Sculpting - Blender Master Class: A Hands-on Guide to Modeling, Sculpting, Materials, and Rendering - page 86

To apply the displacement map to your new
retopologized mesh, do the following:

1. Select your retopologized mesh and, in the

Materials tab of the Properties Editor, create
a new material for it by clicking the New but-
ton. We won't be using this material to render
our mesh later; it's just there as somewhere to
hold our texture for now. You can rename this
material something like Displacement_Dummy .
You may also want to create a fake user for
this material by clicking the F icon next to its
name so that when you assign a different mate-
rial to the object (leaving the dummy material
unassigned), the dummy material will not be
discarded.

2. Switch to the Texture tab of the Properties edi-

tor and add a new texture to the material, again
by clicking New . Figure 6-28: Restricting the action of the Displacement

modifier with a vertex group (shown here in Weight
Paint mode)

3. Set the material type to Image or Movie and

then, from the Image panel below, click Open
and load the displacement map you just created.
Name this something memorable as well.

shows the vertex group for the Displacement modi-
fier in Weight Paint mode; the inside of the mouth
and eyes and the tips of the claws on the wings are
not included in the group.
To create a vertex group, take the following
steps:

4. Delete the Subdivision Surface modifier we

added earlier and add a Multires modifier to
your retopologized mesh instead. Then subdi-
vide it a few times. Aim for roughly the same
number of faces as your original mesh for now.

5. Add a Displacement modifier. From the Texture

selector, choose your displacement material and
leave direction set to Normal , but change the
Coordinates setting to UV to use your object's
UV coordinates to apply the displacement
texture. Because we kept the texture-baking
settings mostly on their defaults, the default
strength of 1 should be exactly what we need.
This should now give your mesh exactly the
same shape as the original sculpt.

1. Enter Edit mode , and in the Object Data tab

of the Properties Editor, and click the + icon in
the Vertex Groups panel to create a new vertex
group.

2. Select the vertices you wish to be included in

the group (that is, the parts of the mesh you do
want to apply the Displacement modifier to),
and click Assign in the Vertex Groups panel to
assign them to the group.

3. Switch back to Object mode , and set this vertex

group as the vertex group to use to restrict the
effect of the Displacement modifier (the Vertex
Group option is in the modifier settings; see
Figure 6-29). The modifiers you should now
have applied are shown in Figure 6-29.

Controlling Displacement with a Vertex Group

Some areas, like the inside of the mouth, may
cause problems when the Displacement modifier
is applied. Since the inside of the mouth is com-
pletely new topology, it won't have any useful infor-
mation in the displacement map, and it would be
better to exclude these areas from the effects of the
Displacement modifier. To fix these areas, you can
assign a vertex group to the Displacement modifier
to restrict displacement to only certain parts of the
mesh, leaving problem areas untouched. Figure 6-28

4. Apply the Displacement modifier by clicking

Apply . Its effects will be stored by the Multires
modifier, allowing you to return to Sculpt
mode and continue sculpting and adding
details.