I’m unable to import 4k displacement maps that were generated in ZBrush. 1k maps seem to work fine, but anything over 1k gives me a File I/O error when I attempt to load it into max. 4k color map works fine.

I’ve read that opening the displacement map in an image editor like Photoshop can have adverse effects on the map, so I haven’t tried saving the map as a different file type. ZBrush exports displacement maps as TIF.

I’m using the multi-displacement 3 plug-in in ZBrush to generate the map.

Any insight or suggestions are appreciated.

Best,
Dustin

No one else has had this problem?

Again, any suggestions are appreciated.

-Dustin

Quite some time I did this - but I remember that I also had trouble with 32bit displacement maps. I ended up using the old way to create 16bit displacements in ZBrush.

Another thing you could try is to convert the .tif file to a .map file before using it (if you are using mental ray for rendering). The tool for the conversion for comes with Maya and Softimage (with the free versions) and it is on the CD-ROM the book “Rendering with Mental Ray). You can find some additional information on this process here:
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/mental-ray-map-converter-v1-1 (NOTE: this is not the converter tool itself. This is only a script that uses the converter).

-Andrea

Yes I did discover that 16-bit displacement maps will import at 4k. Thanks, I’ll see if I can locate that conversion tool.

-Dustin