Hi Bateman,

This looks like simple mismatch between hiRes and lowRes. Always be careful of open edges. Either close out the back of the eye for extracting maps or if the mesh is hiRes enough I sometimes delete the last row of edges on the lowRes just before extraction. So your issues are because of rays being misfired off the back edge of the eye most likely.

We use a raytrace solution for extraction as it give the best quality maps and allows for the user to create creases and pinches in the mesh without problem and the resulting map wil not render with that crease opened up. It also allows for the user to extract between multiple objects and arbitrary objects for example when you have made a UV change or changed the topology of the lowRes. The only draw back is that you need to be slightly carefull on open edges and alignments between the lowRes and hiRes. But raytracing gives the best quality maps.

I figured out another work around for this problem. you can just edit the dismap in photoshop. brushes aren’t allowed on 32-bit maps in PS but the stamp works just fine. so you can just rubberstamp out the holes and the crazy artifacts are gone without having to delete the last row of edges. if you need more heavy edit of your 32-bit map, you can also bake a 16-bit version and convert it in PS to 32bits. then use it as source for doing minor touch ups on your original 32 bit map.

this of course isn’t ideal, but it’s great for minor touchups like artifacts from holes. which brings me to a question.... does anybody know of an editor for 32-bit images that allow you to use brushes?

Hey guys!
I was reading about bateman’s problem with his base mesh and the open edges.  I was curious about the open edges because I modeled my character similar to what bateman did with his eyelids, having pretty mush open edges.

Dave, I wanted to ask you if you have any other suggestions about modeling according to how raytracing works with the geometry, specialy when you have open edges?

Hi Eldee!
I wanted to ask you, what do you recommend about modeling ears for a low-res characters.  Pretty mush what you saying is if you’re going to use a morph target, have that morph target with the ear well defined before exporting it to Mudbox?

Thanks for you time guys!

Javier Loredo.

Maybe this thread should become a sticky? Good info here. Not trying to steal anybody’s thread, but I have a problem too. I made a mesh in maya and modified the mesh the way I wanted in mudbox. However when I exported the disp and low mesh in mudbox, open new scene and import the low mesh to test the disp map, my mesh starts to become crooked and uneven. What’s causing this problem? Plus when importing hires mesh in maya, I tried to do a blend shape like the video tutorial pixelcg made..I get an error that says unable to deform the object or polygon not found in history. :confused:

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Hey guys, blitzmaya i agree this thread should become a sticky, its great. Anyway i had a question on bring displacement maps into maya. I made a model in maya, created uv map, brought it into mudbox, played around with it and i tested to see if the displacement works by using the mesh displacement tool in mudbox on the base mesh. It worked fine but when i brought the model into maya 7 it did not displace correctly, i used the phalasaurous tutorial video (which is great) to see how to set up mental ray. Here is a picture of maya and mudbox render.

The areas i used the pinch tool alot on dont render right and the eye lids look wierd. The detail isnt great but i know how to fix that. Does anyone know why this is happening. Is it my mental ray settings or uv map problems?

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this is a clever piece of software. modeling abilities are far more advanced and it is so easy. but some lacks also.

i just finished sculpting a model. and i like it much. i was so happy, after that i tried to get the displacement maps started with 1024 res. when i get the results from maya whole the world collapse on me. it was such a mass. problems in opening edges. lose of details and pretty long render time.

i must say that photoshop treatment works well.

then i extract my map on 2048x2048 res then without knowing what i was doing, i just enter half the values of search distance and edge bleeding. as far as i know these are changing especialy serch distance, with the scale of your model. but any ways i divide both defaults by 2. and the results are satisfactory. but long render times.

i just did those steps with level_0 and level_1 (get seperate dispmaps)

and i see that res of the map and level of your mesh don’t effect the render time. my high res mesh is 2,5 million polys and both level_0 and level_1 is rendering in 5minutes in maya and this is not good. there is something wrong that i don’t know yet.

i’ll close all my openings.i’ll do a automap(incase my mapping is wrong),and i’ll scale my model*150 in maya,smooth it and then export to mudbox. and i’ll post the results.(so isee that when turnback to maya model scale should be 1/150. and also 1/150=0,0066 should be entered in the alpha gain of the displacement map. am i right?)

but a suggestion bump painting utility is a must. don’t tell me use normal maps. they are not the same. or someone please prepeare a little tut abaout mudbox>normalmaps>maya> bumps in a “human understantable” format.

thank you.

The areas i used the pinch tool alot on dont render right and the eye lids look wierd. The detail isnt great but i know how to fix that. Does anyone know why this is happening. Is it my mental ray settings or uv map problems?

umm it looks like the area wasn’t divided at all…
check the output window and see whatthe final number of tesselation…

aSh
http://www.PixelCG.com

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This has been a very interesting read. And it got me thinking.  Wouldn’t it be damned nice if Mudbox model files could be natively opened in Maya or Max or XSI or what have you, and still retain the levels of SubD and not have to deal with silly little UV maps. It almost makes me wish Mudbox was fully integrated into a major application of said 3D apps. Rig your level 0, make changes to the mesh at any level/layer, sculpt with brushes, animate the model all you want, non-detructively make changes to the model and the rig interpolates the new geo, and viola. non-linear, non-destructive, native format brush-based modeling with full animation/render and poly modeling all in one neat little package.  hmmm

I know this will probably never happen, and it may even go against the Skymatter manifesto, but it would still be ideal and very much the best solution all around.

</ramble>
Sorry to stray from the topic, but I just had to throw that out there…

That would be nice madshader but i don’t think it will ever come about.

Ash-man the mudbox model is 2.4 million quads and the output window in maya is 4.8 million tris. I got it to the exact amount so i dont think its that.