head one

[coffeestains]

Hi and Hellow. this is my first "try" in mud box so dont be to rough on me - ive just spend few hours over learning inteface and trying brushes etc ... after that ive modeled base mesh in maya , and then spend a while with it in mud box ... after that i tryed to bake normal maps and render that in maya mental ray ... and i have a problem - it is not rendering ... any one can help ? im attaching , base mesh, high quolity rendering view port from maya ( where i can see normal maps properly ) , and mudbox screenshoot, as my first work in progres.. will work on on it after i figure out why those normal maps dont render in maya :( ....

any C&C more than wecome

[Bryan Silva]

You need to go back down to the lowest subdivision level in mudbox for your mesh and export that lowest level as an obj. You need to then import that level 0 mesh into maya and apply the map to that mesh. As you sculpt in mudbox your level 0 mesh is changed accorning to your changes you make while scupting. So your original mesh doesnt "fit" the map. If you dont want to use your new level 0 mesh, then you need to import your original mesh into mudbox and use that as your target mesh when extracting the normal map.

[coffeestains]

THX Bryan ... but ...

method#1.
export obj from mudbox at level zero and import it back to maya ... doesnt work ... still mental ray doesnty even start rendering ....

method#2.
mudbox after improting obj and setting it as target model , and setting sculpted model as a source model doesnt extract the map - it says "map extraction finished without errors" but there is no file on disk....

so no progress at this point ... any other ideas why i cant render nothing in mental ray after assigning normla map in maya ...?

thx

[coffeestains]

opening normalMap in photoshop and saveing it again with no changes but under different name helped ....... still cant get the amout of detail i was expecting but at least it is rendering .... strange ...