Need help baking xnormal

Cathodeus

Hi,

I'm new to baking high poly with a cage and i'm having problem with x normal as you can see on this picture.

There are strange fucked pixels.

I don't understand because my low poly retopo is precise. Need your help guys.

What must i do ?

Thanks in advance.
Massimo

C86G

We need to see your UVs.

Looks like missing edge padding and missing AA.

Cathodeus

Cathodeus

I have one uvs island per smoothing group. i preserve the tangent space with a loop as you can see on the low poly picture

C86G

Besides the huge amount of wasted texture space, that should not be an AA-problem with these UVs.
Try the following:
- increase rendered texture size in xNormal
- add AA

If you still can´t get it right, I could check it for you on my machine and tell you what went wrong : )

Cathodeus

The uvs are just for test purpose :-) It seem that if i do an object per uv island everything is ok ... But it's really annoying.

Still have one problem. The normal map is inverted for the objects that were duplicated as symmetry

C86G

Flip Y/green in the shader.

edit: OR flip the inverted/mirrored objects

Cathodeus

It's not about flipping y/green axis. What is "edit: OR flip the inverted/mirrored objects" ? Where should i found it ?

C86G

In your 3d application.

Cathodeus

I think that the problem is in the texture. I need to use the normal map inside cryengine and mental ray. There's no way to fix at baking ?

C86G

You can invert Y/green in xNormal ; P
The Duplicated/symmetry- object need to be flipped in your 3D app before baking if you cannot flip it in the shader.

Cathodeus

Do you know where is it inside max ?

C86G

Select inverted polys and hit "flip"

Cathodeus

I don't have flipped polys inside my mesh. That's why i don't understand. Why my normal is inverted ...

C86G

No, but you have mirrored parts of your mesh. The standard max shaders just don´t display it the same way realtime shaders do.

I´ve had this problem many times and flipping the polys or inverting the channel always worked for me. Worked with Max, xNormal and Xoliul shader or 3Point shader.

Cathodeus

It don't work, just tried and the resulted normal map is worst.

C86G

Again, if you want me to check it for you, let me know.

Cathodeus

Cathodeus

Ok you can check mp me your mail i'll be sending you the datas

Kon Artist

1. redo your UVs (right now your using < 50%)
2. check your AA settings in xNormal (set to 4x)
3. try not putting your supportive edge loops so close together. In Maya, if you put them to close together to get rid of gradient-- it almost act like a hard edge. As stated in other threads... ALL hard edges must also be border edges in UV space.
4. triangulate low poly before exporting


Here's a video from Hand Plane 3D that might help:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciXTyOOnBZQ

Cathodeus

For new generation game what do you think is better ? Changing of Smoothing group when we need an hard edge (resulting waste of uv space) or splitting the cage and have a waste of polys.

jogshy

1. one of your UV islands is touching the top border. You should keep some space for the edge padding to act.

2. ResetXForm+Edit mesh+collapse before exporting in 3dsmax ( Freeze transformations + manual triangulate in Maya ). Seems the right half of your model has inverted normals.

3. Extrude a bit more the cage, specially if your model's radius is small. That will solve some ray tmin precision problems.

4. Try other mesh format ( SBM, OBJ, etc... ). Latest FBX is a bit buggy btw.

5. Don't forget to check in the "Use cage" option in the LP mesh slot.

Cathodeus

@Jogshy : I can tell you thanks a lot for your soft ! Yesterday i wrote on my facebook : "God bless the creator of Xnormal. You're saving me timelife).

I reached a good quality finally. In fact i went into the ray distance calculator and stoppped it immediately. Didn't waited as i did before .

i used sbm file type.

I don't understand why when i hit "use the cage" the resulted normal map i worst !

I don't understand how xnormal use the cage. Why can't we see the cage into the soft ... I feel blind ...

What do you mean by : "3. Extrude a bit more the cage, specially if your model's radius is small. That will solve some ray tmin precision problems." --> Do it mean : "Increase maximum frontal distance ?"

Thnaks in advance

jogshy

Cathodeus wrote: »

I don't understand how xnormal use the cage. Why can't we see the cage into the soft ... I feel blind ...

To see the cage you must enter the 3D viewer and check in the "show cage" checkbox.

The cage works in this simple way: rays are fired from the cage to "inside", so you only need to extrude the cage ( or move its vertices ) until it covers completely the high-res mesh. As simple as that.
Once you're done, press the "Save meshes" button and answer YES to the dialog box. Exit the 3D viewer and render. Voil

Cathodeus

@jogshy Do you have a tutorial showing how can i export the "projection modifier" of my low poly as a cage ?

I'm doing an art test for a big studio. The test is quiete complicated and i start to be late.

You help is ultimately good for me !

Edit : Just found how to export ... Was really easy in fact ... press export button inside the modifier ...