xNormals's cage

zombie420

It seems that often when I try to use xNormal, the cage isn't large enough to grab all of the high poly mesh. I love it's ease of use and time efficiency but I'm going crazy losing some of my detail to a cage that's too small. Is there a way to control the cage size or does it boil down to "make your meshes more similar!"?

WarrenM

As with all things xNormal, the answer is bizarre. I believe on the "3D Viewer" tab there's a button at the bottom called "Launch Viewer". Click that. When it comes up, you'll be able to tick the "Edit Cage" button and then there will be a slider that will let you tweak the cage extrusion. When you're happy with it, hit "Save Meshes" and say YES when it asks if you want to replace your meshes with the saved ones.

Then happily bake!

Ace-Angel

If you're using Max, you can edit the Cage in Max and export via SBM with it, and just have to select "Cage" for the Low Poly.

OR, you export the cage as a OBJ and in the LP section, define if you want a custom cage.

While editing in the Viewer isn't a bad thing, it's it pretty slow and vexing, as you can only select vertices clicking from Left to Right and you cannot Stack select (EI: Press Ctrl to add vertices you wish to extrude or break).

Also, the edit Cage function (once in the viewer) is hidden at the top of the screen.

Beelzeboss

Do you cage in Zbrush using the inflate and move brush takes all the work out of it

have both High and low poly as subtools

Duplicate the lowpoly and colourize the new tool with a bright colour this will be your cage

Use the move and inflate brushes until all you see is that colour.

It gives you a lot of control over the cage and cuts the time right down

WarrenM

To be clear, I only use the xNormal viewer for simple cage extrusions. Anything else, like editing verts, DEFINITELY use something else.