Maya Transfer Map diffculties (or, do I really need to break this mesh up?)
Hello everyone. I've run into some technique issues that I need some help resolving and appreciate any advice.
Basically, it comes down to grabbing the Normals and AO from my high poly mesh and giving them to my low poly mesh (typically Maya Transfer Maps has done this for me). However, I'm having difficulty with this current mesh due to its complexity and how close pieces are to each other (likely throwing off the Transfer Map envelope).
Models (High<->Low):
Resulted Normals:
Resulted AO:
As you can tell from the maps, the degradation is pretty bad (you can tell without needing to see it rendered on the geo). My goal with the AO was to get all the nice detail from the high geometry to utilize in my Diffuse map, though perhaps given the complexity of the piece that may not be possible. I suppose I could forget about that and just get whatever AO from within Unreal/Marmoset via the second UV set.
Starting to ramble. I suppose I just want to know if the best way to get those maps is to just Separate these meshes into smaller pieces and bake them out individually or if there's something else I'm overlooking. And if there's a way to get all the high detail AO, or if I have to forgo some of it.
Thanks as always.
Basically, it comes down to grabbing the Normals and AO from my high poly mesh and giving them to my low poly mesh (typically Maya Transfer Maps has done this for me). However, I'm having difficulty with this current mesh due to its complexity and how close pieces are to each other (likely throwing off the Transfer Map envelope).
Models (High<->Low):
Resulted Normals:
Resulted AO:
As you can tell from the maps, the degradation is pretty bad (you can tell without needing to see it rendered on the geo). My goal with the AO was to get all the nice detail from the high geometry to utilize in my Diffuse map, though perhaps given the complexity of the piece that may not be possible. I suppose I could forget about that and just get whatever AO from within Unreal/Marmoset via the second UV set.
Starting to ramble. I suppose I just want to know if the best way to get those maps is to just Separate these meshes into smaller pieces and bake them out individually or if there's something else I'm overlooking. And if there's a way to get all the high detail AO, or if I have to forgo some of it.
Thanks as always.
Replies
Obviously the thing to take away from this is to better organize the meshes when building them so that they are easily exploded for this scenario.
Very much this. In this case, you have many smaller modular pieces that are easily grouped.
that way you can go between normal, and exploded, but just toggeling between frames 1 and 2.
i generally, have the maya outliner opened all the time, and try to make it look pretty in there too, so renaming things to logical names (not pcube21) and grouping things as i got, really helps out later.
EDIT: Here's a collage of info about the current setup (areas of random darkness/shade on those flat cylindrical areas, and my transfer map settings for AO/MR):
I would suggest using xNormal for AO, results are typically better and done in half the time.
One trick I use is to do two AO maps: one high>low in exploded form, and one low>low in assembled form. I typically do the low>low at a lower quality for speed, and selectively mix that into the final map. This gives you all the detailing from the high poly, while letting you choose which proximity-based shading to use with less hassle.
But I'm curious what you are meaning by "unapplied transforms" and what would I look for to indicate that such a thing is occurring.
Thanks again!
It was from a thread a few months back, i've only seen the issue once. In this case, the model was moved/rotated/scaled arbitrarily in the scene and gave strange artifacts in the ao. Doing Freeze Transforms on it fixed the issue.
What to look for? In the attribute editor or channel box, the numbers you see in trans/rot/scale represent how the shape has been transformed from it's original position.
Still going to look at XNormal anyway
I was wondering then if it is possible to just export and use my "exploded" versions from Maya in XNormal? Or is this a case where I'll need to create a custom cage? If so, are there any good posts/tutorials handy discussing the creation/usage of custom cages in Xnormal? (I wish there was a way to search within big threads like the main Xnormal thread)
Thanks again!
Obviously you can use the exploded versions for the mesh in xNormal for the normal map.
To make a cage in maya I suggest:
Same deal with the keyframe-explode method, just export everything all blowed up and go!
Have you solved the wonkyness in the AO yet? I'm curious about this.
Here is the last AO map I managed to get out of Maya transfer maps. I made sure to ensure there were no unapplied/unfrozen transformations beforehand. It looks better than the original attempts, but still has issues (maybe I didn't make my envelope far out enough on some parts).
So yeah, I'm so sold on Xnormal!
correct me if Im wrong but isnt Turtle included in Maya 2013?