Displacement and Bump Maps not working on Imported model
I've just followed this Daz tutorial for Bump Maps, Displacement Maps - More fun in Iray UBER. But for some reason the maps are not showing up on my imported models. I added a Daz primative to the scene and followed the same steps, and the bump and displacement maps work just fine. But on my imported model in the same file, the maps do not work. I've done the exact same steps to the primative as to the imported model.
I imported both a quad version of my model as well as a triangulated version, but neither seems to register a bump or displacement map.
Does anyone have any tips on how to get some texture on an imported model? I'm happy to remesh my models as necessary. The render is going to look a billion times better with a texture on it.
As it stands the only surface presets that seem to be working on my imported models are basic matte and glossy finishes, and color. No surface preset textures are applying.
Thanks for your help!
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Comments
Is the model UV mapped?
Nope! I'm too new to have thought of that. :) I'll bring it back into Blender and create the UVs. After that if I just import it, will the textures work? Or is there a particular process I have to follow?
Thanks!
I've now uv mapped the model and have an .mtl file. I'm still trying to piece together how to get this into Daz. Is there a tutorial on this? I'm having a hard time turning anything up.
Note that the obj/mtl file format is ancient — it's roughly equivalent to the very basic materials in Poser 4, which was a very, very long time ago. It will (probably) load the bump map properly, but it will not set the bump map value. Displacement will not be picked up at all. Other parameters will also have a good chance of not loading properly. Once you have your .obj model imported, check all the surfaces parameters manually.
File>Import, and be careful with the settings on the import dialog, don't just click-click-OK, there is a setting for .obj format files which does a lot of the heavy lifting for you, but you should still check everything on that import dialog. E.g. there's a tickbox for "read the mtl file" and I can't remember if its default is yes or no.
Thanks! What file format is ideal? I can get my model into Zbrush, Blender, or Rhino, so I have plenty of export options between the three. Which works for displacement?
Here's a screen shot of the obj import options. I don't see an mtl tickbox. Is there somewhere else I'm supposed to look?
Thanks! What file format is ideal? I can get my model into Zbrush, Blender, or Rhino, so I have plenty of export options between the three. Which works for displacement?
Here's a screen shot of the obj import options. I don't see an mtl tickbox. Is there somewhere else I'm supposed to look?
@SpottedKitty I've just figured out that I can import the obj with the uv map baked in. And now I can create a "texure" as the base color map, which is a start. But you're totally right that it doens't pick up any bump map or displacement values. Is dae a better file type for this? Or fbx? These are all brand new workflows for me so I might get an answer on this forum before I have time to process a uv mapped model in another program to get a different file format imported for testing.
Q Why can't you just load the maps manually after importing the OBJ?
@Szark maybe I just don't know what buttons to press? I'm new here. The only way I know of to load maps is under surfaces > editor > and then to click the square icon under one of a few settings. I can upload a map in the bumpmaps setting, but it will take no effect on my model what-so-ever, even in a render, regardless of the mode. Same with displacement - no effect. With the .obj file format, I'm only able to load in a texture map as a base color, and that does give my model a flat surface pattern, which is a start. But my renders aren't going to look right without displacement working. Let me know if you have any tips!
Arr ok, misunderstood. Great that you know how to add maps manually.
So the OBJ is properly UV mapped - Check
For Iray the BUMP maps should be Greyscale and not RGB, same with Displacement. Have you tried a higher Bump value? If you are not seeing any bump effect then maybe it is the map that is the issue, can you post a smaller version se we can take a look.
Displacement for Iray needs more Geometry than say 3delight. In the Iray Displacement settings is a Sub-D (subdividing) value. If the mesh as a good number of polygons already then a value of 3 or 4 might work, IF not it may need to go higher. But it will drain the resources in doing so, so something to be weary of.
Also depending on how the mesh was made you might get mesh distortion with using Displacement. I often see this when folks are still making products from an old school perspective where geometry was a drain on resources in 3delight, This is not the case in Iray so much that it is more about textures that are the main drain on resources. IMO there needs to be a compromise between the two. More edge loops on the mesh can help for stopping any distortion.
@Szark I've got only greyscale maps. I double checked the image mode in photoshop. Genuine greyscale.
Yes, I have tried a higher bump value.
My sub-d is set to 7.
I'm using Iray.
I think @SpottedKitty was on to something when she said:
From my experience so far, I think the .obj file type does have limitations in daz. I'm still working on experimenting with other file types for this, but my machines are cranking away on other work right now so I haven't gotten the chance yet.
Personally speaking all DAZ products are or were based on the OBJ format so I don't think that has anything to do with it. In my own limited modelling experience I have never had an issue with using OBJs.
I didn't get into all the other things that can affect an .obj import, since they didn't seem to be affecting you. If you use the wrong import scale, the model can appear in your scene either as a microscopic speck or a gigantic miles-long monster. If D|S misreads the settings in the .mtl file, the model can be textureless, or each surface a random colour, or even transparent. D|S can't properly handle polygons with more than four edges, but many other 3d programs have no problems with this. The list goes on... sometimes the surprising thing is that .obj imports not designed with D|S in mind work as well as they do.
good call Kitty
Whoops, missed this reply. You've got it ticked, it's the "Read Material Library" box. I've been doing this so long I don't always notice when a program update changes text in a dialog box; I was sure it originally (years ago) did say "mtl".
Incidentally, there's a reason why you had to reduce the import scale to 10% — if you check through the presets dropdown menu, Blender uses a unit scale of 50cm, while Maya (the program that has .obj as a native file format) uses a unit scale of 1cm.
I actually did not know that!!! It might explain the odd occurrence and funky results I've been getting, here and there!
I am not up on Displacement Mapping (Wikipedia English link; it reminds me of embossing techniques) but I have about a half-hour of Dreamlight's tutorials on disk here. The link to that one is https://www.daz3d.com/dreamlight-3d-school-displacement-map-mastery
By rights 3dl too but it is a lot more forgiving than Iray. :)
Technically, Bump or Displacement maps can have colors, hoever both 3Delight and Iray will average out the Red, Green, and Blue values to reduce it to a grayscale image anyway. You'll probably get better results making sure it's just grays in an image editor like Photoshop or GIMP or such.
Also keep in mind that for both types of map, pure gray (128,128,128) means that the surface is not bumped in either direction. Darker values (down to black [0,0,0]) bump down and higher values (up to white [255,255,255]) bump up.
My Displaced Bumps tutorial is a bit dated now and the example renders are using 3Delight, but it still shows the differences between the technologies. The Dreamlight tutorial you linked suffers from the same age related issues. It was written for 3Delight. Iray is a bit more finicky with displacement. 3Delight automatically converts the geometry to microfacets (basically dynamic subdivision), whereas Iray needs you to explicitly either provide enough base geometry or use the subdivision feature built into Daz Studio. As much as I prefer displacement (because it actually changes the surface geometry instead of faking it), I've had to get used to the idea that with Iray I may have to settle for fake bumps.
Btw, a Normal Map, isn't going to help much either if you were to try those. All a normal map does is pre-calculate the effect of a bump in the surface so that the engine doesn't have to do it on the fly. This is obviously faster for game engines and realtime rendering, but doesn't make as much difference for most of us using Studio for static or even animated images.
By default, but not by necessity. if the Minimum is set to 0 and the maximum to 1 then black will be no displacement and mid grey will be displacement by 0.5.
in my experience yes, true grayscale not desatuared RGB. It isn't the first time I have heard folks say they were getting strange results in Iray with using RGB.
I think it's partly down to the way DS assigns gamma values - it assumes greyscale images should be gamma 1, control maps, and is more likely to treat a colour image as a gamma 2.2 item which would confuse the levels.
exactly, thanks for adding that Richard
I'm almost positive I have gone ahead and modified and then desaturated RGB images in the past, and I would quickly save them back as "xyz-something-my-BUMP-file", in the 16M RGB color space. Learn something every day. Thanks.
I hope I don't offend, but the two parts of this sentence, UV mapping and having an .mtl file, don't have anything to do with one another. It makes me wonder if perhaps because you are new at this, you confused the step of creating and applying materials with UV mapping, and that in fact the surfaces still can't work properly in DS because the object hasn't really been UV mapped yet. Could you bring up the UV mapping screen in Blender and post a screenshot of what your UV map actually looks like? And also a screenshot of the Blender export settings so we can verify that the UV gets exported?
That's actually a slightly different issue. If you render a model that still has 3Delight materials, then D|S will auto-convert everything to Iray before starting the render. The problem crops up because this auto-conversion is flawed — whatever the 3DL bump values are, the converted values almost always come out as much smaller, frequently a tiny fraction of a millimetre. Using the Uber Iray shader before rendering lets you see what the auto-conversion actually does, and then change these values to more closely match what the 3Delight materials settings did.