C4D sculpt displacement / normal map problems

[simonrobson]

Hi,
I'm in Octane 3.08
I can't list how many times I've tried to sculpt in C4D, bake displacement and normal maps and try to make them work in Octane. There's a couple of threads on this forum I've tried, but nothing seems to work. I've always made sure my objects are correctly UV'd, it never works.

Has anyone come up with a fool-proof way of getting baked displacement and normal maps from C4D's sculpt system to work in Octane?

If not, what do people sculpt in to create displacement and normal maps that work with Octane for C4D?

I need some help here.

Thanks,

Simon

[aoktar]

Example please!

[simonrobson]

Thanks for replying Aoktar,
I'm away from my PC today but will post a detailed example tomorrow, about 24 hours from now.
Simon

[simonrobson]

Hi Aoktar,
I've attached an example file. A simple sculpted cube test with 4k displacement and normal maps.
Cube is correctly UV'd. Sculpt cube subdivided to 7 ande baked down to a base mesh of 3. Bake settings attached.

As you'll see, geometric artefacts occur around the sculpt and where the cube UV joins are.

I've played with the displace and normal settings, changing follow geometirc and vertexs normals. Taking UV power to 0.5 seems to help somewhat. But nothing get me near a desired result as one sees in the C4D material displace.

Any help much appreciated

octane_sculpt_test05.zip

(95.12 MiB) Downloaded 301 times

[simonrobson]

Hi Aoktar
Any thoughts on this?
Thanks,
Simon

[bepeg4d]

Hi Simon,
the issue is in the way is calculated the normal map:

after roughly change it in Photoshop:

the issue is almost gone:

Please, try to calculate the normal map in tangent mode, with purple background.
Here is the modified scene:
octane_sculpt_test05b.zip
ciao Beppe

[simonrobson]

Thanks Beppe,
This is really useful and I tried it myself with reasonable success.
Could you tell me a bit more about the bevelling you seem to have applied in Photoshop to the edge of the UVs and how I should approach this for my UV maps. It seems to prevent the obvious edges where UV edges meet on the model.

Simon

[bepeg4d]

Hi,
unfortunately the bevel comes out if you directly transform the c4d normal in normal map in Photoshop.
To minimize the effect, I have colored the gray part into R=50, G=50, B=100, before applying the Normal map filter.
If you recalculate the Normal map in purple mode in c4d, it should be more easy, and you should need to change only the gray background.
ciao Beppe

[simonrobson]

Hey Beppe,
I recalculated the normal map in Tangent mode. I then turned the colour surrounding the normals to the same purple as in your map: 128,128,255

The result is better, but I get a hard edge there the cube UVs touch. Please see the attached render image.

What's the best way to avoid this hard edge?

Thanks so much for your help.

Simon

sculpt_test_04_Normal_Source_7_simon.zip

(67.88 MiB) Downloaded 272 times

[TonyBoy]

Have you tried UV projection?