# Old models new depth map renders



## Oscar36 (Feb 23, 2019)

I've been going back to some of my old models and seeing how they look as depth maps. Some worked okay, some looked like a 3 year old made them and some just didn't work. 

Here are a few that were good or okay. A little bit of everything. Hope they are of use to someone.


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## MEBCWD (Jan 14, 2012)

Oscar thanks for sharing these. A lot of interesting projects come to mind.


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## chessnut2 (Sep 15, 2011)

Oscar36 said:


> I've been going back to some of my old models and seeing how they look as depth maps. Some worked okay, some looked like a 3 year old made them and some just didn't work.
> 
> Here are a few that were good or okay. A little bit of everything. Hope they are of use to someone.


I've been dalllying a bit with height maps, but get such enormous file sizes that they're freezing my computer. What software are you using?


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## Oscar36 (Feb 23, 2019)

Mike, your welcome. Hopefully some can be of use to you.

Jim, that is weird. The files should not be that huge. The beauty of depth map renders are they are just pictures. My original renders are anywhere from 2 to 8 megs at 4K resolution. I take them into a graphics program and convert to JPEG with smaller file size <1 meg. Now, you can make huge files but the image would be enormous. 

I make/build the 3d models in Blender 3d or Zbrush. 

To render as depth map images I then have different options.

1. Blender 3d. I use a custom node setup that uses the z-depth data from the model to create a grey scale image.

2. Zbrush. I can export the model from Blender in OBJ format and import into Zbrush (if model not made with Zbrush) and then I create an alpha from the model. I can then save the alpha as a depth map image.

3. ShaderMap Pro 4. I export the model from Blender as OBJ format and import into ShaderMap as a 3d model and it can make an depth map render. 

I take the resulting image and import to Paintshop Pro (most graphics program should be able to do this) and clean up the image. Normally reducing any noise and adding slight gaussian blur.

I save the file as a JPEG which normally further reduces the file size. 

What software are you using?


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## Oscar36 (Feb 23, 2019)

M911 Heavy Equipment Transporter. This is a matching model that goes with the M60 Main Battle Tank shared in a previous thread.


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## chessnut2 (Sep 15, 2011)

Oscar36 said:


> Mike, your welcome. Hopefully some can be of use to you.
> 
> Jim, that is weird. The files should not be that huge. The beauty of depth map renders are they are just pictures.
> 
> What software are you using?


I was just trying to use a couple of sketchup plugins called "Mesh from Bitmap" and "Mesh from BMP". I had to make the tests such a small resolution that they're unusable. I've had limited success with drawing simple geometric shapes in sketchup, saving them as a sketchup file, then importing it into Vcarve Pro. Those worked and carved just fine. But I had tried taking a terrain map from terrain.party of a hilly area near me and saving it as a bitmap. When that didn't work, I took it into Blender and exported it as an stl, then into an online converter and got an stl file, since that's what sketchup will import. That also froze the computer. 
I just saw a couple of plugins that allow sketchup to import .obj files, and will try that. But I gave a quick read to an article about decimating triangles in Blender. Maybe that would get the file size down. Another problem may be that my computer only has 8gb of RAM. I've been putting off upgrading it until I can afford to take it up to the max it can hold. That might help. Thanks for all the info.


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## Oscar36 (Feb 23, 2019)

Jim, I am sorry. I misunderstood the original question. I thought you were talking about the images themselves (creating depth map images). Converting the images to geometry can create humongous files if not careful. 

There are different work flows to attempt to reduce the size of the project. I am not familiar with Mesh from Bitmap or Mesh from BMP.

Blender can create geometry from the depth map files which can then be exported as an STL, FBX or OBJ. On the other end, if you have a huge 3d model file, Blender was so-so at reducing geometry size but with version 2.81 it just got some serious help retopologizing geometry (resurfacing the surface with new geometry). 

Different workflow. If you have a mesh created (humongous file), meshlabs is a free and very good program to reduce the size of the file while maintaining very good geometry envelope structure.

Sorry not a lot of help.


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## chessnut2 (Sep 15, 2011)

Oscar36 said:


> Jim, I am sorry. I misunderstood the original question. I thought you were talking about the images themselves (creating depth map images). Converting the images to geometry can create humongous files if not careful.
> 
> There are different work flows to attempt to reduce the size of the project. I am not familiar with Mesh from Bitmap or Mesh from BMP.
> 
> ...


Wow, this is great info, Oscar. I just downloaded meshlabs and will try it out. And I'll also look at what Blender will do. Thanks!


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## Oscar36 (Feb 23, 2019)

Re-renderings of a few more old files.


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