I had been working on a model on my mac and had been having all kinds of problems.  I then purchased a kick-ass pc hoping it would work better, but I’m still having problems.  I recently modeled out a character and then laid out the UV’s using headus software.  I have plenty of padding at the borders and no overlaps.  I subdivided my geometry, added the finer details, and then went to generate my maps.  I am running on a 64 bit system so I exported the 32 bit exr files.  They are very contrasty with areas of pure black.  I tried testing it using “sculpt using displacement” and that went over terribly.  I then went back to re-analyze my uv’s and they looked clean. 

However, when I put my wireframe on, it showed that one half of my model was dividing really weird, and the other half looked correct.  Yet when I preview it in the uv window, both sides look fine. Can someone look at my attached files and see if they can provide any assistance?  I love mudbox, but I have been having a devil of a time for awhile now trying to get a finished model out of the program.  I had major headaches on my mac and I had hoped going PC would resolve the issues, but I’m still dead in the water.  Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

PS: I use a samsung 30” monitor while working.  Could the size of the monitor affect the program’s performance?  I have a dual quad core with 12 gigs of ram and a NVIDIA Quadro FX 3800, so I didn’t think that could be an issue, but who knows.  Sometimes even basic functions like trying to move an object in the stacking order within the object list doesn’t work.  It also doesn’t display the true polygon count when I step up and down using the “page” keys.  It just lists some huge arbitrary number.

If this continues I may need to record this on video and post it since it’s hard to really define just how many things are going wrong.

Matt Dragovits
3D Modeler - Maya/Mudbox

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the wire looks ab bit strange to me… is there a subD on it..?
looks like you have an asymmetrical mesh, maybe with some tris…

the dispmap looks fine to me… the black areas are negative values…
minus black wich your monitor cant display…
go to the mudbox image browser and use the + and - key to view the negative areas....
or the green square icon to show negative values…

the normalmap looks also fine to me…

may i see your lowpoly mesh and the uvs…

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/christoph-schaedl/6/558/73b

Thanks for taking a look.  The polys should be perfectly symmetrical since I just mirrored them over.  The normals are all pointing the right way too.  I’m really at a loss…

Matt Dragovits
3D Modeler - Maya/Mudbox

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seems to be fine…
may i see the normalmap aplied in the viewport…
and the result of the sculpt model with dispmap…

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/christoph-schaedl/6/558/73b

I’m trying to apply the normal and displacement maps, but when I create the paint layer (bump) the object turns bright blue.  (along with a couple of other objects as well) It then fails to load the diffuse texture I’ve created.  It lists the “fail to load” on the bottom command line, and it always repeats the error twice like it’s looking for two files or something.  Then a window pops up that states an unknown error has occurred.  I seem to get that error an awful lot.  The program does that quite frequently, or it freezes up altogether and I am forced to quit.

The initial mudbox file was created on a mac.  Do you think there is an underlying corruption in the file that is making mudbox act buggy?  Have you heard of that happening before?

One other question I have is, when you create a diffuse layer and then paint on it, will that automatically be applied to your model when you export an exr file or do you need to export the layers out separately?  If your system can handle it, should all paint layers be 32 bit exr for the sake of high quality, or is that putting too much pressure on your system?  I don’t like using tiffs as mental ray doesn’t render them due to lzw compression.  I could always use targa’s though.  What’s your opinion?  Thanks again for all of your help.

Matt Dragovits
3D Modeler - Maya/Mudbox

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those blue faces are the hidden textures… you are working with uv tiles…
mudbox saves all the texure files in an seperate folder…
cause you are using uv tiles the textur names shoud have an _u1_v1 prefix…
textuername_u1_v1.exr
textuername_u2_v1.exr
textuername_u3_v1.exr

are they named correct..?

and you could set an environment variable to get rid of the lzw compressin…
http://download.autodesk.com/us/....htm,topicNumber=d0e27623

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/christoph-schaedl/6/558/73b

Ok, I’m still trying to narrow down exactly what is going on with this model.  I have attached my UV layout showing each element in it’s own UV space.  Question.  When I create a paint layer for the diffuse head, should it show that layer on every other object when I select it?  As soon as I create the layer for the head, it highlights the arms, legs, and other objects even though they aren’t in the same uv space.  Then when I go to select any of those objects it shows them having the diffuse layer for the head within their own paint layer list.  At this rate, every object in my scene will list all of the paint layers for every other object.  That just doesn’t sound right.  I find this even more confusing, because when I have the Sculpt window selected and highlight an object it only shows the sculpt layers related to that object.  But when I select the Paint window and select an object it lists all paint layers for the entire scene.  No matter what object I select it shows all of the paint layers.  I tested this with the built in bull and car models to see if it did it for them too, and it does.  When I create a paint layer for the bull and then select the car, the bull paint layer still shows up in the window.

I am not new to Maya or ZBrush, but Mudbox is pretty new to me.  However, I have followed a number of tutorials by Wayne Robson and Digital Tutors and it honestly doesn’t seem like it should be this complicated.  Is anyone out there actually working for Autodesk?  I would like to toss my base obj files or Maya file up on a server so that someone can take a look and see if something is wrong with them.  I’ve tried using cleanup, but when I select non-manifold cleanup it selects all of my faces for a given object.  Then when I try to apply cleanup it triangulates everything.  At this point I’m not sure if there is something inherently wrong with my maya files or if it’s occurring in mudbox.  The original model was made on a mac, so I don’t know if that could possibly be causing an issue.  I am also using a 30” monitor and I don’t know if that could possibly play havoc with my graphics card?  At this point I’m willing to try anything.  I really want to get cracking with this program and create some cool models for our community, but I can’t seem to get out of the gate with these technical issues.  I just honestly don’t think it’s my workflow.  I’ve watched too much training and repeated the steps too many times.

As an additional test, I created a separate paint layer and then imported just the tile for the headDiffuse.  When I select that new layer, it still selects objects unrelated to the head.  The arms and belt diffuse layers also get selected.  Then when I go to delete the head diffuse layer, I loose the diffuse layer info for my other objects.  It’s as if Mudbox is creating some form of connection between the various object files that just isn’t there.  Is there some sort of graph editor or other tool I can use to see why it’s making these associations.  I delete my history, freeze transforms, and center pivot on my obj’s before ever exporting them out of maya.

Matt Dragovits
3D Modeler - Maya/Mudbox

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i would split up your objects… looks like you are using one obj for all these parts…
and create for each obj a seperate material…
this should do the trick…
the uv tile feature is meant to be used on one object, not across several…

and if your arms are getting to screwed up in mud…
than is there something wrong with the geometry…

if you like i will take a look…
send me an PN…

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/christoph-schaedl/6/558/73b