exporting a single layer as a bump map

[tadpole3159]

hello this is my first post of many
i have recently started making my parents horse in 3d and i have came across a problem.
i have maya 2008 and as most people know maya 2008 cant render displacement maps and i cant afford to upgrade to 2009.

the image below shows the horse at different subdivision layers (5 and 6)
on the left is my horse at 1 million polygons, that's fine for me and maya, we can handle that. but look at the mane, its all low def and lumpy and all the short fur details are lost. on the right is the horse on sub level 6 but that's 3 million polygons and maya crashes on import. is there a way i can export sub division layer 6 as a displacement map or bump map to allow me to render in maya?
http://i733.photobucket.com/albums/ww331/tadpole3159/example.jpg

[Wayne]

Follow the videos on the front part of this site on the Mudbox to Maya displacement piepline and all should be fine.


Wayne...

[irobert]

Maya 2008 CAN render displacement maps. There are some issues with rendering them with certain UV layouts combined with color and other maps, BUT there are some workarounds that work great.

[irobert]

Page 2 should give you some info on how to render the displacement. http://area.autodesk.com/index.php/forums/viewthread/18391/P10/

[tadpole3159]

ok then
after i followed your tutorial i again i managed to fish out my error message
// Error: *Fatal* (mental ray) : mental ray encountered a fatal error. The system may have become unstable. Please save the scene and exit Maya. //
and after some doom spreading threads about maya 2008 i came to the conclusion maya 2008 cant render tutorials.
and sensing your next question:

AMD dual core 32 bit processor
3.11GHz, 2.50 GB of ram

P.S:i used the low def settings from your tutorial

[tadpole3159]

all right then fixed.
the following is for anyone who might have the same problems as me:

the settings in this tutorial are to much for my computer.
http://mudboxhub.com/rendering.php
so in the mentalray Subdivision Approxamation use the settings :
min subdivision = 0
max subdivision = 4

and carry on with the tutorial.

oh and if you manage to render the model but the displacement map is spiking wildly scale your model up to the size of the grid...roughly and if its not showing enough or at all scale it down to about the size of the grid.