I just got a very good result with vray 2.0/3dsmax 2012 and Vector displacement maps created in zbrush4 r3.I cant say this is the correct method, but it produced a very good result.
What I did:
in zbrush:
made model, sculpted/unwrapped being sure no edges touch uv space borders
set my tangent flip and switch and my flip and switch values to 7 as recommended as the 3ds max value in the zbrush pdf
exported a 16 bit version and a 32 bit version of my vector map
go-z’d the model into max
In 3ds max 2012
added a turbosmooth modifier with 1 iteration to the model
added a vraydisplacemod
set the type to subdivision(before switching to subdivision I checked the vector displacement box as it is grayed out when in subdivision mode…not sure whether this is the correct method but I achieved the desired result
imported my Vector map to the texmap slot
In the vraydisplacementmod I had to adjust the amount depending on the map(16 bit or 32 bit) for 16 bit I had to turn up the value quite a bit 4.0 ", for 32 bit I used a much lower value .5 "
relative to bounding box
edge length was set to 1
max subdivs to 512
smooth uv’s
smooth uv’s at borders
tight bounds all checked
texmap min set to 0
texmap max set to 7
instance the map to the material editor
set the u angle to 180(map came in upside down for some reason)
If you use the “Subdivision” mode, then it’s doing regular displacement, not vector displacement. For vector displacement you need the “3d mapping” mode.
Ah damn! When I change to 3d mapping it doesn’t look correct, black breaks and artifacting with all the settings as they were. Any suggestions, can i post a file?
Hey Vlado, I am inserting a link to the zipped file. It was all created quickly just to testFile
The VDmap was exported from zbrush4r3 using the value 7 which is what they recommend for 3ds 2012. I also tried using their vector diagnostic, but it didnt produce a result like seen in the video here(maya) Vector Diagnostic
thanks!
I think the value of 7 in max is for mental ray. I don’t know if that gives anyone clues as to how to set it up right for vray is if they know what the difference is on how mr and vray approach vector displacement.
Zbrush has vector diagnostic tool that exports a sample scene to find out which value to use, I tried it back when I posted, it also didn’t give a desired result. It is supposed to create a sphere above a grid to let you know which map is generating the proper VDsp. I see other people on the ZB forums saying it didn’t work for them as well.
Hopefully between here and ZBC someone can find a working methodology.
I’ve been tracking this as well. I tried the diagnostic and all i got was spheres that looked like they exploded into particles. I’m surprised I haven’t seen more posts on zbrush central about this. I know that when mudbox first came out with vector displacement, wayne robson wrote a plugin that allowed it to work in max and eventually it was folded into the core of max. I don’t know if the same thing has to be done with vray or not. I hope its resolved soon.
Any progress with this, has anyone gotten a desirable result? Is there anything that can be done on the user end to help this along towards a workable result? I just posted on ZBC as well fwiw
