Faogen 3 GPU AO baking

beefaroni

Hi everyone. My boss (or ex-boss since I finished my internship, but that sounds weird) passed along a new piece of software currently in development.

The software can bake AO to vertex colors on high poly meshes using the GPU. Then, each piece can be baked individualy to its corresponding part. I have about 6 parts on my model currently so have the intersecting AO baked to the vertex colors was a huge timesaver (present/past tense writing i just woke up my bad).

Anyways, Faogen combined with normal map to AO I believe will give GREAT results in a fraction of the time that it usually takes. Here is a video I did.

VIDEO (THE IMPORTANT PART!!)
[ame]www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX4B7VrazI8[/ame]

Edit: If anyone has any critiques on the video please let me know. I haven't made many and am trying to get better.

leleuxart

You mentioned how it can bake directly to the low poly texture, have you used that yet? Does that work properly, or do you get better results doing HP vertex colors, then baking in XNormal?

beefaroni

You can import a low poly mesh, and bake the AO to that texture map. So it won't actually use the high-poly at all so there won't be a ton of detail. Could be useful for hand-painted stuff that doesn't use a high poly? Maybe like for gradient maps as well?

For any complex mesh, definitely the vertex colors to high poly > low poly texture is the best method.

Matt Fagan

Faogen has been around since 2007 if I recall which is when I had the first chance to use. It was the best AO baker I used at the time. Though when Topogun came to popularity. I had to use that. Just because the quality and look of AO bakes were better suited for textures than that of xnormal or anything else.

Cool to see it's still around though and very surprised the drop of their pricing now! wow

beefaroni

I had never heard of it previously, but it looks like it was out of development from 2010-2014. And yea $35 is a great price .