Beginners MUDBOX map extraction
polycounter lvl 6
Hi All,
I have been trying to learn how to enhance my models by doing some sculpting in mudbox. The sculpting itself is going ok but I seem to be having issues when it comes to extracting the maps.
The problem is that when I extract the maps I seem to be getting a lot distortion, especially around the uvw seams. As it is impossible to avoid a little bit of seam bleeding the result is that when I apply the maps to my low poly models I get ugly joins at the seams.
In some places the distortion also comes inside the seam area. I really don't know what I am doing wrong, I have tried using lots of different extract settings but the basic problem is always there. There doesnt seem to be any "padding" options like when rendering textures in max.
I've seen some other pics of mudbox normal maps that dont display the same problems, so what am I doing wrong? Here are some pics of my latest attempt. The same thing happens with my AO maps as well
First pic shows the low poly model in max (on the left), the model cut up so it can be correctly sub-divided in mudbox (on the right) and also the uvw-map for the model. The second pic shows the model in mudbox (in this case all I did was put some light stencil texturing on the outside) together with the extraction parameters I used and finally a segment of the exported normalmap. The areas of pixel distortion and blocked color should be obvious.
http://www.mediafire.com/view/?myfiles#7jp1apqvkqvxonz
http://www.mediafire.com/view/?crodd7v6dgasewu
The thing is I am pleased with the way the models look in mudbox, but as it stands the extracted maps arent much use - they look ugly at the seams and its too time consuming to fix manually.
What am I doing wrong?
I have been trying to learn how to enhance my models by doing some sculpting in mudbox. The sculpting itself is going ok but I seem to be having issues when it comes to extracting the maps.
The problem is that when I extract the maps I seem to be getting a lot distortion, especially around the uvw seams. As it is impossible to avoid a little bit of seam bleeding the result is that when I apply the maps to my low poly models I get ugly joins at the seams.
In some places the distortion also comes inside the seam area. I really don't know what I am doing wrong, I have tried using lots of different extract settings but the basic problem is always there. There doesnt seem to be any "padding" options like when rendering textures in max.
I've seen some other pics of mudbox normal maps that dont display the same problems, so what am I doing wrong? Here are some pics of my latest attempt. The same thing happens with my AO maps as well
First pic shows the low poly model in max (on the left), the model cut up so it can be correctly sub-divided in mudbox (on the right) and also the uvw-map for the model. The second pic shows the model in mudbox (in this case all I did was put some light stencil texturing on the outside) together with the extraction parameters I used and finally a segment of the exported normalmap. The areas of pixel distortion and blocked color should be obvious.
http://www.mediafire.com/view/?myfiles#7jp1apqvkqvxonz
http://www.mediafire.com/view/?crodd7v6dgasewu
The thing is I am pleased with the way the models look in mudbox, but as it stands the extracted maps arent much use - they look ugly at the seams and its too time consuming to fix manually.
What am I doing wrong?
Replies
What??!! Wth does that mean?
Could somebody please give me some comprehensible pointers here, it's getting very frustrating...
How does your low poly look like. do you have your smoothing of the faces split like your uvs. Also adjust your search distance until you get decent results.
How does your cage look?, do you have a simple box with 6 polys on it as a door?, or a more complicated piece
Thank you very much for the replies. I'm sorry for using Mediafire, I know it's crappy for this... it was late, I was tired and couldn't find a password...
Anyway, regarding the problem at hand... thanks to a post in the Area forums (that re-enforced my own suspicions) I tried breaking up the model into separate pieces and sculpting/baking them individually and the problem seems to have been fixed.
Basically it seems that my UVWs were too tightly packed together and the different islands were distorting each other because I didnt leave enough bleed space. When I started modeling a friend told me I shouldn't waste any uvw space, so i got a bit neurotic about packing uvws as closely as possible... and it seems that this is causing the problems.
I don't know how to show the "cage" in mudbox so I can't really anwser your question, Setes...
The search distance confuses me somewhat because the "best guess" is normally HUGELY superior to the value I actually need, for this model it was about 11.5 and the value that actually worked was about 0.25
Thanks again!