps to render with a high resolution version.
I find that my well modelled and defined low res is overly smoothed in zbrush once I re-export the subdivision 1 version, and even though it holds the displacement map reasonably well it's not as good for rigging with. ( The cage function seems to sometimes work okay and recent tests show it works better in 3.5 ) I don't know how mudbox handles this.
My consideration is to create the displacement high res version in zbrush as normal and then calculate the displacement map based off the original model and the created high res.
I'll soon post my 3ds Max displacement workflow, I hope you can post yours from your choice software to add to this thread.
When we create a character in our software using polymodeling or whichever method we choose to use, then hand it over the riggers ( or do it ourself ) it's important that mesh doesn't 'change positions', Too much, so the weighting and rigging of eyelids and lips are well defined and accurate.
This is one of the reasons why we use a low resolution or not overly dense mesh for the rigging and animation process. Either skin wrapping or using displacement maps to render with a high resolution version.
I find that my well modelled and defined low res is overly smoothed in zbrush once I re-export the subdivision 1 version, and even though it holds the displacement map reasonably well it's not as good for rigging with. ( The cage function seems to sometimes work okay and recent tests show it works better in 3.5 ) I don't know how mudbox handles this.
My consideration is to create the displacement high res version in zbrush as normal and then calculate the displacement map based off the original model and the created high res.
I'll soon post my 3ds Max displacement workflow, I hope you can post yours from your choice software to add to this thread.