Modo201 painting and baking!
polycounter lvl 18
I think this should be interesting for everybody.
Luxology released 3 videos for modo 201 about the painting and baking of bump/color maps. You can even re-UV map your model and rebake the color map to match the new UV.
James and I are using the beta and i'm pretty much going over all the model and world textures and painting in new normal and spec maps. I'm just projecting world textures into a 1mx1m planar so i can paint the normal and spec maps there. Since you can apply the color map as a bumpmap (later bake it as a normalmap) you get the same starting point for a texture that you'd get from running it through the NVidia normalmap PS plugin, with the difference that it does a better job at it.
Coolest thing is that it works like PS. You can blend (overlay, softlight, multiply, transparency, alpha channels... anything) in whatever maps you have like PS layers and the baking (you can bake any visible layers as anything: normal/spec/colo/height -maps etc) works like flatten in PS. It bakes all visible layers into 1 file.
You dont have to overlay your baked normalmap with the one you painted in PS with additional detail and live with the information loss you suffer in PS from the overlay, you just bake both normal maps into one in modo
The original thread - http://forums.luxology.com/discussion/topic.aspx?id=5842
and the videos
http://content.luxology.com/modo/201/video/RealTimeOptions.mov
http://content.luxology.com/modo/201/video/DetailPaint-Bake01.mov
http://content.luxology.com/modo/201/video/DetailPaint-Bake02.mov
Luxology released 3 videos for modo 201 about the painting and baking of bump/color maps. You can even re-UV map your model and rebake the color map to match the new UV.
James and I are using the beta and i'm pretty much going over all the model and world textures and painting in new normal and spec maps. I'm just projecting world textures into a 1mx1m planar so i can paint the normal and spec maps there. Since you can apply the color map as a bumpmap (later bake it as a normalmap) you get the same starting point for a texture that you'd get from running it through the NVidia normalmap PS plugin, with the difference that it does a better job at it.
Coolest thing is that it works like PS. You can blend (overlay, softlight, multiply, transparency, alpha channels... anything) in whatever maps you have like PS layers and the baking (you can bake any visible layers as anything: normal/spec/colo/height -maps etc) works like flatten in PS. It bakes all visible layers into 1 file.
You dont have to overlay your baked normalmap with the one you painted in PS with additional detail and live with the information loss you suffer in PS from the overlay, you just bake both normal maps into one in modo
The original thread - http://forums.luxology.com/discussion/topic.aspx?id=5842
and the videos
http://content.luxology.com/modo/201/video/RealTimeOptions.mov
http://content.luxology.com/modo/201/video/DetailPaint-Bake01.mov
http://content.luxology.com/modo/201/video/DetailPaint-Bake02.mov
Replies
I'd guess you can tile the new paint job too, by using a cylinder instead of a plane (or a torus if you're adventurous!).
Can you paint other channels too? Like specular color, cube-reflection mask, opacity, emissive, etc.?
Modo also has an Fprime (LW plugin) like realtimish render window, so you can paint all you stuff in a 3d viewport and the 3d renderer will update everything on the fly... for hipoly stuff mainly.
And you can undock any viewport, so you can have the render window on the second monitor, or whatever setup you like best.
Do you know if it support multiple UVs? Like diffuse/bump uses a tiled set, while opacity uses a 0-1 set?
I put in a request to be able to assign a different UV map to any of the images/layers. I'll post what i hear, maybe there's an easy way and i cant see the tree in the forest.
Since most next gen engines, us included, use 2 UV maps for the reasons you just said, i'd really want that too
I'd love to see a layer mask using a different UV set than the layer itself. Does it let you paint masks?
Masks... The normal workflow would be to start a new image which is always transparent and then just paint in the bits you want there. If you paint with a texture (assigning a texture to a brush), lets say a photo, it will automatically work like a layer mask, you will reveal parts of the photo source as you paint.
You can assign painted layers as layer masks like in PS or set layers to 'transparency' which affects other layers... but to what extent i dunno yet.
this looks really sweet.. How is the interactivity between say photoshop and modo? Can you paint a texture in modo, open it in PS and paint some more than let it autoupdate in modo and keep workin from there etc?
Painting supports tablets and pressure, and brushes can be set to change size and opacity with the pressure ala PS.
Haven't really done anything with PSDs in modo yet, but it supports (load/save) layered PSDs, that's all i know right now.
Oh, and it comes with the imagesynth PS plugin to make tiling textures, haven't had time to give it a real go yet tho.
http://content.luxology.com/modo/201/video/NormalBliss.mov
http://content.luxology.com/modo/201/video/NormalBliss02.mov
That said, it took bloody ages to render out the cellular procedural to a 512x512 normal-map.
Also is there a way to lock down the "yaw" on the perspective view when rotating the view? The horizon line keeps going on a slant, which makes me feel mildly seasick
The Difference of baking vs. running the image through the PS filter is that the PS filter doesn't support gradients, it merely does bevels around any edge it can find ie, paint a shaded sphere in PS and run it through the filter and all the normalmap you get is a flat cylinder.
Bake the same in modo, and you'll actually get the shaded round sphere as a normalmap. So, unlike PS it actually generates a proper normalmap, as you would get from baking geometry (like a Zbrush detailed texture) into a planar.
I bake all my painted normalmaps in 1024 in modo and i'd swear it takes less time than it took in that video for the 512, and i have some crazy stuff going on. I usually have 2-3 bumpmaps, some painted, some are just the colormap set as bumpmap to capture the base roughness of the photo sources etc, and then bake them all out into 1 normalmap.
I think the videos, althought aimed to game devs still show techniques i'd rather use for texturing hipoly models, while for games you'd rather like to see how you can paint beautifully deep and correct normalmaps for your existing textures and skins in 1/5 of the time it would take to model a brick or weathered/cracked concrete wall in ZBrush to get the proper deepness, since the PS plugin does nothing for you there.
You can paint all that stuff directly in OpenGL in modo and see the results you'd have ingame and it's pretty much like using projection master in Zbrush, with the difference that you don't lose detail when you export* your 3 Million polygons mesh out of ZBrush to be slowly and painfully baked.
It works equally good for tiling world textures or skins of any kind.
(*of course, you can try to bake the textures in Zbrush and overlay the resulting normalmap with the initial normalmap you get from the PS filter which as we all know will weaken the colors and bumpiness of all the overlayed normalmaps).
Also is there a way to lock down the "yaw" on the perspective view when rotating the view? The horizon line keeps going on a slant, which makes me feel mildly seasick
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There is a way! not that I can remeber where the setting is haha. Although if you have modo you should give being able to rotate in three axis a go, I think its great! I hate trying to view stuff and only being able to rotate in two axis now.
I can't wait for modo2! It sounds awesome
I want it!
Seems like Modo has the fine bump detail end of it covered, but I can't see if it has the toolset to completely replace a dedicated displacement-painter like ZB.
Thanks again for sharing all the info.
I think the existing modeling tools combined with displacement/bump painting and baking will still make a decent combo for getting normal map details for some objects right within modo. Edge weights will now be much more useful since you can now render them and bake the subdivided results down to the low rez uv map. I can easily see myself doing props and hard surfaces all in Modo this way, but I'll probably still be using ZB for more complex, organic stuff.
I just gave the first 3 videos a second look and noticed something.
During the second one (detail paint 01), when the guy starts painting, he first paints diffuse info (scaley leather bag style) that he picks from a texture he loads. Later on he turns on the bump, mich makes the material much more believable.
BUT, when he does that he mentions that the bump layer in an instanced copy of the diffuse layer. He then goes on painting that rocky texture, same effect.
Which means that the bump effect shown on that videi is just a greyscaled version of the diffuse - hence not a real material made out of multiple maps. What is the point?
Hence my question to experienced Modo201 users : is it possible to use an actual material (made out of real separated maps : diffuse, spec, bump) as a paintbrush? Or are you limited to instanced copy of one base texture?
Thanks!
If you use 'real' maps, which you can, you cant paint them all at the same time.
However, painting with a texture is like painting a layer mask (alpha map that reveals the texture) in PS so... theoretically you can paint a grayscale, set it to alpha and group the other images (color/bump etc maps) to it.
Downside would be that you wouldn't be able to resize the size the texture is projected with since its just a different map, not part of the brush anymore.
Likewise, if you like playing McGyver, painting with a texture in modo will always paint 100% opaque, the actual transparency is stored in the alpha channel of the texture (unless you use file formats that dont support alpha channels), or unless you fill the empty texture with a solid color before beginning to paint.
So... you could when done go to PS and just replace the color, bump or specmap for a 'real one'. If you dont change the alpha channel the brush stroke and transparency would look the same.
*I take no responsability for any injuries suffered from doing any of this, the info is based on my experience, and i dunno everything (yet)... and cant test it right now.