Occluders in xNormal

JamesWild

I'm using xNormal for the synched normals pipeline for UDK, and have hit a bit of a snag. In Max or Blender, when baking, there are three sets of meshes; the low poly, the high poly that is being directly baked from, and high poly that won't be directly baked, just as a shadow casting/occluding/light reflecting surface. This is very, very useful, and I find, the best way of doing floating geometry without interference.

I don't seem to be able to do this in xNormal. Is this the case? I've looked through the tutorial, saw no option to do it. If I can't, it's not a huge problem, I can bake the AO in something else and just do the normals in xNormal.

Thanks

JamesWild

Never mind I found it thanks, for future reference they're called blockers and are added to the low poly not the high for some reason.

Nope, doesn't seem to do anything.

cptSwing

Not sure what you mean - you can setup several HP meshes in xnormal, ie include a plane or cones or whatever to occlude your mesh.

Blockers are intended to stop raycasting errors from occuring, in areas like between fingers, IIRC.

JamesWild

Here's my low poly for reference:

I want to bake the pipes and block separately, so I don't get bits of pipe all over the block and vice versa. However, I still want the pipes to cast shadows on the block. In Max or Blender this is easy; in Blender just don't select the pipes when baking the block, and in Max don't add them to the list in the projection modifier.

I don't see a way to do this in xNormal.

Froyok

Simply uncheck the HP mesh of the pipe in the HP list, xNormal will not bake it.
Save your maps separately then blend them inside photoshop.

JamesWild

It also doesn't cast shadows on the bit I do want, which makes the end result look less "real".

Thanks for the reply.