baking normal maps on a mac?

Ged

I may be working primarly on apple macs soon, I was wondering what people do for texture baking on a mac as xnormal isnt available? I would be working with C4D and photoshop most of the time but C4D doesnt have a great baking toolset.

renderhjs

Mac != 3D game development environment

Its always tricky on the mac to get the right tools that are more home at the windows platform. I am not sure for example if the Turtle for Maya is available for the mac.
You could look into Modo as it has some basic functionality for baking and it is on booth win and mac available (the mac builds are very exemplary of how 3d mac apps should be).
Also Cinema is more home in the TV ad advertisement area not such much in games either.

If you have to use with a Mac I guess Modo is your best toolkit if you are into games and not movies. Some modo tutorial on how to bake:
http://library.creativecow.net/articles/mylenium/modo_bake.php

Maybe consider running a virtual Machine for just in case situation to still be able to use stuff like xNormal.

Ged

Well I would stay on a pc and use 3dsmax but as far as I can tell a Mac is essential kit for iphone games development at the company Im moving to.

Hmm I never thought of modo, didnt realise its on mac. Ive been using Cinema4D and 3ds max at different times for the last 3 years now so I would be able to get productive immediately at the new job which they would really really appreciate.

I probably wont need to bake normals much anyway as it is just iphone 3D but could also be ipad later.

renderhjs

We are working here also on iPhone games but just the main developer is using a mac next to his PC.
I am creating assets and editor tools with unity on the PC side, and because we rely on FBX as well as PSD for the content of most content there is no problem exchanging assets and game content.

Even our main developer uses a virtual machine to use MSVisual C++ because its the better coding environment as opposed to mac alternatives for him. So even here its super mixed and hybrid. I don't like windows but I like the tools that are only available for the platform.

I wish apple wouldn't bitch that much around so that more bridging tools could be used on their platform as well.

Neox

renderhjs wrote: »

Also Cinema is more home in the TV ad advertisement area not such much in games either.

crytek is using cinema for baking purposes, so i guess its doable on the mac too

r_fletch_r

Out of interest whats wrong with Maya? it runs native on OSX

ShaDoW

I was in the same situation for a while, so I opted for Blender on the Mac. Worked pretty good for basic game modeling, baking, etc...

If you are using Unity for iPhone development, Unity reads the .blend format almost perfectly as well, allowing you to hit save and seeing your models update on the fly. On the other hand, it might take you some time to learn the sometimes unforgiving interface.

Modo is a beautiful choice on the Mac too!

Ged

thanks for the suggestions, well I may just use cinema 4d as theres no learning curve for me and its much cheaper but I may have a look into modo or maya later if I start to need a more powerful toolset. I wont be using unity so blender would just provide more of a learning curve than necessary. I was really just wondering if people out there have made some sort of baking application for mac like xnormal or something similar? Ill most likely use collada as a file format anyone know if cinema 4d exports good collada files?

Rick Stirling

On the mac I bake in zbrush and Silo

Ged

Rick Stirling wrote: »

On the mac I bake in zbrush and Silo

ah yeah that would be useful not sure if we will afford zbrush as we are doing such lowpoly stuff, its a bit of a wierd way to bake but the results arent too bad from zbrush are they? thanks Rick

r_fletch_r

Ged wrote: »

ah yeah that would be useful not sure if we will afford zbrush as we are doing such lowpoly stuff, its a bit of a wierd way to bake but the results arent too bad from zbrush are they? thanks Rick

I think he means he uses both Silo and Zbrush for normal map baking. Silos got a really nice baking function. Quick and easy(as is everything in silo)

jogshy

Virtualisation ftw! Btw... can Parallels run OpenGL apps using GLSL shaders?

James Edwards

Topogun has a mac version now - I believe you can also bake in it.

Ged

oh yeah and 3dcoat has some baking doesnt it?

SHEPEIRO

ive usd maya 2011 on my mac, and its not too bad

James Edwards

Yeah but 3dc's AO baking isn't very good. Using maya 2011 for osx myself. Really like this release so far.

Ged

cool well it looks like my software is going to be cinema4d and photoshop for now, might get topogun or 3dc but they arent really necessary. Then later possibly learn maya or modo in my spare time just so that I can move onto a more robust toolset on the mac. For now cinema will be more than enough. Pity max isnt on mac or Id definitely use that.

renderhjs

maybe get in contact with commander_keen:
http://boards.polycount.net/showpost.php?p=1132790&postcount=197
he did some BSP/lightmapping in unity - might not in all cases but for levels like his examples is surely looks great.

Ged

thanks renderhjs if I was using unity engine Id be on that like a squirrel on nuts but Im using an engine made in house

Andreas

Neox wrote: »

crytek is using cinema for baking purposes, so i guess its doable on the mac too

Are they just using it to bake or for other parts of production? Weird to hear C4D being used at all in the industry never mind by Crytek...

Ged

I think people in film and game industry often use cinema4d for bodypaint and its painting toolset but I dont think most people use it for modelling and animating unless theyre at a small studio or working on macs

Ged

So its been a while and Ive hit this issue yet again. Maybe things have changed in the last 2 years. Im still on cinema4d V11 at work as we are still working on macs so...
which do people recommend for normal map baking on a mac?

Mudbox?
Blender?
3dcoat?
Modo?
Topogun?

are there any standalone apps like xnormal on the mac app store or something genius that I have somehow missed.

EarthQuake

I do all my high/low/uv modeling in Modo, but I wouldn't recommend baking normals in it for any reason. Maya will be much better.

Though I always bake AO in Xnormal when baking normals in Maya, at least in the last version of Maya I used you can't actually bake.... ao.... from a high poly mesh.... to a low poly mesh. Not like anyone would ever want to do that anyway. So you'll have to figure out something to bake AO in.

Ged

Yeah we only have one copy of maya at my workplace and not being able to do all the bakes would suck a little. Topogun is relatively cheap I might go for that, Im just concerned about the workflow and wondered if anyone had baking experience in topogun? whats it like etc?

Farfarer

xNormal 4 will hopefully be in beta by the end of the year with a Mac build. So you might just have to find a stop-gap to tide you over until then?

Ged

Talon wrote: »

xNormal 4 will hopefully be in beta by the end of the year with a Mac build. So you might just have to find a stop-gap to tide you over until then?

yeah thats the idea!

passerby

maya's tranfer maps is prolly the best solution for map bakeing under osx, followed by blender, which has OK AO and normalmap bakeing, but lacks control over the process.

Ged

passerby wrote: »

maya's tranfer maps is prolly the best solution for map bakeing under osx, followed by blender, which has OK AO and normalmap bakeing, but lacks control over the process.

so no one recommends topogun baking? it seems excessive to buy maya just to bake textures. topogun baking looks good with lots of fine tuning options http://vimeo.com/7427591

EarthQuake

Generally speaking, What Max, Maya and Xnormal(to a lesser extend, well its more annoying in XN is all) have over these random apps like modo, topogun, zbrush, blender, etc is:

Advanced cage setup. If you can't do a fully averaged cage for a mesh that has hard edges, its useless for baking. I don't think Blender can. Modo's vertex normal support is very weird and thier baking options are very minimal. Xnormal by default with the simple ray distance can't, you have to export a cage or set up a cage in the 3d viewer.

Not sure about topogun, haven't used it.

passerby

@ged, cant confirm since i dont onw topogun nor have i used it, but if the AO looks good from it, and if it can bake with a cage, should be fine.

Ged

there seems to be a cage mesh input button:
http://www.topogun.com/Docs/docs/UserGuide.Bake.htm


I will just have to try the demo

Ged

aww crap the topogun 2 demo is limited to 256x256 maps so its a little hard to test on my object as its got quite complicated uvs . it seems to perform well on simple objects though!

Caterpillar

Still no good solution to this? 
Xnormals was one of my fav pc applications just because of how lightweight and to the point it was. produced great maps, and I do believe accepted cages.

The only apps I have on mac that I use for bakes was the substance package, both painter and designer can make pretty great bakes, and allow for editing of them. Unfortunately I'm here because substance is not cooperating with my mac, and I need to bake normals ASAP. 

FrankPolygon

Marmoset Toolbag 3 can bake and is available for Mac OS https://marmoset.co/toolbag/

Shrike

Marmoset is available for Mac OS as Frank wrote, I use that also, works well in conjunction
Edit: Damn, got necro'd

We/I use cinema in our studio, forget baking in it, unless thats a surface color bake or a ao bake low to low, thats not going to happen

There is one cruxial thing you need to be able to fix to work in C4D for games, that is using an external UV editor like 3D coat, and having your smoothing splits split based on UV splits (we made a script for that, otherwise this is hell) - Otherwise C4D works very well for games, with R20 you have a crazy advantage with the volume builder for easy highpolys that nobody else really has atm. 

Check out this thread:
https://polycount.com/discussion/212367/cinema-4d-for-game-art-game-development-resources#latest