Modo + Handplane + Knald + Unity. Workflow problem.

MrOneTwo

Trying to work out workflow:

- Modo - baking world space normal map.
- Handplane - creating tangent space based on world space from Modo (Unity tangent space)
- Knald - creating rest of the maps... here is the problem.

The normal map I throw to Knald is tangent space which compensates gradients created by using 1 smoothing group. Knald based on this map creates 'wrong' AO since normal is 'wrong'. Any way to make it work ? If Knald would 'eat' world space normal map it should work perfectly.

Any ideas ?

Farfarer

Why not bake the AO in modo?

MrOneTwo

Because I also want convexity and concavity maps. Knald creates great maps. I also don't want to add another program to this workflow. I use your scripts for adjusting normals on the mesh in Modo. Those + Handplane + Knald would create perfect combo if I could jump through this hoop.

Gheromo

I just think you are over complicating it, just bake AO in the same time as u bake normal map.

frmdbl

MrOneTwo wrote: »

Trying to work out workflow:
The normal map I throw to Knald is tangent space which compensates gradients created by using 1 smoothing group

You mean compensates on a mesh? In knald certainly it's going to introduce wrong shading.

I don't think knald supports object-space normal maps.
You'll have to make some splits to avoid gradients
in the normal map for knald
even if you finally end up using a mesh with 1 sg.

I've produced a couple of assets with a similar workflow and the AO ended up great.

Farfarer

MrOneTwo wrote: »

Because I also want convexity and concavity maps. Knald creates great maps. I also don't want to add another program to this workflow. I use your scripts for adjusting normals on the mesh in Modo. Those + Handplane + Knald would create perfect combo if I could jump through this hoop.

Try adding an Ambient Occlusion texture layer to your high poly mesh's material, it has options for ambient occlusion, specular occlusion, etc... (far more options than the Ambient Occlusion render output gives)... I think it contains options for convexity and concavity.

You can set it's effect to Diffuse Colour and then add a Diffuse Coefficient render output to bake it out.

MrOneTwo

Will test it out. If the results are good maybe it could cut out Knald from the equation...but I just find Knald fascinating. I want to implement it in my workflow. Wrote to metalliandy is to possible to add support for world space normal maps. I think it is worth the hassle to make it work like that. Being able to tweak maps in realtime seems worth it. Thanks for your help guys.

MrOneTwo

Tried baking all in Modo. Can't really figure out how to make the renderer take in consideration morph map. I use morph maps to explode geometry. Renders come out as if morph map wasn't activated (you can see itersections in the bake). Any idea what may be wrong ?

AlecMoody

Another good method for AO is to render it in zbrush, assign as vertex colors, and then bake those vertex colors. You can explode the mesh after assigning the vertex colors and it won't affect the shading. Its also a lot faster and generally better quality than most baking tools AO. The same method works well for cavity maps as well.

igi

I tried to create a workflow for modo in the past with those featured stuff on the net.Then I decided to do everything by hand.If you need a exploded mesh or a cage,you better to ctrl+C,N,ctrl+V them all or simply assign the 'duplicate' command to a key,rename the duplicated 'mesh' and then do whatever you want.Storing exploded and cage meshes in a new layer might be useful.Bake inside modo by using cage script is still giving me some loose results for some reason,probably a technical limitation.

Farfarer

My cage script has been updated and included into the Vertex Normal Toolkit.

It can't do a per-vertex distance, only direction.

But we're hoping that next major version (801) has proper cage baking and such.

Hoffbrau

Farfarer - what is the Vertex Normal Toolkit?

dzibarik

Farfarer wrote: »

But we're hoping that next major version (801) has proper cage baking and such.

When is it out by the way? Is there any release schedule?

Farfarer

Hoffbrau;
This http://forums.luxology.com/topic.aspx?f=83&t=77919.

Basically it's a MODO Kit that lets you do things like harden/soften shading on edges (like you would in Maya) and also has a bunch of normal weighting options (area, angle, full) and has the ability to calculate accurate normals for non-planar polygons (which modo doesn't do by default).


dzbarik:
801? No idea. Modo usually releases at about 1.5 years per major release. So likely somewhere towards the end of next year?


Oh, and to answer your old question MrOneTwo, to see the morph applied at bake time, you'll need to add a morph deformer to your meshes.

Setup Tab > Deformers tab on the left hand form > Morph (from "Apply Mesh Deformer" section). Then you can scale it from 0 - 100% using the Morph Influence item that's created.

MrOneTwo

Thanks Farfarer :>

Using all your scripts; you are kind of awesome!

Bek

frmdbl wrote: »

I don't think knald supports object-space normal maps.
You'll have to make some splits to avoid gradients
in the normal map for knald
even if you finally end up using a mesh with 1 sg.

There's an extra benefit to this that I've been thinking about:

Have three meshes. High, 'Handplane' and low. Handplane is the low (Must have the same UV's as the low) but with edge loop city. This lets you bake an object space map without gradients, but also with better projections. You can add loops to remove waviness. Then you feed handplane the low mesh with your baked OS map. If you require the low to have shading without gradients then you should be using splits on uv seams or extra loops.

I'd have to say +1 to using modo to bake AO though. As for morph maps, have you tried applying them, baking, then undoing? Can't remember if that works or not.

MrOneTwo

Applying deformer solves the issue.

Baking AO in Modo:

If you use render output you can get pretty nice AO where overlapping geometry gives you black colour on the AO.

If you use material (which is way more better since you can change a lot of things) AO is pretty messy where geometry overlaps and it's white inside.

I hope you know what you mean. Anyway to solve it ?

Farfarer

Bek wrote: »

There's an extra benefit to this that I've been thinking about:

Have three meshes. High, 'Handplane' and low. Handplane is the low (Must have the same UV's as the low) but with edge loop city. This lets you bake an object space map without gradients, but also with better projections. You can add loops to remove waviness. Then you feed handplane the low mesh with your baked OS map. If you require the low to have shading without gradients then you should be using splits on uv seams or extra loops.

That kinda works but then you've got the issue of maintaining two meshes. edited your low poly mesh? Better make the exact same edit to that intermediate mesh or redo all of your support loops


MrOneTwo:
Not sure about that.

The only way I can think of is to bake both out, but set the Render Output Ambient Occlusion's "Input White Level" to 0.1 - that makes it pretty much binary black/white (i.e. interior areas are black and exterior is white).

Then you can then multiply that over your Occlusion material output in Photoshop.

igi

Lately been using a method in modo for making cages tighter. Have no idea if it's a correct way to do that but it worked for me.
Have your low poly mesh. Then duplicate it and add edge loops, do not update the shading from vertex map toolkit.In most cases you will have pretty identical looking models. Use edgelooped model for bake, display the normals on your initial model.

MrOneTwo

Yeah it's method Bek described. It'd just creating additional loops to make normals transition better. Like Farfarer said the problem is that each time you want to change something you have two objects to modify. Imagine you want to change something in lowpoly. You have to delete lowpoly with additional loops. Modify proper lowpoly -> duplicate -> add loops again.

Adding lots of work. If only Knald could work on world space normals. Since tangent space maps are relative they will always have some gradients since low poly always compromises on some curves....

Recently people are creating so many awesome apps helping in making your art look as good as it can... and we still pay for making such a mess with normal maps.

igi

One point is that handplane is not mandatory for this workflow. You can bake the normals from xnormal by using edgelooped model. hmm about modifiying you're right.But i think that workflow is still doable.Once you have your both hi and low source and sorted out the silhouette of your model, high portition of possible editings are not about pulling vertices imo.

MrOneTwo

I want to use Handplane since it gives you synced normal maps.