Clarafi

One of the biggest challenges in creating compelling animations for scientific visualization is rendering highly organic detailed structures. This requires an understanding displacement texture map generation and application. In this tutorial you will learn the processes involved in incorporating Pixologic’s ZBrush and Autodesk’s Maya into a scientific animation workflow. The demonstration uses the example of a highly detailed brain coral model. You will learn how to create UV texture coordinates for a model, and how to use ZBrush to generate texture, displacement, and normal maps. You’ll learn how to edit the texture maps in Adobe Photoshop and how to incorporate the maps in an Autodesk Maya 2015 shader network and how to render the model using the mental ray plug in for Maya. The tutorial finishes with discussions on troubleshooting displacement maps and a brief overview of using vector displacement maps.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Understand what displacement maps are and how they are useful for rendering detail in Maya
• Generate UV texture coordinates for ZBrush models
• Learn how to create and export texture maps using ZBrush plugins
• Learn how to export models from ZBrush and import them into Maya
• Learn how to build shader networks in Maya using displacement maps
• Learn how to render a brain coral model using mental ray for Maya
• Compare different types of displacement maps including vector displacement maps.

TABLE of CONTENTS