Cineversity

I’d like some help with baked displacement maps and normal maps from C4D sculpting in terms of using them in other programs like Maya and rendering in vRay. In particular I am trying to get baked displacement and normal maps to work in vRay (C4D R15 and vRay 1.8/2.4).

I did a test sculpture and it rendered perfectly or near perfectly using the C4D native physical renderer - Cool! However, I have been completely unable to get acceptable rendering results in vRay using RBG tangent displacement maps (these do not work at all) and intensity greyscale displacement maps (these work after a fashion that have a lot of artefacts).

Firstly, can you use baked sculpture baked displacement maps in vRay and if so a tutorial/advice on settings would be fantastic. Having discussed the issue with Stefan on the vRay for C4D support forum it seems that the issue is with the way that Cinema 4D generates displacement maps. It seems that these maps are unique to Cinema 4D and will not transfer easily to other programs or renderers - Is that the case?

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FYI
If this is indeed the case, then Maxon is missing out on sales. I really like Cinema 4D with the improved snapping and modelling tools and although the sculpting tools are in their infancy, I find them easier to use than zBrush – no doubt that will change with time. I was hoping to use Cinema 4D as a character production pipeline (modelling, sculpting and texturing using BodyPaint) but if I can’t export displacement and normal maps successfully to other programs like Maya or render using the then I will have to continue using zBrush or perhaps something like Mudbox.

My ideal scenario would be modelling, sculpting and texturing in a revamped Cinema 4D / BodyPaint that has vertex painting and symmetry and a much easier way of creating UVs (like 3D Coat). With all other great features, I’d think you’d find Cinema being integrated into more production pipelines.

Is Maxon aware of all these issues and working to resolve them?

Thanks
Chris

Hi Chris,

Quite a list of points, so let me address them.

If something is not working as it should (creating normal and displacement maps), then please contact the MAXON Support. Cineversity is not supposed to provide technical support in the way MAXON does it.
http://www.maxon.net/support/support-questions.html

I wonder if Stefan is not in contact already—after he is aware of that problem.

You can make feature requests (ideal scenario) to MAXON here: http://www.maxon.net/support/suggestions.html

For tutorial request - please use this thread: http://www.cineversity.com/forums/viewforum/96/

How MAXON does its business or might missing on sales is not a discussion here on Cineversity, this might be addressed elsewhere, I have no interest in discussing it here.

If MAXON is internally working on such things is of course not my business to share in public, if they don’t do it either. You might understand. As part of the beta-tester group, etc., I have signed an NDA, so I can’t talk about those internal developments anyway.

Please understand that we deliver here training and ideas, not a platform to discuss MAXON’s way of creating software nor doing business. Thanks for understanding.

.

This sounds perhaps like a “cold shower”, and if so, sorry, not my intention, not at all. The opposite is the case, I say thank you for bringing it up, and I hope that feeding it into the right channels will help many people in the future to NOT run into that problem that you have in front of you. Not nice and certainly not fun, I concur, to have to deal with such things. I hope the support is able to address these things to your liking, and a proper workflow is soon possible for you.

All the best

Sassi

Thanks

However, do you know about using baked displacement maps and normal maps from Cinema 4D sculptures in vRay were exporting them to other programs - Is it possible, does it work and what are the pitfalls?

FYI -Stephan Is discussing the issue with Maxon and I will post questions directly to Maxon but I was hoping for someone here to have some opinions and helpful advice rather than just directing me to other links. That’s why I just spent $295! I’m sorry if that sounds like a “cold shower” but I was expecting more help and at least a discussion of what you guys know.

Hey Chris,

Understandable that you are not happy, if you expected at least a discussion about. I have given you all the information which I’m able to share. As I wrote above, if that theme touches a coding problem of C4D, and I assume you made that experience, then I’m out of the loop. I was told several times, if it is a support question, then the support is in charge exclusively. More, I can’t do right now.

Doing online training and helping people getting stuff done now in my tenth year, I’m certainly not holding back if I can share anything. I’m sorry if that collides with your first post here. Please check the support (!), just trust me on this.

All the best

Sassi

I’ll contribute to this as well.

First the issues with Vray “reading” RGB displacements is not a MAXON issue but a limitation of Vray.
RGB displacements are an industry standard in regards to displacements, and in this case Vray needs to implement a feature they are missing. RGB displacements are supported by most major render engines except for Vray.
This is exactly what Stefan mentioned.
He also mentioned that the Chaos group was in talks with pixologic about supporting this displacement type.

Next, the intensity based maps in C4D are limited by UVs…and unfortunately the worse the UVs…the worse the artifacts.
This is because the Displacement is calculated based on the UVs and is NOT using raycasting to generate the displacement.
On top of those issues, there are also some artifacts that can occur when the sculpted surface crosses the source geometry.

So in short, MAXON IS using industry standards, 1 that VRay does NOT support, and 1 that Vray does support.
Of those 2, the one that Vray supports can have artifacts.

Unfortunately I would love to be able to tell you more…but that is what it is.
There is nothing we can do to “train” around these issues.

You can explore alternatives, such as baking with Xnormal, or blender.

Until then all we can do is put in requests to MAXON and hope that they issues are resolved with the next release.

In terms of MAXON’s development, we at CV have no real influence over that process, other than early access to new builds before a major release. Which is why we direct you to the online forms when there is anything to do with development ideas or suggestions.

That’s fantastic Patrick and exactly what I wanted to know. I wanted to know the state of play and what the limitations and what people are trying to do to improve the situation. I’ve been investigating sculpting in Cinema 4D to see how it compares with zBrush that I’ve been using for a while. Especially as Cinema 4D’s modelling tools are now so much better.

The test model I used has quite simple UV’s that doesn’t have much stretching or distortion yet I still got a relatively poor result in vRay using intensity/intensity (centred) greyscale displacement maps (which is better to use?).

However this may be because of something I’m not doing right in the process – Do you know of a tutorial that takes you through sculpting in Cinema 4D, baking out displacement maps and importing then creating displacement materials in vRay? I’ve tried using both 2D and 3D intensity displacements in vRay that sort of worked but didn’t really get usable results. Do you need to follow the same process for vRay that’s in the Cinema 4D manual - if you have 7 levels of subdivision then you bake out a displacement map for 0=5 and a normal map for 5-7 that tidy’s up any errors?

“MAXON IS using industry standards” - Does that mean that if I need to export a baked model for use in something like Maya then it should work as well as it does in Cinema 4D? Are there issues that you know about with Maya and Max. Or because of the way that Cinema 4D creates its maps using UV’s does that mean there will still be issues?

I get the sense that baking maps has limitations and that if you try and make a map where there is extreme or large amounts of displacement that you’re likely to get artefacts and errors. Is that a reasonable statement?

“Until then all we can do is put in requests to MAXON and hope that they issues are resolved with the next release.” By this you mean the way that Cinema 4D calculates displacement maps based on UV’s– yes? I’ve been using zBrush and presumably that calculates maps based on Raycasting - I actually like the way you can sculpt in Cinema 4D even though it doesn’t have the same feature set. Perhaps I could take my final high-resolution model back into zBrush, recreate the subdivision history and then bake maps in zBrush if I need to use the model in other programs or render in vRay. Is that a valid approach?

Again, thanks for your detailed reply and help.

Cheers
Chris

From the bottom up.

Most of the issues with baking are rooted in the lack of a raycast method for baking.
This is where there is a fairly major divide, as AFAIK, you need the UV data to properly calculate RGB displacements.
Whereas intensity maps are prone to failure when generated off of the UVs.

An intensity map can only push a vertex along a normal, while the RGB map can push the vertex along a normal AND add an offset.

Now, if you have a quad poly that folds on itself, and then imagine trying to match a high res sculpt to this folded polygon…imagine how sloppy that could get if you are only allowed to move the subdivided mesh along the normals.
RGB handles this with ease…because of the additional offset included.

When I say “Industry Standard” it is in regards to the fact that there is a standard set in how RGB displacements are calculated AT RENDERTIME.
The maps RGB maps generated by C4D will work with any render engine that supports RGB displacement maps, which is most.

AFAIK, the intensity based methods will always be touch and go, until raycast baking is implemented….although…this introduces a whole new set of limitations (specifically with overhanging / occluding geometry.)
To that extent, you will run into issues using intensity based methods, which means any map generate that uses intenity based methods will likely have proplem, and thus will not work in Vray.

Now, all that said, if you do have zbrush, then importing your high resolution mesh and your low resolution mesh into zbrush and generating a displacement there, is totally a viable option.

AFAIK there is no tutorial on the net that will help in anyway.
Really the only “skills” needed here are using the Vray displacement maps, and if you already know how to work with those, then all you need to do is load in the map…If C4D is not baking the map correctly then there isn’t much to be done. :/

Thanks

I’m investigating vRay so I’m not that familiar with displacement materials although it seems reasonably straightforward - That’s why I asked about a tutorial or at least the best settings to get an optimal result. None of the 20 or so settings I’ve tried work very well.

FYI, the last time I baked RGB vector maps from zBrush and rendered in Maya and C4D it worked in Maya but there were artifacts in C4D - inbuilt render (but this was R13/14 so I suspect it will be better).

At least I now know where things are at and have workarounds - Perhaps R16…

Cheers
Chris