Modo 501 - Floating geometry and AO?

Norron

Another Modo question for you experts. I'm baking some AO using floating geometry and I can't figure out how to keep the floaters from casting shadows in the bake.

Is there a "casts shadows" toggle somewhere like in Maya or will I just have to paint them out?

EarthQuake

There is likely an option in either the object properties, or the material properties that you can use to turn off shadow casting, but honestly, I wouldn't really recommend normal/ao bakes in modo.

Norron

Really? Do you normally bake in Max or something else?

Thanks for the answer.

Frankie

If I recall correctly you need to make a new shader that the material uses and then turn it off from the shader properties. Really annoying. If your really wanted you could just add them to another layer and turn the layer off. Also as far as I know Modo normal map bake isn't synced up with the viewport preview so you can't tell if you got a good bake or not!

passerby

just bake it in xnormal, by defualt the backfaces wont occlude geo in xnormal

Norron

Frankie wrote: »

If I recall correctly you need to make a new shader that the material uses and then turn it off from the shader properties. Really annoying. If your really wanted you could just add them to another layer and turn the layer off. Also as far as I know Modo normal map bake isn't synced up with the viewport preview so you can't tell if you got a good bake or not!

Thanks for the help, I just figured that out by fiddling with things. I'm still not sure how to apply said shader to only certain geometry like my floaters. But are you saying if I turn off the background layer the floaters will still render in the AO bake but won't cast shadows?

So what is the issue with Modo's AO baking? It seems reasonably accurate and a lot faster than Mental Ray or XNormal bakes. I understand why not to do normals though, especially with Modo's annoying smoothing groups.

Frankie

No sorry, I got it wrong, that would just totally get rid of the floaters

I think to get the shader effecting the material you want, add a new shader and drag it into the material group then drag that material group above the existing shader.

Not sure if you can turn off back facing polys from being included in the AO cals with it though, which is what I think you want...

Norron

Wait, so I need to select said floating geometry then move the new shader to the top of the heap? I still don't really understand Modo's shader tree. Does the shader that's on the top of the list affects all geometry?

This is crazy man, why can't I just select individual meshes and apply a different shader like every other program.

Frankie

You need to give the floating geo a new material if you want to give it a new shader too.....

Yeah confuses me too!

I think do what passerby said and use xnormal as I just tested and I couldn't turn off the backfacing AO in modo, so even shadow casting turned off wouldnt help.

Norron

I guess if Modo doesn't want to help me then I'll just bake in a program I understand better. Thanks guys.

EarthQuake

Generally I bake in Max or Maya, depending on project/client requirements. If I'm doing maya, I bake AO in XN, if Max, ao in Max with light tracer or whatever.

I do all my high/low/uv work in modo, but all setup, hard edges/SGs, and bakes in Max or Maya(+xn). Maya's AO workflow is totally broken as of 2008 which is what i've got here, and Maya bakes are so astoundinly slow that i'm sure it would take 4 days to render AO in it even if it worked properly, so gotta go with XN there.

In general its best to do all your baking in one app, as you dont waste time setting up your bage/cage in multiple apps, and each app may average normals a little different, which could result in some details tracing onto different areas of the uvs, and not lining up. With my Maya/XN workflow i have to manually fix some stuff not matching up sometimes, Max is the most reliable.

Additionally, Modo simply does not have a mature baking workflow last time i checked, it was more of a 1-click sort of thing with no real options.

Norron

I've gotcha. My normal workflow is Maya modeling with XNormal baking but I've been trying out Modo and wanted to work with it's workflow the whole way. The exporting issues, crappy smoothing groups, and annoying cage-less baking made it a tad obnoxious though.

Thanks for the help.

passerby

if your set on doing it in modo you bake twice once with floaters once with out and combine the 2 maps in PS, but that seems like a lot of needless work to me.

im a failry new modo user but i would have never even considered baking in it, seems to make more sense to just fire up xnormal or max.