Normal baking from blender to xnormals

mnphear

Hi dear polycounters!

Recently i have made this pistol, its not 100% accurate but it will do the trick.

I want to learn how to do a succesfull bake from blender to xnormals without getting those ugly artifacts. So please if anyone knows the workflow to bake from blender to xnormals advanced hig poly meshes help!

So here is the HP:



Cheers!

ivanzu

Set up a cage and smoothing groups.

Will come handy!
http://www.felixschlitter.com/snippets/xnormal-blender


This applies to every 3D modeling application.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=118043

mnphear

Thank you man!! hope it helps!!

ivanzu

It does support splitting edges which is what basically smoothing groups become once imported into game engine.

mnphear

Yeah but doesnt it double you polycount on those edges?

Mischievous

Blender had an integrated Xnormal add on? Mother of~ ... Well today just started awesome!

Also it supports smoothing groups, you can go manual and assign them yourself by selecting polygons and selecting smooth (or flat respectively), or making them all smooth and using a edge split modifier.

*Edit: Damn ninjaed before I post this...

mnphear

Yes yes i know that the whole mesh must be smooth shaded for the bake, and blender automaticly smoothens it on export with fbx.

edit: But how do you make the cage mesh??

Mischievous

I find it that I often use Obj when baking with Xnormal because I hate Fbx, Obj allows to save the smoothing groups, and generally just works better for me...

About the cage mesh...well I'm still new to that as well, I usually make a slightly scaled up model of my low poly, and use that. The cage mesh has to have the same vertex count as your low poly model.

mnphear

Yes but when the obj from blender is imported in marmoset it acts weird...
I dont know why but it just does

Mischievous

Then I guess you should use edge splitting despite the added vertex count...

mnphear

i suppose..Thank you man! What about the cage mesh? what is your workflow for it?

Mischievous

The essential idea is that sometimes your High poly mesh might penetrate the low poly one as a result of manipulation, so the cage mesh is essentially your low poly, but modified to envelop the high poly model. You can easily check that, if you overlay your low poly model over your high one, shade the high one with some easy to notice bright color and see where it shows though the low poly model.

mnphear

Are there any tutorials for this?

Mischievous

There definitely should be but I don't know one, you can await until some one posts one or search for one yourself. Just look around for "How to make a cage mesh" or similar...

mnphear

Thank you man! You've been of great help in my quest for the perfect bake

cheers

passerby

for the cage, just copy the lowpoly mesh, set all normals to soft, than scale out slightly on the normals.

not sure if blender has a tool for this but max has the push modifer, and maya has a tool to transform with the vertex normals as a constraint.

also a exploded bake might help you for some pieaces.

Stromberg90

displacement modifier set to normals works like the push in 3ds max.