Xnormal Ambient Occlusion issues

manilamerc

Hey guys I am trying bake out my Ambient Occlusion for my pants with XNormal. This is the result I get with default settings.




So I try the Ray distance calculator and change the max frontal ray distance and max rear ray distance. And here is what I get







What can I do to make this more accurate?

Ravanna

you know Xnormal can import a cage with your low poly right? Build the cage so that none of its surfaces clip with the high poly (zoom out a bit in case of Z-distance issues).
[cage options are in low poly window]

Ray distance is just a manual cage system as far as I know, but a cage allows for more control.

Also, When baking AO, it wouldnt hurt to include a large shallow "bowl" beneath the character. Essentially blocking light from below.

Bake both the floor version and non floor version, and alter its opacity in photoshop for subtlety.

*skips away

manilamerc

what do you mean a large shallow bowl? how do I do that?

manilamerc

SOMEONE HELP ME!

Ace-Angel

He already told you to use a cage, it will solve a majority of your issues, after which you can show us new pictures of there are any issues.

Dylan Brady

what he means is that you'd actually create an inverted 1/2 sphere or "bowl" out of geometry (ive only heard of using a plane before, but it doesn't change the outcome much) witch you include in your low-res export from maya/max/xsi/modeling app of the hour and bake as per usual. regardless your problem is due to your ref mesh being outside of the cage. this video https://vimeo.com/16871755 is a good solution to how you might go about solving your issues if you simply refuse to use a cage. I actually dont use a cage either, I split my meshes into chunks, and bake a close and a far projection and later combine the two in photoshop, but thats not the advised method.

manilamerc

could someone show me an example of a cage?

Gheromo

http://www.3dmotive.com/training/zbrush/texturing-and-baking-with-zbrush-xnormal-and-ndo/?follow=true watch either this, or you can find all your answers in polycount wiki

manilamerc

where do I import the large bowl?

nick2730

in xnormal on the list for the item there is an option for cage, and to import a cage. it has to match the amount of vertices EXACTLY.

manilamerc

Ok everybody this was my attempt to set up a cage



Here is what it looks like Xnormal, as you can see I also but a large bowl underneath my character



Here is my result



Yea I don't know why this is happening, can someone please tell me what I am doing wrong?

nick2730

your cage mesh looks the same size, when you add a projection modifier you need to put a value in the "push" field for it to expand further then the mesh.

You need to export the cage mesh from max as an .obj. Then in xnormal under Lowpoly option select import cage and attach the file.

Try baking in max to see what happens. Make sure the cage covers all of the mesh

manilamerc

nick2730 wrote: »

your cage mesh looks the same size, when you add a projection modifier you need to put a value in the "push" field for it to expand further then the mesh.

You need to export the cage mesh from max as an .obj. Then in xnormal under Lowpoly option select import cage and attach the file.

Try baking in max to see what happens. Make sure the cage covers all of the mesh

Where is this push field so I can make my cage slightly bigger?

jogshy

Take a look into xN's docs and the polycount's normal mapping wiki.
See also this very informative page about cages from Ben:
http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/normal_workflow.htm

A cage is just an extruded version of your LP mesh which is used to control the ray distance and direction.

In 3dsmax, you can easily create a cage with the Projection modifier, playing a bit with the Push number. Also, xN has a basic cage editor, just load the model without cage, enable the Show cage/Edit Cage option inside the 3dview, play a bit with the extrusion sliders and press the Save Meshes button when you're happy ).

The trick to create a good cage is to cover completely the HP mesh, to bevel enough the LP model and to know how/when to control the ray directions ( to avoid cylindrical wavey effects ).

manilamerc

jogshy wrote: »

Take a look into xN's docs and the polycount's normal mapping wiki.
See also this very informative page about cages from Ben:
http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/normal_workflow.htm

A cage is just an extruded version of your LP mesh which is used to control the ray distance and direction.

In 3dsmax, you can easily create a cage with the Projection modifier, playing a bit with the Push number. Also, xN has a basic cage editor, just load the model without cage, enable the Show cage/Edit Cage option inside the 3dview, play a bit with the extrusion sliders and press the Save Meshes button when you're happy ).

The trick to create a good cage is to cover completely the HP mesh, to bevel enough the LP model and to know how/when to control the ray directions ( to avoid cylindrical wavey effects ).

I tried saving doing the cage thing and when I go to save mesh it says: "Do you want to auto assign your meshes to the Low Definition meshes? So I say no then it says my high poly is more than 32k verticies and that obv. files are designed not to deal with heavy files and it asks me if I want to skip through exportation so I say yes then it says meshes saved. So i load the the obv file to my Low Definition Meshes and this is what I get. I'm not sure If I did the whole cage thing properly

Internet Friend

manilamerc wrote: »

Here is what it looks like Xnormal, as you can see I also but a large bowl underneath my character

This isn't how you set up a bake. The low poly, high poly and cage should all be occupying the same space, with the cage pushed out to fully envelop the high poly. The projection happens from the cage inward toward the low poly.

I'm surprised your results are as comprehensible as they are if this is how you've been trying to bake them.

Ace-Angel

I think you forgot to tick a few boxes, so Xnormal is most likely ray baking the mesh on itself...

jogshy

Use SBM files and answer Yes to the auto-assignment question
OBV was the old xN's format kept for compatiliby or in case you need to output XML data.

Also, remember to check in the "Use cage" option in the LP slot, or cage will be ignored even if you setup it.

manilamerc

jogshy wrote: »

Use SBM files and answer Yes to the auto-assignment question
OBV was the old xN's format kept for compatiliby or in case you need to output XML data.

Also, remember to check in the "Use cage" option in the LP slot, or cage will be ignored even if you setup it.

ok well I set up the cage like this





And I also checked the use cage in the low poly section and I got this
it's better but not perfect