Short and sweet (hopefully).
It seems to be quite a normal topic these days. Mari and Zbrush are commonly used by texture artists. Combining displacement maps in look-dev is a must.
I'll be using Maya and Arnold for this demo but any 3D software and renderer is welcome to use the same workflow.
- Using Zbrush displacements is no brainer. Just export them as 32 bit .exr and that's it. Set your render subdivisions in Arnold and leave the default settings for displacement. Zero value is always 0 and height should be 1 to match your Zbrush sculpt.
- These are the maps that I'm using. First the Zbrush map and below the Mari map.
- No displacement at all in this render. This is just the base geometry.
- In this render I'm only using the Zbrush displacement.
- In order to combine Zbrush displacement maps and Mari displacement maps you need to normalise the ranges. If you use the same range your Mari displacement would be huge compared with the Zbrush one.
- Using a multiply node is so easy to control the strength of the Mari displacement. Connect the map to the input1 and play with the values in the input2.
- To mix both displacement maps you can use an average node. Connect the Zbrush map to the input0 and the Mari map (multiply node) to the input1.
- The average node can't be connected straight o the displacement node. Use ramp node with the average node connected to it's color and then connect the ramp to the displacement default input.
- In this render I'm combining both, Zbrush map and Mari map.
- In this other example I'm about to combine two displacements using a mask. I'll be using a Zbrush displacement as general displacement, and then I'm going to use a mask painted in Mari to reveal another displacement painted in Mari as well.
- As mask I'm going to use the same symbol that I used before as displacement 2.
- And as new displacement I'm going to use a procedural map painted in Mari.
- The first thing to do is exactly the same operation that we did before. Control the strength of the Mari's displacement using a multiply node.
- Then use another multiply node with the Mari's map (multiply) connected to it's input1 and the mask connected to it's input2. This will reveal the Mari's displacement only in the white areas of the mask.
- And the rest is exactly the same as we did before. Connect the Zbrush displacement to the input0 of the average node and the Mari's displacement (multiply) to the input1 of the average node. Then the average node to the ramp's color and the ramp to the displacement default input.
- This is the final render.