I've sent you the hi and lo poly model by mail. It would be very nice if you could tell me if the bright transmission map is intended or if you think I should change some setting to get this dark transmission map as the shader author demands.
Can you explain your transmission map? Would you say it's perfect? I'm asking because in one forum there is a discussion if your transmission map is too bright. So I wonder what he means by "too bright". I guess you're not doing this "as you like", but your transmission map is the gold standard, and shader developers, etc. have to play by its rules, right?
Left is Knald, right is what the shader expects. The developer of the shader said that one should simply lower the contrast in the Knald transmission map. Wouldn't that break some rules?
I've sent you the hi and lo poly model by mail. It would be very nice if you could tell me if the bright transmission map is intended or if you think I should change some setting to get this dark transmission map as the shader author demands.
It would be really nice if you could tell me more about it.
Thanks for the files! There shouldn't be much need to post process the Transmission map with Photoshop in order to alter it's functionality (other than removing parts of it that you don't want to be translucent ofc) as you should be able to get the result you are looking for by adjusting the various sliders and the Attenuation dropdown options. To get something similar to the image you posted above I would suggest that you change the Attenuation to Ramp Linear and bump the Scale slider to 1000%. You can also change the Ramp slider to make a lighter or darker texture (towards 0% for a darker map and 1000% for lighter).
While there are always improvements to be made with any technique, we do consider our Transmission to produce the most realistic result. The generic Thickness maps that many solutions have implemented are fundamentally flawed and inaccurate when
it comes to the transmission of light
Here is another example using the Hunter mesh (Art courtesy of Warren Boonzaaier) so
you can see judge our Transmission solution directly with the
alternative Thickness. In the Non-Knald thickness you can see there are major
problems in multiple areas such as the eyelashes, eyeballs, the belts
and the hood etc. While Thickness generated this way does a good job of
generating local thickness it does not represent the true thickness of
the entire mesh rendered as a coherent volume and is only suitable for
singe objects like crystals or candles etc. when viewed in isolation.
Of course, the strength of the transmission is exaggerated in this image for effect, but you can see the results speak for themselves. Hope that helps!
Knald is mentioned here: https://labs.unity.com/article/experimental-feature-de-lighting-tool I love Knald for sure, I bought a license, but I have no idea what it's needed for in this case. I mean normals give instructions about the details of a model when applying the high details on a low(er) poly mesh, right? And I guess Knald can't create normal maps from a single model, it needs both hi and lo poly, right? I mean I just don't understand it. Perhaps if you say that Knald indeed can bake normals and AO and bent normal from a single model, it would make more sense to me. Can you perhaps shed some light on this?
Knald keeps crashing when I try to bake an AO. I upload a normal map and a mesh and when I press 'Activate' on Image AO Settings knald crashes. I am doing everything as I have done many times, and have no idea why it is crashing now. I noticed there was a update for graphics driver, but still crashes after I installed it. Can you suggest anything?
Knald is mentioned here: https://labs.unity.com/article/experimental-feature-de-lighting-tool I love Knald for sure, I bought a license, but I have no idea what it's needed for in this case. I mean normals give instructions about the details of a model when applying the high details on a low(er) poly mesh, right? And I guess Knald can't create normal maps from a single model, it needs both hi and lo poly, right? I mean I just don't understand it. Perhaps if you say that Knald indeed can bake normals and AO and bent normal from a single model, it would make more sense to me. Can you perhaps shed some light on this?
Hi! Sorry for the late reply. I didn't get a notification for your message.
The idea is that you would bake high to low in the regular way, but using the HP generated from the photogrammetry and then input the baked textures (OS Normals, AO and Bent Normals) into the delighting tool, which give the tool the information it needs to remove the shadows etc. from the albedo. OS Normals give directional information of the vertex normals found on the high poly mesh, AO gives general occlusion data and Bent Normals gives
another more specific form of occlusion data via the bent normal, which represents the weighted
average of all unoccluded directions. As mentioned above, you still need to bake these high to low, but the delighting process isn't restricted to tiling textures or anything like that. Any mesh that can be baked could in theory be "delit" in such a way. Does this help?
Knald keeps crashing when I try to bake an AO. I upload a normal map and a mesh and when I press 'Activate' on Image AO Settings knald crashes. I am doing everything as I have done many times, and have no idea why it is crashing now. I noticed there was a update for graphics driver, but still crashes after I installed it. Can you suggest anything?
Sorry that you are having problems!
Can you let me know which version of Knald you are using, along with your GPU model and driver version please? Also it would be helpful if you could send me the normal map and mesh you are attempting to bake. You can send it to support@knaldtech.com
Thanks for the quick reply, I sent you an email as requested
No problem & thanks for the files. Unfortunately it looks like the UVs are either
corrupted on the mesh or are packed in such a way that they are
overlapping continuously, so this isn't really a Knald bug, but an issue
with the mesh itself.
If you unwrap the mesh again with more traditional, non-overlapping UVs then everything should bake perfectly.
I think Knald is not updated very frequently, meaning you make a lot of beta testing and don't rush. However, could you release a beta for UDIMMs early?
@TheresaFall UDIM is on our list as a high priority. Hopefully people wont have to wait too long for a new release
Yeah, thats what I'm hoping for about a year now... switched to baking in Marmoset Toolbag 3 a long time ago, and very happy with it. I will check out the new version of Knald though when it comes out in 2020. Only joking.
@wilson66 No problem! We really do try our best to release our software when it's ready, rather than forcing ourselves to hit arbitrary deadlines or promising that the next release will be out by a specific date, as this causes huge disappointment to users if the deadline/date is not met. It comes down to a fundamental belief that Knald & Lys should be stable, rather than potentially jeopardising stability for a faster release cycle, which is easy to do. Rest assured that we are always working on Knald in the background and have lots of really cool stuff in the pipeline
It looks like Knald welds vertices on your low poly together when it creates the cage. I tried contacting support about it but couldn't get any help there. I couldn't find anything about it when searching, so I just wanted to post it here in case somebody encounters similar issues and can't figure out what is going on.
@TheresaFall UDIM is on our list as a high priority. Hopefully people wont have to wait too long for a new release
Yeah, thats what I'm hoping for about a year now... switched to baking in Marmoset Toolbag 3 a long time ago, and very happy with it. I will check out the new version of Knald though when it comes out in 2020. Only joking.
@TheresaFall UDIM is on our list as a high priority. Hopefully people wont have to wait too long for a new release
Yeah, thats what I'm hoping for about a year now... switched to baking in Marmoset Toolbag 3 a long time ago, and very happy with it. I will check out the new version of Knald though when it comes out in 2020. Only joking.
That would already be in 2 years... :-)
Can't really call it a complete product when it can't hand hard-surface or mechanical objects.
Unless you physically split edges with hard normals the cage will always be solid.
I did some quick testing and you are right, Knald seems to weld the verteces of a cage if the low poly has verteces in the exact same location. However it takes 10 seconds max to create a cage to go along with it that is 'broken'.
To get a cage in Knald that is split up you will need to create it in an external program. Simply duplicate your mesh and move it along the normals/apply a push modifier, and use that as your cage.
Now in knald, import your cage along with the physically split low poly and change the ray distribution to unadjusted.
Unless you physically split edges with hard normals the cage will always be solid.
I did some quick testing and you are right, Knald seems to weld the verteces of a cage if the low poly has verteces in the exact same location. However it takes 10 seconds max to create a cage to go along with it that is 'broken'.
To get a cage in Knald that is split up you will need to create it in an external program. Simply duplicate your mesh and move it along the normals/apply a push modifier, and use that as your cage.
Now in knald, import your cage along with the physically split low poly and change the ray distribution to unadjusted.
At that point XNormal is faster and more reliable. I have never encountered a situation where it interfered with how my vertices are set up.
I'm not worried about missing features. What drives me crazy with Knald is the update rate. This is a commercial product that should actively be worked on. Updates in time spans of 2-3 years are not acceptable.
is it possible to add " position" baking to sync up with substance painter workflow?
Thanks for the suggestion! It's already on the list of things to add for a future update.
@metalliandy I saw on Unity forum (De-Lighting Tool topic) this post of Cyril-Jover and it seems that Unity Technologies Team is using PositionMap baking feature in some beta version of Knald. Could I ask when you will release this version with Position baking? Is it possible to recive beta version of Knald for current customers? Our Nano Team would like to test new baking pipeline fully based on Knald and PositionMap is part of it.
We are always actively working on Knald & try our best to release updates as frequently as possible, but we can only do so when we are confident they are ready for public consumption. As I have mentioned previously, promising specific release dates or forcing ourselves to hit arbitrary
deadlines is an easy way to potentially jeopardise stability, which
in turn, reduces the quality of our software & we are not prepared release
buggy software in order to get a faster release cycle. While this does sometimes mean
that there are longer periods of time between updates, it also means
that people can use Knald with confidence which is far more important.
For what it's worth, since February 2016 we have released 5 free updates to Knald & between the 1.1.0 and 1.2.1 releases we have probably tripled Knald's functionality overall.
@mayamak There isn't currently a public beta, but we are hoping to make one available soon. Stay tuned
From the trial I thought Knald was an awesome piece of software. But the fact you can't bake multiple objects with multi-uvs is a solid deal breaker for me. I'd certainly buy knald if this was implemented, as Substance painters baker slugs/freezes when applying anti-aliasing. But it does do multi-map bakes...:(
Andy, can you create a tutorial on how to work around the missing UDIM feature in Knald? I have no idea how I could do that in Blender. You once wrote a single-line instruction for me in private mail, but I need a more detailled instruction. If I remember correctly, you said that it was a no brainer.
@tmighty Sure, the thing to remember is that Knald can only see the UVs that are within the 1001 area (the light grey square in Blender), so whatever you want baked, and only what you want baked, needs to be in there.
1) First things first we need to head over to the UV/Image Editor window and assign an image to the mesh. We should also select the
"Normalized" checkbox in the Display section of the Properties as it makes moving the UVs around much simpler. 2) As you can see we have 4 UDIM tiles. If we want to bake Suzanne we need to move
all the UVs to the left by 1 unit. To do this we need to select all the
UVs and then hit the G key along with the direction we
want to move the UVs. In the example below I wanted to bake Suzanne so I need to hit G and then X for direction and then the distance, which is 1 unit. You only ever want to move in whole units or it will not render correctly. You then export the mesh in this state and Suzanne will be visible to Knald. 3) Next if you wanted to bake the cylinder you would follow step 2 but change the direction in which you are moving the UVs. In this case we would move then in the -Y direction by one unit, using the keys "G, Y, -1", which would give us the result below. 4) You would then save out a mesh for this state and bake as you did previously.
You don't necessarily need each HP mesh to be it's own specific mesh as it really depends on the workflow you are using.
I generally export all the HP parts as individual meshes in order to get nice MatID bakes.
Would you mind doing a video including the Blender workflow and import multiple meshes in Knald? I'm more the visual type of learner. It wouldn't need to include any fancy audio. It might be good in general, given the number of people who are seemingly also looking for a UDIM solution in Knald.
Just curious, I'm getting these privacy warnings on your website. It effects the "Docs" and "FAQ" sections of your website. It happens on multiple computers and on my IOS devices too.
@tmighty Importing multiple HP meshes is done in the usual way but you just select multiple meshes by holding the Shift key when you get the popup. You can see this in the Speed Bake tutorial I made. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHyyoZrI8Qc
In regards to the UV offset, I'm not sure making a video could explain it any better than the images I posted above. It's exactly the same process but you would just see the UVs move. Essentially you just need to make sure that the UVs you want to bake are the only ones in the light grey square. Everything else should be in the dark grey area. That being said I went ahead and made a short video which will hopefully help you out. https://www.dropbox.com/s/t3hs5uxr3kgks12/UV_Offset.mp4?dl=0
@GIS3000 Thanks for letting us know about the expired certificate. We will try to get this fixed ASAP, but you can safely ignore it for now. Users don't have the ability to send data to the docs server as they are read only so you can safely add an exception until we get it fixed.
Thanks, but I wanted to see the exporting as well. I hate exporting in Blender, something always turns out wrong for me. Seeing that in a video would be a helper because I could always look it up in case anything goes wrong.
And I wanted to note again how important it would be for me to have that in Knald. As crazy as it sounds, I have around 100 models to be processed, so you can imagine how unnerving it is to do that by hand.
Thanks, but I wanted to see the exporting as well. I hate exporting in Blender, something always turns out wrong for me. Seeing that in a video would be a helper because I could always look it up in case anything goes wrong.
Here are the export settings I use. While in Object Mode just select the low poly mesh you want to bake and go File> Export> obj.You can make a preset in the OBJ exporter by clicking the + icon next to Operator Presets dropdown after checking the options you want.
And what are your import settings? I already stumbled over a few problems (like splits). Being able to see your import settings (also to look them up later) would be nice. I'm not lazy, I just try to avoid problems. I've used these, but I'm completely unsure if I should have checked anything else.
When I do it as you do it in the video, my UVs look like this: When I use "Split", Blender splits my model into different groups. What should I do now?
Edit: Ok, when I choose "Split", my UVs look like yours in your video. But the groups... are they ok?
Another problem: When click Tab as usual to select the vertices, my entire model isn't highlighted, only the vertices of a single split group of the model are selected.
Hmmmm. It's getting chaotic here, my UVs are still overlapping / stacked on each other. Do you think it would be possible to send you my model so that you can show in a video how to deal with it? Or should I fight myself through it?
If the parts are grouped correctly you should be able to select what you want to bake together in the outliner while in object mode. There shouldn't be much need to go into edit mode at all unless you want to separate an incorrectly grouped mesh. You can also select everything by hitting the A key twice.
Replies
My transmission map doesn't look as dark as yours in your docs:
https://docs.knaldtech.com/doku.php?id=transmission_maps_knald
It would be really nice if you could tell me more about it.
Thanks for the files! There shouldn't be much need to post process the Transmission map with Photoshop in order to alter it's functionality (other than removing parts of it that you don't want to be translucent ofc) as you should be able to get the result you are looking for by adjusting the various sliders and the Attenuation dropdown options. To get something similar to the image you posted above I would suggest that you change the Attenuation to Ramp Linear and bump the Scale slider to 1000%. You can also change the Ramp slider to make a lighter or darker texture (towards 0% for a darker map and 1000% for lighter).
While there are always improvements to be made with any technique, we do consider our Transmission to produce the most realistic result. The generic Thickness maps that many solutions have implemented are fundamentally flawed and inaccurate when it comes to the transmission of light
Here is another example using the Hunter mesh (Art courtesy of Warren Boonzaaier) so you can see judge our Transmission solution directly with the alternative Thickness. In the Non-Knald thickness you can see there are major problems in multiple areas such as the eyelashes, eyeballs, the belts and the hood etc. While Thickness generated this way does a good job of generating local thickness it does not represent the true thickness of the entire mesh rendered as a coherent volume and is only suitable for singe objects like crystals or candles etc. when viewed in isolation.
Of course, the strength of the transmission is exaggerated in this image for effect, but you can see the results speak for themselves.
Hope that helps!
Knald is not rendering normal maps correctly for me. It almost looks like its trying to render in UV space.
Anyone know how to fix this?
I love Knald for sure, I bought a license, but I have no idea what it's needed for in this case.
I mean normals give instructions about the details of a model when applying the high details on a low(er) poly mesh, right?
And I guess Knald can't create normal maps from a single model, it needs both hi and lo poly, right?
I mean I just don't understand it.
Perhaps if you say that Knald indeed can bake normals and AO and bent normal from a single model, it would make more sense to me.
Can you perhaps shed some light on this?
I upload a normal map and a mesh and when I press 'Activate' on Image AO Settings knald crashes. I am doing everything as I have done many times, and have no idea why it is crashing now. I noticed there was a update for graphics driver, but still crashes after I installed it.
Can you suggest anything?
The idea is that you would bake high to low in the regular way, but using the HP generated from the photogrammetry and then input the baked textures (OS Normals, AO and Bent Normals) into the delighting tool, which give the tool the information it needs to remove the shadows etc. from the albedo.
OS Normals give directional information of the vertex normals found on the high poly mesh, AO gives general occlusion data and Bent Normals gives another more specific form of occlusion data via the bent normal, which represents the weighted average of all unoccluded directions.
As mentioned above, you still need to bake these high to low, but the delighting process isn't restricted to tiling textures or anything like that. Any mesh that can be baked could in theory be "delit" in such a way.
Does this help?
Sorry that you are having problems!
Can you let me know which version of Knald you are using, along with your GPU model and driver version please?
Also it would be helpful if you could send me the normal map and mesh you are attempting to bake. You can send it to support@knaldtech.com
If you unwrap the mesh again with more traditional, non-overlapping UVs then everything should bake perfectly.
Hope that helps!
However, could you release a beta for UDIMMs early?
@TheresaFall
UDIM is on our list as a high priority. Hopefully people wont have to wait too long for a new release
Thanks for the post!
@wilson66
No problem! We really do try our best to release our software when it's ready, rather than forcing ourselves to hit arbitrary deadlines or promising that the next release will be out by a specific date, as this causes huge disappointment to users if the deadline/date is not met. It comes down to a fundamental belief that Knald & Lys should be stable, rather than potentially jeopardising stability for a faster release cycle, which is easy to do.
Rest assured that we are always working on Knald in the background and have lots of really cool stuff in the pipeline
I hope it will be finished before I retire.
Unless you physically split edges with hard normals the cage will always be solid.
I did some quick testing and you are right, Knald seems to weld the verteces of a cage if the low poly has verteces in the exact same location.
However it takes 10 seconds max to create a cage to go along with it that is 'broken'.
To get a cage in Knald that is split up you will need to create it in an external program.
Simply duplicate your mesh and move it along the normals/apply a push modifier, and use that as your cage.
Now in knald, import your cage along with the physically split low poly and change the ray distribution to unadjusted.
This is a commercial product that should actively be worked on.
Updates in time spans of 2-3 years are not acceptable.
Switching to ShaderMap for now.
I saw on Unity forum (De-Lighting Tool topic) this post of Cyril-Jover and it seems that Unity Technologies Team is using PositionMap baking feature in some beta version of Knald. Could I ask when you will release this version with Position baking? Is it possible to recive beta version of Knald for current customers? Our Nano Team would like to test new baking pipeline fully based on Knald and PositionMap is part of it.
Thanks for the comments!
We are always actively working on Knald & try our best to release updates as frequently as possible, but we can only do so when we are confident they are ready for public consumption. As I have mentioned previously, promising specific release dates or forcing ourselves to hit arbitrary deadlines is an easy way to potentially jeopardise stability, which in turn, reduces the quality of our software & we are not prepared release buggy software in order to get a faster release cycle. While this does sometimes mean that there are longer periods of time between updates, it also means that people can use Knald with confidence which is far more important.
For what it's worth, since February 2016 we have released 5 free updates to Knald & between the 1.1.0 and 1.2.1 releases we have probably tripled Knald's functionality overall.
@mayamak There isn't currently a public beta, but we are hoping to make one available soon. Stay tuned
I have no idea how I could do that in Blender. You once wrote a single-line instruction for me in private mail, but I need a more detailled instruction. If I remember correctly, you said that it was a no brainer.
Sure, the thing to remember is that Knald can only see the UVs that are within the 1001 area (the light grey square in Blender), so whatever you want baked, and only what you want baked, needs to be in there.
1) First things first we need to head over to the UV/Image Editor window and assign an image to the mesh. We should also select the "Normalized" checkbox in the Display section of the Properties as it makes moving the UVs around much simpler.
2) As you can see we have 4 UDIM tiles. If we want to bake Suzanne we need to move all the UVs to the left by 1 unit. To do this we need to select all the UVs and then hit the G key along with the direction we want to move the UVs. In the example below I wanted to bake Suzanne so I need to hit G and then X for direction and then the distance, which is 1 unit. You only ever want to move in whole units or it will not render correctly. You then export the mesh in this state and Suzanne will be visible to Knald.
3) Next if you wanted to bake the cylinder you would follow step 2 but change the direction in which you are moving the UVs. In this case we would move then in the -Y direction by one unit, using the keys "G, Y, -1", which would give us the result below.
4) You would then save out a mesh for this state and bake as you did previously.
I hope this helps clear up the process.
It might be good in general, given the number of people who are seemingly also looking for a UDIM solution in Knald.
Just curious, I'm getting these privacy warnings on your website. It effects the "Docs" and "FAQ" sections of your website. It happens on multiple computers and on my IOS devices too.
Is this normal?
Thanks
In regards to the UV offset, I'm not sure making a video could explain it any better than the images I posted above. It's exactly the same process but you would just see the UVs move. Essentially you just need to make sure that the UVs you want to bake are the only ones in the light grey square. Everything else should be in the dark grey area.
That being said I went ahead and made a short video which will hopefully help you out.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/t3hs5uxr3kgks12/UV_Offset.mp4?dl=0
@GIS3000
Thanks for letting us know about the expired certificate. We will try to get this fixed ASAP, but you can safely ignore it for now. Users don't have the ability to send data to the docs server as they are read only so you can safely add an exception until we get it fixed.
As crazy as it sounds, I have around 100 models to be processed, so you can imagine how unnerving it is to do that by hand.
Hope that helps!
When I use "Split", Blender splits my model into different groups.
What should I do now?
Edit: Ok, when I choose "Split", my UVs look like yours in your video.
But the groups... are they ok?
Can you send me a low poly mesh so I can check here please? There are so many possibilities it's hard to say without seeing the file.
Do you think it would be possible to send you my model so that you can show in a video how to deal with it?
Or should I fight myself through it?
You can also select everything by hitting the A key twice.