What (in your experience) gives better bakes?

Zepic

What, from your experience, gives a better tiling bake?
For example, say I'm sculpting a tiling texture in ZBrush. Would using the tools inside ZBrush ( Normal matcaps, displacement maps etc) or baking onto a flat plane in XNormal give a better bake?

cryrid

On a planar mesh I don't think it should matter too much either way. For a standard 3d object however, I wouldn't use zbrush for baking the normal map.

Fwap

If you made a tiling texture in 2.5D it might make sense just to render out matcaps but it can be a little problematic. Everything else Xnormal IMO

Olli.

I always bake everything in 3ds max (Except if I just want a quick bake from zbrush and dont want to go through the hassel of exporting)

Ace-Angel

You need a synched baker to your renderer as well, so all that talk of 'what is better for me' is all for naught if nothing uses the same math as the other.

Many peeps are moving to XNormal for baking since it's faster and the math for the Normals is open, unlike some other software. But again, since nothing is synched, you might as well go with something that doesn't take ages to render a NM at 2x AA.

cptSwing

^ Hmm, normal maps take next to no time with xnormal at 4x (at least on my end)?

Ace-Angel

Yep, just re-read my sentence, oops, silly me.

I meant to say that unless you have programmers who know their stuff and what they're doing with Normals and the engine, why not go with XN? I agree, it's super fast, especially when compared to (in my case) Max, which takes ages for even a basic bake, unless you use 2009, which has the best baking times, but still slower then XN.

Zepic

Thanks for all the info guys.
I have another question.
Could you guys point me to a tutorial or give me advice on how I would make a tiling texture that I'd bake out using XNormal? The problem I have is with edges, how would you get (say I'm making a tiling brick wall) the bricks on the edges to tile correctly. Is there some kind of trick that someone uses to do such a thing.
I've done it with the flat plane but the edges don't line up exactly.
I was also thinking about making geo bricks, but how on earth do you make the edges tile? Would I have to just use photoshop and paint out the seams?

cryrid

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1101338#post1101338

http://wiki.polycount.com/EnvironmentSculpting?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryEnvironment%5Cb%29

cptSwing

this might help: http://eat3d.com/free/zbrush_tile

AceAngel: Yeah no problem, was a little surprised 'cause I couldn't imagine anything baking much faster than xnormal ;-)
I've used Max to bake normal maps maybe 2 times, then never again. So slow, so clunky.

Zepic

Thanks a ton guys, this really helps.
One more question.
When you instance an object in Max; can you export out those instances into the hipoly obj file, or do you have to convert all of the instances to an editable poly before exporting?
I'm afraid Max might crash if I have a bunch of ZBrushed sculpts in Max 09 and then convert the instances.
FYI, I'm trying to do the Kevin Johnstone Brick Grid tut and I want to bake my hi to low in XNormal.

cptSwing

Give it a try - usually it'd export your instances fine.

Shogun3d

Zepic wrote: »

Thanks a ton guys, this really helps.
One more question.
When you instance an object in Max; can you export out those instances into the hipoly obj file, or do you have to convert all of the instances to an editable poly before exporting?
I'm afraid Max might crash if I have a bunch of ZBrushed sculpts in Max 09 and then convert the instances.
FYI, I'm trying to do the Kevin Johnstone Brick Grid tut and I want to bake my hi to low in XNormal.

Instancing is fine, it's when you start attaching or grouping objects where things get tricky, so make sure organize and plan this ahead of time.

McGreed

Another thing about using xNormal, is that you can work with something else while its rendering. Its cheaper in resources then running two 3ds max

cptSwing

Protip: When rendering AO at ridiculous sizes set xNormal's "affinity" to not use all cores in the Task manager. Makes working while baking a lot more fun

Deadly Nightshade

My favorite baking software has always been xNormal and believe it or not: Autodesk Mudbox. Even for hard-surface models, I find the Mudbox tool not just good and accurate, but it is also very fast. And xNormal comes with so many good settings you should have that piece of software in your art toolbox imo.

Zepic

Hey Guys, thanks for the wealth of info.
One more question...
How do I export out multiple instances to XNormal.
For example, I'm trying to export out around 20 instanced sculpted bricks.
I want to bake these sculpted bricks to a flat low poly plane in XNormal.
Is there some kind of trick to exporting out multiple instances as one object; or do I have to attache the instances to one another and then export?

Zepic

Oops, never mind. Just realized I could do an export selected as one .obj file. :poly142:

Zepic

Hey Guys,
Would you happen to know why my normal map is coming out green?
I googled it and from what I was reading, it said my flat plane was either too close or too far from my hi-poly. Anyway, I've been moving my low flat plane poly above, below and directly in the middle of my hi-poly and it's still coming out green. Any ideas?

cryrid

Is your baker set to use tangent space?

Zepic

I see an option in the "High Definition Meshes" tab that says, "Base texture is a tangent-space normal map" When I check that option it doesn't seem to change anything with the rendered image. Is that the one you're talking about?
I seemed to have fixed it by rotating the mesh in 3DS-Max. BUT, I'm not exactly sure if that's what fixed it. I was just kinda figeting with things back and forth and it seemed to kinda fix itself. (I always get bothered when things work out that way).

cryrid

Not that option. You'll want to open Baking Options: Normal Map (...)

Zepic

cryrid wrote: »

Not that option. You'll want to open Baking Options: Normal Map (...)

Yep, it's checked.

Zepic

When using XNormal to bake down to a flat plane; what is the best distance to keep the flat plane from the hi-poly geo. On top? Mid level? Or, below? (for a sculpted brick wall)

Edit: I don't really notice any difference unless it's extremely far from the hi-poly geo. Does it really matter? I'm not sure how it's calculating.

EarthQuake

On top.

If you're still getting a green bake, your plane may simply be inverted?

Zepic

EarthQuake wrote: »

On top.

If you're still getting a green bake, your plane may simply be inverted?

Thanks EarthQuake.
I turned off back face cull in max and realized I wasn't paying attention to the normal directions. God, that was driving me insane. Thanks.

Edit: Upon further investigation, I noticed that my hi-poly objects were coming in all green from the bake when I reset the pivots. I ran a normalize modifier on them and they baked out correctly again. Not sure if this is a bug, but it seemed to fix my problems.

Zepic

Another note to add... (if anyone else encounters similar problems with XNormal). Go under Settings and Examples and hit the Restore default settings. This seemed to clear up a few other problems I was having with AO not baking correctly.