Curvature maps and gradient maps for hard edge bakes
polycounter lvl 8
Hey
Typically when I bake my guns, I just rely on the basics, AO and Normal and a cavity map converted from the normal.
A while ago I did the swap from single smoothing group baking (no cage, only ray distances in xnormal) to cage + smoothing groups + SG UV splits.
Of course, when you bake this method, the hard edge is technically still there, hidden by the normal.
I've noticed that now as I'm trying to experiment by adding curvature maps and the green channel from my normal map as overlays to create cool effects, this kind of reveals all the hard edges that a normal and AO alone would typically hide.
Are there any steps to do for using curvature maps and gradients and so on that don't reveal the hard edges? What I'm doing now is selecting my UV alpha and deleting any gradient effects from the edges of UV shells, but I don't know, that seems retarded and defeats the purpose?
Or if you guys have any suggestions on what type of maps you bake besides AO and Normal for hard edge objects, I'm all ears
Sorry I have a hard time explaining this, here are pics:
Normal + AO + Cavity, baked with cage, UV split with SG, object has multiple SG splits
Pretty decent result, edges barely visible
Normal + AO + Cavity + Normal green channel gradient:
It's not the best example of its use here, but yeah N green channel, curvature maps, and even light maps can produce better results than just a flat AO and Cavity, but yeah, the hard edges show up.
Edit for another example:
Typically when I bake my guns, I just rely on the basics, AO and Normal and a cavity map converted from the normal.
A while ago I did the swap from single smoothing group baking (no cage, only ray distances in xnormal) to cage + smoothing groups + SG UV splits.
Of course, when you bake this method, the hard edge is technically still there, hidden by the normal.
I've noticed that now as I'm trying to experiment by adding curvature maps and the green channel from my normal map as overlays to create cool effects, this kind of reveals all the hard edges that a normal and AO alone would typically hide.
Are there any steps to do for using curvature maps and gradients and so on that don't reveal the hard edges? What I'm doing now is selecting my UV alpha and deleting any gradient effects from the edges of UV shells, but I don't know, that seems retarded and defeats the purpose?
Or if you guys have any suggestions on what type of maps you bake besides AO and Normal for hard edge objects, I'm all ears
Sorry I have a hard time explaining this, here are pics:
Normal + AO + Cavity, baked with cage, UV split with SG, object has multiple SG splits
Pretty decent result, edges barely visible
Normal + AO + Cavity + Normal green channel gradient:
It's not the best example of its use here, but yeah N green channel, curvature maps, and even light maps can produce better results than just a flat AO and Cavity, but yeah, the hard edges show up.
Edit for another example:
Replies
Do you suggest I just stick to AO and Cavity as my base then?
I tried curvature maps which help in weathering effects although it reveals hard edges as well, unless I mask out the areas close to uv shell seams.
I use xnormal for baking
Really, because the projection normals of your mesh will be exactly the same when using an "averaged projection mesh" or "cage" the bake will pick up the same curvature data regardless, because curvature isn't relative to your mesh normals like a tangent space normal map is.
So if you're getting seams it makes me think its another problem, or a problem has nothing to do with using hard edges or not. For instance, if you have hard edges or all smooth edges, you will still get seams on your model if you zoom in too far or if your texture resolution is low along any uv border. This is the same for 1SG vs hard edges. When you add on other effects and maps this might simply be more obvious(again, regardless of your mesh normals, as long as you've baked with an averaged projection mesh).
But getting rid of that green channel thing has to be the first thing you do, thats going to mess with your results - the seams might be from that and nothing else.
Make sure to change the curvature map settings in xnormal to monochrome.
I'd also suggest using 256+ rays and 2x or 4x super-sampling for optimal results.
The fact that it depends on raycasting like AO, I did a test and at full quality it takes as long as an AO bake which is not what I want (40mins+ for 4x 1024, 300 rays, etc)
I'm running max 2013 and there doesn't seem to be a material or script available to get curvature information into the vertex colour of the high poly, which would be preferable, as it would be faster to bake VC in the end. Everything available is for either Maya, LW, or older max (http://www.tomcowland.com/mentalray/tc_curvature/)
No I have not tried curvature from normal (i imagine from crazybump or equivalent?).
Left: Norm, Cav, AO
Right: Norm, Cav, AO, Curv
or a pyhton add-on for maya called r7 vert curevature that i cant find the link for, to calculate convex and concave areas, and store it in the highpoly meshes vertex colours, than bake the vert colours off to hte low poly
Yeah thats what I tried. Works in max2012, but not 2013
Best bet for max2013 HP right now is ConvertEdgetoVertex from here http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_tools/soulburnscripts/soulburnscripts.htm
test with that script