What are these dots in my bake?

Chase

I've done everything to try getting rid of these, but all of a sudden Max2012 seems to have just broken on me. Render times are slow as can be, and now I'm getting these random dots. I've tried upping the resolution to get rid of these dots and sampling up and anything else I can think of. Not to mention this grid line in the middle of the bake. I'm pulling my hair out here folks :poly127:



When I apply to the model using the standard material in Max it looks good


However, using 3point or Xoliul it looks awful

passerby

mind showing your normal map?

Chase

Edit: just figured out why i was getting these shader errors. I reset Xform, which still didn't help, but then on a whim selected all the faces and flipped them. Then the heavens opened up and I could breathe again. Plus I didn't get the dots on the bake this time :poly142:

Eric Chadwick

A way to save a lot of future headaches...

Customize > Preferences > Viewports > Backface Cull on Object Creation

I think this should be the default for all game artists, since for games we should be manually creating backfaces only when we need them. And we should see in the viewport only the faces that will actually be exported.

Chase

Just looked up what it meant. Seems to save rendering time if I'm not mistaken

Eric Chadwick

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=backface+cull+3ds+max

Eric Chadwick

Chase wrote: »

Just looked up what it meant. Seems to save rendering time if I'm not mistaken

Kind of. For games in particular, backfaces in 3ds Max are a lie. Those faces are not exported to the game. So backfaces can be misleading.

You can use a 2sided shader in a game, but it's usually a waste of polygons because u don't need every face duplicated, just some of them.

Also, can't edit the normals for those backfaces, unless you make them manually instead.

Chase

Do you know what this issue is Eric?

Seems like a graphics card issue all of a sudden, but it's only on this model as far as I'm aware. I've tried all the basic tests; resetting xforms, checking for unwelded verts, exported to a new scene. I've never seen this before or seen anyone else post this issue. Very perplexing as it only shows up with an AO bake.

Here's the AO. Don't mind the few cage misses

Butthair

Is this a custom material? If you apply a default gray material will it look fine?

Noors

is gamma on ?

Mr Digital

Just Hit "Reset Xform" in utilities, that fixed those problems before with me.

Vailias

That AO looks really odd.
It looks more like a single distance light projected from above.

Chase

Butthair - I've experienced some overheating issues with my pc so I can't be completely certain that a standard material looks normal vs the 3point material. I'll be going into my local computer store to have them reset the fan on the CPU because apparently that may be causing my "overheating". From what I remember I believe I still had a bit of a shadow down there even with a standard material, but again I can't be certain at the moment. What would be the reasoning behind a standard material not shading right?

Noors - Yep gamma was on

Mr Digital - Trust me, that was the first thing I tried haha

Vailias - It does look weird. Just like what I said to Butthair, I would check what my other AOmaps looked like after rendering if I could get on my pc. Any reason why this might be having this projection look?