Baking complex objects

sheckee

I'm baking complex objects in Maya using Transfer maps.

I have the high poly model (A smoothed high res model) of a bag that I'm trying to bake down to lower res. What's the best way to organize and do this? I guess I bake it in pieces too?

Should I just make the whole low poly as I think it should be around the high, lay out the Uvs and test bake? The way I'm doing it is to make the low pieces and test bake them as I go because I'm unsure of how it will work, this of course results in fragmented normal maps and UVs just randomly placed to test the bakes. Which means it will be tough later when I organise all the low poly Uvs, I'll have to cut the normals up and replace / size them to fit.

I'm also getting crazy overwhelmed with layers when doing this as I try to hide the rest of the high res, I have a duplicate of the high res unsmoothed too that I'm trying to use to make the low res from, plus other layers with pieces that I've made into low res, and high res pieces that I'm finished with, etc. It just gets messy.

Is this the technique and I'm just not experienced enough to have developed my work flow yet? Or am I missing something?

Cheers.

sheckee

I just came up with a possible technique.
If I take the object I'm baking and break it apart into the individual pieces that I want to bake separately and then freeze all their transformations whilst they are together as one as they should be. I'll then take each segment and move them -1 then -2 then -3 each separate piece, so that they are all floating separately from one another. I can then make the low polys around them, UV them all, bake each one separately, and then i'll select all the low polys, select their transforms, hit 1 and it will snap back together again.

warby

i can barely follow what you are talking about some images that illustrated your issues/questions would probably help

m4dcow

It sounds like you are talking about exploding the mesh in your second post, but I don't really know why that would be neccesary with a bag, besides maybe for zips.

Ace-Angel

Pictures please, I cannot make head/tails of what the issue actually is or looks like. I mean to me it sounds like your exploding the mesh and that was your original issue, which everyone knows about and does.

sheckee

Sorry, initial post was a mess. Posted it when I was very tired. I'll grab some pictures soon to illustrate as best I can. Apologies

sheckee

Okay, hopefully I can explain a little better now.


Here's the hi-res of the bag, I'm currently building a low res around it using duplicates of the bag at a lower division level.
When it comes to baking I am a bit confused. Do I make the whole low poly first, and sort out the UVs, then using the exploding technique bake each part separately? The main bulk of the bag, the side pockets etc. Or do I bake the entire object as one? I'm asking the best, most efficient way of baking this really, as I'm finding myself with a mess of layers and multiple normal maps that I'll have to cut apart and join together to make one map from.
I hope that makes sense, perhaps I'm over thinking it.

Ace-Angel

Explode both high poly and low poly so you don't have major overlaping pieces and bake all your maps like that (especially Diffuse and Normal).

Unexplode your bags, and bake out a second AO map, although you could do that also without the need for a HP model.

sheckee

Thanks to everyone for the help.
Below is an image of my first attempt at this, with a few problems.
Maybe someone can clear up the couple of issues I'm having. Thanks!

Couple of things :
As you can see the flap projected onto the pocket behind it. I think that’s a control cage issue.
Will try and fix that one on my next bake. The front zips look strange, I think that’s because I kept the slight lip /indent on the front pocket which has sent the rays out at funny angles. Will remove those ones.
Also the side pocket covers projected onto the actual pockets. I think the flaps will need baking separately to resolve that.