AO Explosion/Cage question

ghaztehschmexeh

Okay so I baked my normal maps with an exploded mesh in xnormal. I've moved on to baking the AO map, but baking it with an exploded mesh doesn't produce realistic result for obvious reasons.

However, my AO map for an unexploded mesh has big white sections that it shouldn't, I assume because of intersecting geometry with the cage.

So what is a good workflow for complicated geometry in this situation? Cheers for any help.

Bruno Afonseca

Check this out, Earthquake's method -> http://wiki.polycount.com/AmbientOcclusionMap

ghaztehschmexeh

fonfa wrote: »

Check this out, Earthquake's method -> http://wiki.polycount.com/AmbientOcclusionMap

Yeah I actually thought about doing a similar thing, and I saw this too. But xnormal's simple AO tool gives me a terrible result:

Ace-Angel

Are those unique pieces each, or is there overlapping for UV's scrapping?

Also, if Simple AO in XN doesn't work, just drop you LP mesh both in the HP and LP nodes and bake them out from there. It SHOULD work, but I haven't tried that.

ghaztehschmexeh

Ace-Angel wrote: »

Are those unique pieces each, or is there overlapping for UV's scrapping?

Also, if Simple AO in XN doesn't work, just drop you LP mesh both in the HP and LP nodes and bake them out from there. It SHOULD work, but I haven't tried that.

Some parts are displaced by +1 in the U direction so yes sort of overlapping.

And what do you mean? in the normal xnormal renderer? It doesn't work with or without a cage, that's my problem.

EDIT: Baked a lowpoly AO map out in 3DS max, seems to have worked nicely

thanks for the tip!

ghaztehschmexeh

As it turns out, the low poly bake makes it look... well, low poly, in places. I guess I will just have to manually edit it.

Bruno Afonseca

There's a setting somewhere that can turn the intersecting parts black instead of white. I know xNormal does it, I think it's the "ignore backface hits". You can do those two bakes and combine them on photoshop.
I generally take this second one and tint it brownish and overlay on top of the other to simulate dust gathering in crevices. Play around with it

ghaztehschmexeh

fonfa wrote: »

There's a setting somewhere that can turn the intersecting parts black instead of white. I know xNormal does it, I think it's the "ignore backface hits". You can do those two bakes and combine them on photoshop.
I generally take this second one and tint it brownish and overlay on top of the other to simulate dust gathering in crevices. Play around with it

Thanks for the tip, will give it a try!

ghaztehschmexeh

It was already on And the combined AO map does not give me a good result, and I can't realistically edit it.
See the difference: