Cage baking DISTANCE

beefaroni

So I think I've read through most of the baking threads on here and am really close to getting a nice bake out of my model; however, I'm having 1 last problem with my cage.

For the Ethernet port and USB port, only the shallow part of it bakes. It works fine when just using raycasting; however, I need to use a cage on this model. Any ideas why it isn't baking out the rest of the depth?



and a image of how the model is looking as a whole right now @7200 tris..

Album with wireframes if anyone is interested..
http://imgur.com/a/RcfxQ

Bartalon

The only thing that comes to mind without seeing the file is if those ports on the high poly are floating geo and they're intersecting with the rest of the back plate.

beefaroni

Here is the high poly.

Farfarer

I think generally the ray will only be cast from the cage backwards at twice the distance of the cage offset at that point.

There might be options for controlling that, but a quick fix would be to extend the distance your cage projects outwards from your low poly mesh.

beefaroni

Ooh very interesting. I'll test this out when I get home in a few hours.

Thank you

Steppenwolf

You can taper in the ports a bit in your hipoly if you want to create the illusion of depth in the normal map. Right now the walls are perpendicular to your cage so the rays can't hit the side walls and create normal map information. The ports could be forever deep and still look that flat.

beefaroni

Steppenwolf wrote: »

You can taper in the ports a bit in your hipoly if you want to create the illusion of depth in the normal map. Right now the walls are perpendicular to your cage so the rays can't hit the side walls and create normal map information. The ports could be forever deep and still look that flat.

Oh yea great call!! Should have thought of that.

Thank you everyone. Re-doing a few other parts of the model right now with some new baking tips I've picked up.

I feel like I should make a big process wip on Pimping in Previews. Maybe not..

EarthQuake

Also you can simply make the indents less deep, if you aren't matching it in the lowpoly shape there isn't much need to have it realistically deep.

beefaroni

EarthQuake wrote: »

Also you can simply make the indents less deep, if you aren't matching it in the lowpoly shape there isn't much need to have it realistically deep.

I actually went back last night and made a lot of the parts more shallow. This is definitely a learning process but thank you :thumbup:

I think when I actually get into my enviornment I'll use nDo for a lot of the details but I thought practicing a proper high poly to low poly workflow without was important.

beefaroni

Thank you everyone. Learned that next step in baking from this model. Here are some images if anyone is curious..