Baking High poly to Low poly in Max Problem

dawnofwar19

Hey Guys,

I'm toying around with the baking high poly to low poly pipeline, and I must admit I am rather green at it. I followed a short video on the process on youtube, but the result I'm getting doesn't look right. I have attached images of the result I'm looking for, and what I am actually getting. What I'm trying to do is create a crate full of fruit for a in game model this was the cheapest way I could think of without wasting resources. Hope you guys can help.

Thanks

Snader

Technically, this is correct so you're not doing anything wrong with the baking.

What you need to understand is that a normal map doesn't actually add more polygons or rounder shapes or anything. What it does is look at a part of your highpoly, check what angle that bit is on, and store that information in the texture. Then in the game engine, it's a relatively cheap (doesn't cost much performance) trick to check what angle every pixel of an object is at, and render the appropriate lighting. But, this means that you only have the correct angle of the highpoly, and not the actual shape - which causes it to still be flat when looked at from the side.

Here's a sketch:


black is the lowpoly, blue is the highpoly, green is all the angles of the highpoly when they are rendered as pixels of the lowpoly.

dawnofwar19

So If I understand you correctly I'm approaching the result I'm looking for the wrong way? Sorry if I've got it wrong.

cptSwing

You probably want to sink the spheres down, halfway underneath the plane you're baking to. Even so, you won't be able to represent full curvature.

dawnofwar19

Ok, sorry to bump this thread again, but I approached the whole baking process in a more simplified type example. I took 2 cubes, and added a turbo smooth to my high poly one. Both the high and low poly version have been unwrapped. The problem I'm having is the result i'm getting in the baked normal map. I hope you guys can figure out what I'm doing wrong.

EarthQuake

Images? Explanation of what is going wrong?

dawnofwar19

Sorry about that, I uploaded an image, but it must not have worked. I uploaded the baked normal map i keep getting, and the effect it has on the model.

jovcem

dawnofwar19 wrote: »

Sorry about that, I uploaded an image, but it must not have worked. I uploaded the baked normal map i keep getting, and the effect it has on the model.

You dont need to unwrap the high poly, and your normal looks like it might have some overlapping UVs

EarthQuake

Hmmm, this looks like something really weird like you baked the normal map to the highpoly uvs and then the lowpoly or something. The high doesn't need uvs as stated above.