Recently I've had the same result with baking which is just blaaaah. The resolution looks weak on the normal map when applied and on the sheet itself. I've only gotten into baking as of recent and thought I learned all the necessary rules. Apparently not :poly136: For anyone that doesn't know, instead of explode baking I baked using the match material id option.
I don't know what these black markings are.
I think I know why this one's happening. It's cause I mirrored the chair, but not the shell so if I mirror the shell with the rest of the chair that should fix it.
The cage is so big because it's as far as I had to go to get the ray misses to go away. No idea what to do to have a closer cage at this point.
LP/HP Comparison
I was given the advice to maybe use an exploded bake instead to see if that will work. I'll give that a try too, but the weird thing is I was baking a hp horse to a lp and had the same issue in terms of resolution initially, but then it went away. Then it came back again and I didn't change any settings either way.
Replies
If you want more help, post pictures of your highpoly geo, your UVs, and your render to texture settings.
http://wiki.polycount.net/NormalMap#UV_Coordinates
Eric - yep don't have any overlapping uvs so good to go there.
I'll post the hp, uvs and my settings when I'm off work.
Exaggerate those details, beef em up so the baker has something it can actually capture. Dont zoom crazy far in when you're modeling the highpoly, nobody will ever view it like that.
Took me a while to realise this. Detail on a highpoly mesh wont always translate well onto a normal map, you really do need to exaggerate the details sometimes !
Here's what the render settings look like as I'm not seeing anything I'm missing.
HP geo and LP uvs
And I'm having similar issues in other simpler bakes. I do have the back of the lp deleted, but the hp is still there. I thought that was the culprit, but it didn't matter if the back faces were there or not.
Can you post a Max file, with just a small subset of the original model? Delete everything but a small corner of both models.
The biggest issue is the cage and the consistent low res look of the normal map when it's applied to the model. I'm having issues moving the verts of the cage around while needing to maintain a condensed projection. Once I'm able to get the cage sized up better I'll only have the super sampling issue. From far away in my screen cap you can't tell there's a super sample issue and that it's just a projection thing I need to fix.
One thing I can certainly confirm is that using the matching material id method was the way to go.
Here's the whole hp and lp chair cause the Max file was going to take an hour to upload and I didn't know if having chunks would effect the bake.
Dropbox obj
Your edges look a lot better. At this point you just need to tweak your cage for ray misses and then make your details bigger so they actually render correctly.
Is this a cage issue as well?
Even though this is part of a portfolio piece and I know it'd be best if I exaggerated and made my hp details bigger, I think I'll chalk it up to experience for next time. I'll see if I have any further issues now with the horse bake and get back to you if I do. Thank you!
If you want to go down to 1024 or 512, you'll need to rethink how you map the asset. You could tile the "s" shapes. Also you'll want to increase the bevel on them, make them stick out more.
A solution for the last problem is in the Technical Talk sticky Understanding averaged normals and ray projection/Who put waviness in my normal map?
When I applied a basic diffuse to the model with the normal map you can't really see the low res look. One of my friends said this amount of pixelation is normal and said you won't see it when you apply a diffuse and spec. Looks like he was right! I still have some other areas that are beyond my normal map remedial knowledge though.
It can't be the cage for these weird black lines and splotches because I barely have any ray misses.
On the subject of the cage, is there a way to save the cage so if I end up having to adjust the editable poly I don't lose the cage I just adjusted? Is that what exporting in the projection does? I'm also unable to use the gizmos when I select the cage by face and element. I have to select by face or element and then ctrl/click by vert just to be able to use the gizmos. Any reason?
How might I get a nice cage projection? Using the push amount in the projection can only get me so far until it's too big of a cage. That's when I need to push by individual verts so I'm not sure how there's another way. For this particular model the cage is usually still below the floor and other random areas like the sides where the fish is. So Do I just bake the parts individually and combine them into one normal map or is there another way to get an easier projection.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGszEIT4Kww
Awsome. A guy clearly explain fundamental of baking, worth looking, even if you know fundamentals.
Really needing some cage advice there. With an explosive bake you can adjust the cages of each exploded part separately, but using this multi material id baking method doesn't allow you to adjust the cage easily.
This is the cage, and you can see the three different parts I'm projecting. The cage is really bloated in areas, but to shrink those areas down I'd have to select every part. I can do that by element I guess, but it doesn't help if I have to make changes to the model which forces me to lose the cage and need to redo those manual cage edits.
Any advice on this?
Select the smaller pieces in element mode in the proj. modifier.
Ctrl + click on vertex selection (you have to do this because doing push/reset doesn't work in element/poly selection, it does nothing or applies that to everything, so always be in vertex selection).
Press the "reset" button, and give the smaller parts a smaller push.
Shouldn't take longer then 2-3minutes.
Here's a much better bake. The hp accessories I baked still leave a little to be desired when you see them after the bake, but I don't have time to redo them to read better. Any suggestions for next time? I know exaggerating the hp details is the best practice, but any other advice?
I have a "rat's nest" when I exported to my carousel scene. I found an unwelded poly so I don't know if that's what a "rat's nest is".
The knees on the front legs could have probably used some more polys too as it looks like the normal map is a little wavy there.
Other than that it looks pretty good.