ZBrush materials into Daz?

Selek

I'm able to export Zbrush meshes, along with polypainted textures, into Daz.  I use ZBrush's UVMaster to create UVs, create a texture from polypaint, import the .OBJ and texture maps.  The UV islands generated by UVMaster aren't fabulous, and I'd be interested in advice on how to improve them, but that's not why I'm writing.

I'm interested in also exporting the materials I use in ZBrush, like metallic or clay surfaces.  I found a tutorial that suggested generating a displacement map from the mesh, then applying that map to a simple Plane3D, then applying the relevant Material to the plane.  So I tried it with a metallic material.  That did create an interesting, shiny displacement map that seemed to follow my UV coordinates.  But when I use the map in Daz, as either a Displacement or Bump map, nothing happens.  When I put it in as a Normal map, I get some odd noise but nothing much of interest.  

Any advice on all this?  Is it simpler just to use Daz's surface shaders for this sort of thing?  Or should I be investing in Substance Painter or some such?  I'd also be interested in advice on creating cleaner UV islands.  Thanks in advance.

Richard Haseltine

I would have thought the idea was to use the final map a control for Metallicity in the Iray Uber Base shader, though from the description it's hard to be sure.

Selek

Thanks for your reply.  The Metallicity slider does respond when I turn it up, and the result is somewhat encouraging: metallic, shiny, but chaotic and only vaguely how it looks in ZBrush.  Maybe I'm on the right track and my UVs just need improvement.

Really I'm wondering about the broader question of process.  How does one replicate the pretty "materials" I can slap on a model in ZBrush?  I assume this has to be done with displacement or normal or bump maps, or maybe some combination of the three, in conjunction with an ordinary texture (diffuse) map that has polypainting info.

Richard Haseltine

I'm not sure what the ZBrush materials are doing - they has settings, so look at those and then see if you can find analogous properties in the Daz Studio shader you are using.

Selek

Thanks. Yes, I seem to have the most success just adjusting the shader settings in Daz to approximate what I get in ZBrush.

Do people work this way with Substance Painter, too?  Just try to use Daz shaders to replicate the effects they achieve in Substance Painter?

Richard Haseltine

Selek said:

Thanks. Yes, I seem to have the most success just adjusting the shader settings in Daz to approximate what I get in ZBrush.

Do people work this way with Substance Painter, too?  Just try to use Daz shaders to replicate the effects they achieve in Substance Painter?

Yes, though I think Substance painter can output a range of maps thata re pretty close to the properties in the Iray Uber Base Shader so usually it is relatively easy to plug those in - the main issue, I think, tends to be that a lot of Daz Studio lighting and materials are not in fact physically based, rather they tend to be eyeballed, and that can make it hard to get materials to match without throwing out all the other materials in the scene.

Selek

Thanks for your helpful comment.  Okay, I'll keep at it.  I appreciate the help!