Xnormal - Proper Heightmap Bake

Melodeus

I get these faceted displacement bakes. I found that the LP needs to be subdivided a level or two to rid the geometry of the veining wireframe look. Should I be keeping my future LP objects in a position where they're able to be subdivided? I don't want to do something destroy efficiency with redundancy so what method do you all find best for this type of scenario?

CheeseOnToast

The faceted displacement map is correct. Don't expect a smooth looking result like a normal map. Have you tried actually using it as a displacement map?

EarthQuake

It depends on what you're displacing.

If you're displacing a lowpoly mesh as is, with flat tessellation (ie: the mesh is tessellated but nor smoothed) then you want the faceted looking height map as is. This is usually typical for realtime applications.

If you're smoothing the mesh first and then displacing, ie: catmull-clark sub-division, you want to bake the height map from a smoothed mesh(idealy the exact same type of smoothing you will use for the end result). This is more typical with offline rendering/film/etc.

Melodeus

CheeseOnToast wrote: »

Have you tried actually using it as a displacement map?

I've rendered in Marmoset and the mesh just tends to displace each polygon separately. It's like pushing bread onto a meshed fence.

EarthQuake wrote: »

It depends on what you're displacing.

If you're displacing a lowpoly mesh as is, with flat tessellation (ie: the mesh is tessellated but nor smoothed) then you want the faceted looking height map as is. This is usually typical for realtime applications.

If you're smoothing the mesh first and then displacing, ie: catmull-clark sub-division, you want to bake the height map from a smoothed mesh(idealy the exact same type of smoothing you will use for the end result). This is more typical with offline rendering/film/etc.

It's a game object and the tessellation is being done in Marmoset Toolbag.

If I might ask a question. I notice that the mesh remains completely in-tact, but around the seams, both sides push away from one another. Does the tessellation process apply a subtle change in the mesh's definition enough to make displacement visible, rounded not look cheap and blocky?

Without Displacement


With Displacement


I guess what I'm attempting to understand at the moment is why the facets occur, even if XNormal's outputting correctly. Is it due to the fact that since it's a height map, it's having information projection at an angle since it's a relatively low-level mesh?

I tend to use Marmoset Renderer for realtime. Everything shown above is just that. I don't know if I'm supposed to tinker with the swizzle settings in XNormal, so I left it as default and I didn't much find anything concerning it in Handplane either.

Optinium

Is the displacement map dilated? I usually find that helps.

Melodeus

Optinium wrote: »

Is the displacement map dilated? I usually find that helps.

I don't know how to actually dilate a displacement map, but I'm guessing you'd do it in Photoshop. What are the benefits to dilating btw?