Baking vs Painting

Benton

Hey guys,

So I am making a hanging wall-lamp, and I want it to have lots of detail via the normal map. So my question is, what is better? Sculpting a high-poly, doing retopo, and baking, or painting the normal map in Ndo2/Photoshop? It seems for this painting the normal map would be way faster, and I can use vectors etc., but I always see people doing bakes, not painting normals. What should I do?



I painted where most of the detail would go.

poopipe

For this..

Both

Benton

Hmm, so bake the bigger details and then draw out the little ones...hmm never thought of that

sprunghunt

for an environment asset you should rarely have to retopo the highpoly. Retopo is only important for objects that are going to be animated.

I would do this with sub-d modeling.

Benton

Yes, I don't think I am going to touch any sculpting. But there are some small ridges that could be baked?

I don't quite understand...if you make a high-poly sub-d model, you need a low poly one to bake too...so how do you do that without retopo?

WarrenM

I've been finding a nice workflow lately with advice I read here awhile back ... bake for edges and large shapes, nDO the details. Seems to work pretty well! And it's faster - for me, anyway.

megalmn2000

Depends on the shape. If it takes 10x more time sculpting it instead of just baking / painting it in seconds getting the same results, I would go with the fastest way. But yeah, nDo2 is perfect for tiny details.

Benton

Yeah I don't have Ndo2. I will just paint a heightmap.


Oh and one other thing. I don't understand why I should be doing sub-d modeling for this. If I want to keep my edges really sharp, then why would I sub-d?

ivanzu

You add edge loops on the model to get sharp edges while using sub-d pls read the polycount wiki.
http://wiki.polycount.com/SubdivisionSurfaceModeling

Benton

Yes but that would add unneeded polygons, when really I want a very sharp edge.

Hang10

I'd bake if I were going for smooth edges but in your case since you aren't I'd simply paint the detail.

Alliteratively to painting a height map, there is a free trial of nDo2

ivanzu

Benton wrote: »

Yes but that would add unneeded polygons, when really I want a very sharp edge.

It looks like you don't know the difference between a high-p model and a low poly model.It doesn't matter really how much edge loops/polys you got on you subd model as long as you have good topology and desired look.Subd model is used to bake the details on the low poly so you should be careful with low-poly model more so that you get good topology,silhouette,low poly count and good baking base.Very sharp edges don't translate onto the normal map really good.

View this video:[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_S1INdEmdI"]Subdivision Surfaces: Artifacts - YouTube[/ame]

Ace-Angel

WarrenMarshall wrote: »

I've been finding a nice workflow lately with advice I read here awhile back ... bake for edges and large shapes, nDO the details. Seems to work pretty well! And it's faster - for me, anyway.

Exactly, glad to see this is catching on.

Benton

ivanzu wrote: »

It looks like you don't know the difference between a high-p model and a low poly model.It doesn't matter really how much edge loops/polys you got on you subd model as long as you have good topology and desired look.Subd model is used to bake the details on the low poly so you should be careful with low-poly model more so that you get good topology,silhouette,low poly count and good baking base.Very sharp edges don't translate onto the normal map really good.

View this video:Subdivision Surfaces: Artifacts - YouTube

Haha thanks, I just watched that video before you posted it

I understand that the low poly cage can be subdivided up to form the high poly mesh, but the problem with that is I will need to add supporting edges on the low poly base mesh, and that is not really great when I want a low poly hard edge. Anyway, my mesh is low poly enough that I only need to create hand-painted normals, but I actually don't need to do that because it will be viewed from so far away.

McGreed

Yeah, the best combination (work and timewise imo) is to have both, the highpoly will give your model the smooth edges, and the painted will give all the details. If you are good and fast with zbrush/mudbox, you might be better/faster with details, but if you don't, try making a balance between time 'wasted' creating a highpoly, and just faking it in the texture.

Benton

McGreed wrote: »

Yeah, the best combination (work and timewise imo) is to have both, the highpoly will give your model the smooth edges, and the painted will give all the details. If you are good and fast with zbrush/mudbox, you might be better/faster with details, but if you don't, try making a balance between time 'wasted' creating a highpoly, and just faking it in the texture.

Well it turns out that the model I made did not really have anything to be baked down on. Maybe I would have saved 10 polygons, but it would be in the scene 4 times, and saving 40 polygons is kinda useless on desktop. I am going to start using Photoshop to draw a detail normal map with some designs. I will let you all know how it comes out.

Thanks all, for being awesome people with awesome answers.

Benton

Just thought I would share with you guys how it turned out:

UDK:

Bek

Use a cubemap on the gold parts and make it shiny

Benton

I could but they are pretty small in the scene, and I am quite tired of it anyway. Maybe later

reecpj

Off topic, but I like the light glow! how did you do that?

JamesWild

Looks like a flat colour with a value >1.0 (probably 2/3ish) running into the emissive channel.

The emissive channel is added to the surface colour without any consideration for lighting, and any pixel with a brightness >1.0 will begin to bloom.

WarrenM

Ace-Angel wrote: »

Exactly, glad to see this is catching on.

As an added bonus, it allows for faster iteration times since I'm just manipulating layers in Photoshop and not baking the maps over and over again whenever I want to move a screw head.

sprunghunt

WarrenMarshall wrote: »

As an added bonus, it allows for faster iteration times since I'm just manipulating layers in Photoshop and not baking the maps over and over again whenever I want to move a screw head.

In a situation like this I would reccomend evaluating the high-poly model before you bake and making changes to the highpoly. Baking to the lowpoly should just be a final step. I only re-bake if I've changed the lowpoly in some way.

However using NDo is sometimes useful as baked in detail doesn't always show up the way you want it to due to texture resolution.