Thanks Fararer, yes just tried that out. I should have been more specific too, I don't care about a high to low bake, I just need to convert some photo to normals into object space and then back to tangent space. Would be great if Knald had this ability.
For those interested I've done this in xNormal by loading up a flat plane as my low poly mesh and converting the existing map in xnormal, then converting it back.
Thanks for the suggestion. May I ask why you need to convert image based normals to OS and back to TS please?
With a forward facing plane the maps would look identical in both TS and OS so I assume that you are doing something else with them?
Feature request, could we get the ability to sharpen the bevel that is created by fine, medium, large, and extra large. It would be great to be able to have a medium bevel and then tighten the edge so you get a thick sharp bevel.
I will see what I can do. Great suggestion as always!
Hey metalliandy, I was trying to clone stamp out a normal map seam in 3D space in Mudbox, but realized you can't do this in a tangent space map if the uv shells are facing different directions. I ended up painting out the seam as a greyscale image in mudbox and then brought that into Knald to create a new normal map that covered up the uv seams, not an ideal workflow.
Hey metalliandy, I was trying to clone stamp out a normal map seam in 3D space in Mudbox, but realized you can't do this in a tangent space map if the uv shells are facing different directions. I ended up painting out the seam as a greyscale image in mudbox and then brought that into Knald to create a new normal map that covered up the uv seams, not an ideal workflow.
Bit random but is there any information on an upcoming sale or disccounts? I loved Knald during the trial time and have been waiting for a while in hopes to get it during a potential sale. It's not that the software is pricey or anything but I can't afford full price atm. So far no luck.
Hi!
I have run into this problem with Knald. Hopefully somebody can help here? So basically my normal maps are messed up when I import them into Knald. I tried different ways of importing them, in different image formats and with different bit depths. Hope someone has some idea, what might cause this.
We are happy to announce the Knald 1.1.0 Open Beta for Knald customers!
Since Knald was originally released we have been hard at work developing a next generation baker and we would love to extend an invitation to our existing customers to try it out!
We have loads of more features planned for release during the beta (inc. copy/paste) and we hope that you enjoy this update as much as we are excited to share it with you!
As a beta tester, I can confirm the awesomeness. The Knald baker has replaced baking from max and xnormal for me. It's just so fast and clean. The speed makes it painless to make tweaks. Highly recommended. Just looking forward to vertex color baking now (I am informed that only PolyPaint vcols can be baked right now)
I'll second what odd_enough said. Ive been using it for a couple months now and yeah this thing is amazing. Im baking everything at resolutions I would have never considered before because of how long it would have taken in the past.
Knalds taken pretty much everything I've thrown at it without dropping the quality ball.
All the bakes in this thread were from Knald: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=145608&page=3
Just read this whole thread. Sounds like Knald is.... Pretty Good. It looks really good. I'm close to impulse-buying this right now. I'm trying to download the demo to answer some of my questions, but the registration page seems broken? You guys seeing this? I'm sending them an email, too.
Yes, all of the features that were in Knald previously are available in the new Beta. (Including Color to Normal)
Regarding the website - thank you for the screenshot! The issue seems intermittent and we are working to resolve it as fast as possible.
Edit: We have taken a pass and the web issues should be resolved - please try restarting your browser (to clear any cached pages in memory) and accessing the site again.
If you are still having issues, any information you could provide such as browser, version, OS and addons installed would be a big help in diagnosing the problem!
3dsMax and Substance Designer have the ability to match high and low poly meshes so the user does not need to explode detailed objects. Is a feature like this planned for Knald?
Did a quick test vs Xnormal, both done at 4K with their respective max AA
Some minor but visible aliasing seems to show up, mainly in areas where different meshes meet?
THe same High Poly, Low Poly and Cage were used.
Hey metalliandy, does this release have any updates for Photo to normals or is this just the baker that's been added? I'm really looking forward to a release that addresses some minor but time consuming workflow issues.
Also how are you handling the triangulation differences between game engines, for example can you bake a map that can be viewed in Maya or UE4 correctly based on their respective triangulations? And is there any different baking methods for how the normal map is projected for example geo and surface normals (Maya terminology).
Any chance for implementing a soft gaussian blur filter (like in Maya transfer maps)? As far as I'm aware, there is none in xNormal, and filter types from 3dsmax scanline don't work with render to texture. It's useful to get higher quality bakes at low resolution like this (right is with blur filter).
I still get the issue. Win 8.1 64Bit, Firefox, addons: noScript, AdBlockPlus. NoScript reports nothing and disabling AdBlock makes no difference.
I just did a fresh installation of:
Firefox Developer Edition Win64 39.0a2
(No Win64 build of Firefox is currently in the release branch)
NoScript 2.6.9.22
Adblock Plus 2.6.9
Can you confirm that this matches your configuration?
I am seeing a variety of issues with the site with NoScript installed and with default settings. (24 Script objects blocked)
Our website relies pretty heavily on JavaScript - to clarify the issue can you try temporarily disabling ABP and NoScript then attempting to access our site again?
How does the licensing for Knald work? Would it be feasible to transfer the activation from my desktop to laptop depending on if I'm traveling?
Our paid licenses are all permit two simultaneous activation by the same person. (Eg: For a Laptop and Desktop)
The license key for the beta is just the same key as you use for the existing release of Knald. Also it's possible to have both the Beta and Retail versions of Knald installed on the same machine side-by-side.
Hey metalliandy, does this release have any updates for Photo to normals or is this just the baker that's been added? I'm really looking forward to a release that addresses some minor but time consuming workflow issues.
Also how are you handling the triangulation differences between game engines, for example can you bake a map that can be viewed in Maya or UE4 correctly based on their respective triangulations? And is there any different baking methods for how the normal map is projected for example geo and surface normals (Maya terminology).
Actually, we did add a feature to Color To Normal in this build!
You can now specify the Kernel as:
Default (Original)
Sobel
Alternating
We also have some other improvements to Color To Normal planned.
(Andy will have to fill you in regarding your other questions)
I'm sorry if this has already been asked, but is there a way to change the tangent space on the baker via a plugin? I guess this is a must if people want to use this with a inhouse engine.
What is the default tangent space tweaked for? Maya viewport?
Would I get different results should I view my baked model in CE3 or UE4?
I'm sorry if this has already been asked, but is there a way to change the tangent space on the baker via a plugin? I guess this is a must if people want to use this with a inhouse engine.
What is the default tangent space tweaked for? Maya viewport?
Would I get different results should I view my baked model in CE3 or UE4?
Should be Mikktspace if the earlier version of Knald is to go by (also, the guy who came up with the Mikktspace tangent calculation is one of the main guys on the Knald team, soooo).
You could always use Handplane to get the best results, though.
It'd be really great to see some kind of support for baking meshes with multiple parts without worrying about intersection errors. Of course the user could explode their bake, but that isn't great for baking AO and isn't as great for previewing. For xNormal I usually divide my meshes up into parts which don't intersect, batch bake the normals and compile the results in photoshop. Then I can bake the AO without changing the meshes, just baking them together. It'd be great if you could specify separate parts which would bake normals etc separately and then have them compiled together on the fly. Or some kind of ID system like in max.
Hes simply referring to the specular model which varies depending on whatever engine you are using. Above is a pic of some common physically based specular models
not really... (below is for the benefit of others because i'm pretty sure you know this already lol)
Torrance-Sparrow formulation is just one of many BRDFs, all of which can be physically based if the math is right. The differences between them are the "shape" of the highlights.
"Physically based" is more of a buzzword but at it's core it means that the total energy in both the diffuse and reflective components can't be greater than the energy it receives. so if the light source is at "3", then the diffuse and reflection combined cannot be greater than "3". This means that the diffuse colour gets darker as the reflection becomes more intense.
So, the most simple answer would be:
YES! - Knalds renderer is physically based (as the term "normalized" means that, in this case).
however - Torrance-Sparrow looks different from both Blinn-Phong, and GGX reflections. So it will have a slightly different "feel" to other renderers.
cgilbert, thanks for the info. Specifically our team is looking for the following features, we don't actually need the baker, but we desperately need the below fixes and features. Seriously at this point I would pay for the upgrade just to get the copy paste functionality like CrazyBump has.
1. Copy paste to/from clipboard instead of having to export or import the map.
2. File browser does not recognize .psd files unless you choose all file types which is just another click in the long list of clicks to get colour to normal maps out of Knald.
3. Turn diffuse texture off does not stay off between sessions and we never want to see diffuse it does not help.
4. Ability to save the settings for the colour to normal map you just finished and easily recall those settings later after the art director asks for revisions.
5. Ability to Gaussian blur resulting normal map with slider bar and have it still seamlessly tile.
6. Ability to rotate existing normal maps arbitrarily and also be able to do this with colour to normal as you are creating them.
7. Ability to create sharp edge extrusions like nDo.
3dsMax and Substance Designer have the ability to match high and low poly meshes so the user does not need to explode detailed objects. Is a feature like this planned for Knald?
It basically means that you don't have to use the same topology in the imported cage as that found in the low poly mesh. You can have different UVs, triangulation, vert order etc., which is nice
Did a quick test vs Xnormal, both done at 4K with their respective max AA
Some minor but visible aliasing seems to show up, mainly in areas where different meshes meet?
THe same High Poly, Low Poly and Cage were used.
Thanks for the report. I will PM you for more details.
Any chance for implementing a soft gaussian blur filter (like in Maya transfer maps)? As far as I'm aware, there is none in xNormal, and filter types from 3dsmax scanline don't work with render to texture. It's useful to get higher quality bakes at low resolution like this (right is with blur filter).
Thank for the suggestion. I will see what I can do.
I'm sorry if this has already been asked, but is there a way to change the tangent space on the baker via a plugin? I guess this is a must if people want to use this with a inhouse engine.
What is the default tangent space tweaked for? Maya viewport?
Would I get different results should I view my baked model in CE3 or UE4?
Hey Helder!
The default TS is MikkTSpace, which is the default in most places now it seems, as it's easy to integrate . In our next update we'll also be supporting tangent space with fbx files though, which many engines will support in cases where MikkTSpace cant be added.
It'd be really great to see some kind of support for baking meshes with multiple parts without worrying about intersection errors. Of course the user could explode their bake, but that isn't great for baking AO and isn't as great for previewing. For xNormal I usually divide my meshes up into parts which don't intersect, batch bake the normals and compile the results in photoshop. Then I can bake the AO without changing the meshes, just baking them together. It'd be great if you could specify separate parts which would bake normals etc separately and then have them compiled together on the fly. Or some kind of ID system like in max.
Thanks for the suggestion! I will see what I can do.
Hey metalliandy, does this release have any updates for Photo to normals or is this just the baker that's been added? I'm really looking forward to a release that addresses some minor but time consuming workflow issues.
Also how are you handling the triangulation differences between game engines, for example can you bake a map that can be viewed in Maya or UE4 correctly based on their respective triangulations? And is there any different baking methods for how the normal map is projected for example geo and surface normals (Maya terminology).
We added a few new Kernels to Color To Normals which are Default (Original), Sobel & Alternating. Alternating was specifically added to account for the 1px bevels you requested a while ago.
We also added PSD import in the default file list too.
Regarding triangulation, if the source mesh isn't triangulated before importing I believe we use the shortest diagonal method, but I will have to check to be sure. I'm not sure what Maya uses.
MikkTSpace will match UE4 100% as of version 4.7 iirc and in our next update we'll also be supporting tangent space with fbx files.
cgilbert, thanks for the info. Specifically our team is looking for the following features, we don't actually need the baker, but we desperately need the below fixes and features. Seriously at this point I would pay for the upgrade just to get the copy paste functionality like CrazyBump has.
1. Copy paste to/from clipboard instead of having to export or import the map.
2. File browser does not recognize .psd files unless you choose all file types which is just another click in the long list of clicks to get colour to normal maps out of Knald.
3. Turn diffuse texture off does not stay off between sessions and we never want to see diffuse it does not help.
4. Ability to save the settings for the colour to normal map you just finished and easily recall those settings later after the art director asks for revisions.
5. Ability to Gaussian blur resulting normal map with slider bar and have it still seamlessly tile.
6. Ability to rotate existing normal maps arbitrarily and also be able to do this with colour to normal as you are creating them.
7. Ability to create sharp edge extrusions like nDo.
Just noticed that you replied while I was writing this so I will answer below.
1. Copy paste will be added during this beta period.
2. PSD is now supported in the default file list, along with the 1px bevel previously requested.
3. I'm sure we can hook up the current save/cancel/restore for the 3d preview too, which would fix this issue. You can only store 1 save however.
4. You can already do this now in the beta with the save/cancel/restore button found on the top right of each group.
5,6 & 7. I will see what I can do. We will be adding much more functionality to Color To Normals during the beta so hopefully we can work something out.
Hey trying the beta right now, I can confirm the browse for .psd is fixed, thanks!
The save restore thing is great, but how do I save a preset? I have multiple normal maps on the go with multiple settings and then after art review I need to change the base colour maps and would like to create a colour to normal, but with my old settings times multiple input maps/setings.
After some testing it appears what I want is save settings for a group, but multiple settings for a single group that I can name and reload later.
Malcom - I'll get the load/save expanded to the 3d preview checkboxes in our next update. We just recently enhanced our support of the save/cancel/load system to include the 3d preview in this latest beta so we are only one step away.
Regarding copy paste - can you share more specifically the workflow in which you utilize it?
For instance, is it mostly importing diffuse maps for color to normal conversion? Are you doing any copy/paste of "exotic" (eg: other than 8BIT RGB24) buffers? If so, what applications are you doing so to/from?
The tricky part with copy/paste is that there is no universally supported standard available for exchanging buffers of anything beyond RGB24. There is a standard way of exchanging RGBA32 data but not all applications support it correctly.
Would your workflow involve copy+pasting from Knald into other software as well? If so what target applications?
Out of curiosity, do you have copy/paste working with 16bit? I've been trying to do that with some stuff I'm working on and I can't seem to get better than 8bit (as it's stored in the clipboard as HBITMAP).
EDIT: Hah, that's what I get for not reading to the end of the thread. Answered in the post above :P
Hey cgilbert, for copy paste here is the workflow we'd like.
Press ctrl + c in Photoshop or ctrl + shift + c in Photoshop to copy an image into the clipboard.
In Knald press ctrl + v to paste the image from the clipboard as the colour to normal map input image.
Move some sliders around until you're happy with your normal map, then press ctrl + c to copy the resulting normal map back to the clipboard so you can paste it directly into your Photoshop document.
Ideally this would work with 16bit images in both directions, but I'm not sure if the windows clipboard supports this.
The magic of Knald is it's ability to quickly get normal map detail layers to composite on top of your baked map, but because you have to set up a bunch of files in folders first before you can do the colour to normal and then export the results, then import the results into Photoshop this kills the magic. We want to quickly jump into knald, grab a photo to normal and then have that instantly in our main normal map document as a layer in Photoshop.
Yes, that would definitely be the best workflow. Managing the folder structure can be a bit tedious - also, I often don't need almost a gig of separate bakes per asset, when I could just copy them into the correct Photoshop document from Knald itself.
Been playing with the beta and it seems very nice. I've had a few issues with heavy meshes not loading which I've already reported to support.
One question about future plans for the baker, are you planning on adding support for non-generated curvature maps? It'd be very nice to be able to render curvature maps same as in XNormal but with the speeds of Knald. Besides bug fixing, that's all that is missing for me currently.
Hey cgilbert, for copy paste here is the workflow we'd like.
Press ctrl + c in Photoshop or ctrl + shift + c in Photoshop to copy an image into the clipboard.
In Knald press ctrl + v to paste the image from the clipboard as the colour to normal map input image.
Move some sliders around until you're happy with your normal map, then press ctrl + c to copy the resulting normal map back to the clipboard so you can paste it directly into your Photoshop document.
Ideally this would work with 16bit images in both directions, but I'm not sure if the windows clipboard supports this.
The magic of Knald is it's ability to quickly get normal map detail layers to composite on top of your baked map, but because you have to set up a bunch of files in folders first before you can do the colour to normal and then export the results, then import the results into Photoshop this kills the magic. We want to quickly jump into knald, grab a photo to normal and then have that instantly in our main normal map document as a layer in Photoshop.
Thank you for the information - I suspected the workflow involved was mostly Knald<->Photoshop but didn't want to make any assumptions.
I'm not sure that we will be able to do anything outside of RGB24 (perhaps RGBA32) regarding copy paste at this time, there sadly isn't support in Windows for such an operation currently. There is a small chance we may be able to do 16bit between Knald and Photoshop specifically, but it largely hinges on what kind of data we can get out of the proprietary Adobe clipboard objects. (if any - there are really no docs we can find on Adobe's clipboard format)
A feature I'd love to see that xNormal has is baking a base texture from the high poly to low poly (really mesh to mesh). I do this all the time at work, but would definitely utilize knald as a replacement for xNormal if it had that feature, too.
cgilber, most times it's all 8bit. Occasionally I need a 16bit input into knald for soft blurred maps, but you could take care of that by adding a guassian blur slider to knald. 99% of our workflow is to export the 16bit doc out of knald and then import that into an 8bit document in Photoshop. Perhaps in Knald there is a send to Photoshop button that way you can have control over what image data gets sent? It could even be as ghetto as saving a 16bit map to disk first then sending to photoshop, that is definately possible.
Most of the time what typically happens is you have one .psd document with a bunch of layers in it that I need to quickly get photo to normals from and get those maps generated in Knald back into my main normal map. Right now it's a pain, you have to create a seperate doc, save it, load it in Knald, save the output, import into Photoshop, paste into your active normal map for game. That's only one layer, our team usually uses up to 3-7 photo to normal layers on top of a bake we get out of MightyBake. And for tiling textures sometimes we exclusively use Knald with no baking at all. And then, when the art director asks for changes it's painful to go back into Knald and try to remember what settings you had on the sliders for all 7 maps so we also need the ability to save a named preset for each photo to normal we generate. That way I have one master .psd that is greyscale where each layer feeds Knald photo to normal via copy paste, and we could retrieve those settings later when the AD asks for changes to the diffuse or normal map.
cgilber, most times it's all 8bit. Occasionally I need a 16bit input into knald for soft blurred maps, but you could take care of that by adding a guassian blur slider to knald. 99% of our workflow is to export the 16bit doc out of knald and then import that into an 8bit document in Photoshop. Perhaps in Knald there is a send to Photoshop button that way you can have control over what image data gets sent? It could even be as ghetto as saving a 16bit map to disk first then sending to photoshop, that is definately possible.
Most of the time what typically happens is you have one .psd document with a bunch of layers in it that I need to quickly get photo to normals from and get those maps generated in Knald back into my main normal map. Right now it's a pain, you have to create a seperate doc, save it, load it in Knald, save the output, import into Photoshop, paste into your active normal map for game. That's only one layer, our team usually uses up to 3-7 photo to normal layers on top of a bake we get out of MightyBake. And for tiling textures sometimes we exclusively use Knald with no baking at all. And then, when the art director asks for changes it's painful to go back into Knald and try to remember what settings you had on the sliders for all 7 maps so we also need the ability to save a named preset for each photo to normal we generate. That way I have one master .psd that is greyscale where each layer feeds Knald photo to normal via copy paste, and we could retrieve those settings later when the AD asks for changes to the diffuse or normal map.
Regarding getting maps out of Knald into Photoshop - have you tried our "Post Export Actions" group?
It's possible to have Knald open your maps in Photoshop automatically after an export. (Or execute any series of command line actions on the exported files)
Like I said previously - better than 8 bit clipboard support may simply be a technical impossibility - we will try our best to find a way to support it but there is no clear technical solution to the problem at this time.
Regarding the Color To Normal presets, would being able to save the entire application configuration to a file (and be able to load it again) provide a workable intermediate solution for your use case? Per-group preset lists are a great idea but due to scope of work not something we expect to have done in the near future.
3D Viewport is quite limited in how far you can zoom. I have quite complex model that I had to explode and its impossible to inspect certain elements closeup.
3D Viewport zoom is buggy, it doesnt zoom properly. One time it works, then it doesnt. Quite confusing at times.
Knald doesnt reload models if they are updated automaticly, you have to delete them out of Knald and plug them back in. Quite slow process.
Its unclear sometimes what Knald uses for baking. Is it going to use range or cage to bake? If you plug in cage and start messing with range, it will use range to bake, but you cant go back to cage? So in order to go back to cage baking mode, you have to unplug it and plug it back in? There should be a switch perhaps.
Feature request: Xnormal has a feature to use geometry as raycast blockers. So say you have 2 pieces of geometry very close to each other and when rays cast these rays grab info from other geometry, which you dont want, so you can put ray blocking geometry in between like a plane to stop it from happening.
Feature request: Curvature map baking,
Its really nice baking solution so far, I really like how quick it is!
Thank you!
Replies
With a forward facing plane the maps would look identical in both TS and OS so I assume that you are doing something else with them?
I will see what I can do. Great suggestion as always!
Nice find! I have confirmed the bug and we will work on a fix for the next release.
[quote=Pedro Jatob
I have run into this problem with Knald. Hopefully somebody can help here?
Hey everyone!
We are happy to announce the Knald 1.1.0 Open Beta for Knald customers!
Since Knald was originally released we have been hard at work developing a next generation baker and we would love to extend an invitation to our existing customers to try it out!
[ame]
This update adds a world-class baking solution, including ground breaking advancements unique to Knald!
Some of the features and changes:
You can find more information including download instructions at: https://www.knaldtech.com/knald-1-1-0-open-beta/
We have loads of more features planned for release during the beta (inc. copy/paste) and we hope that you enjoy this update as much as we are excited to share it with you!
KnaldTech Team
Knalds taken pretty much everything I've thrown at it without dropping the quality ball.
All the bakes in this thread were from Knald: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=145608&page=3
Yes, all of the features that were in Knald previously are available in the new Beta. (Including Color to Normal)
Regarding the website - thank you for the screenshot! The issue seems intermittent and we are working to resolve it as fast as possible.
Edit: We have taken a pass and the web issues should be resolved - please try restarting your browser (to clear any cached pages in memory) and accessing the site again.
If you are still having issues, any information you could provide such as browser, version, OS and addons installed would be a big help in diagnosing the problem!
Thanks!
Chris Gilbert
KnaldTech Team
Cheers metalliandy
Some minor but visible aliasing seems to show up, mainly in areas where different meshes meet?
THe same High Poly, Low Poly and Cage were used.
Also how are you handling the triangulation differences between game engines, for example can you bake a map that can be viewed in Maya or UE4 correctly based on their respective triangulations? And is there any different baking methods for how the normal map is projected for example geo and surface normals (Maya terminology).
I just did a fresh installation of:
Firefox Developer Edition Win64 39.0a2
(No Win64 build of Firefox is currently in the release branch)
NoScript 2.6.9.22
Adblock Plus 2.6.9
Can you confirm that this matches your configuration?
I am seeing a variety of issues with the site with NoScript installed and with default settings. (24 Script objects blocked)
Our website relies pretty heavily on JavaScript - to clarify the issue can you try temporarily disabling ABP and NoScript then attempting to access our site again?
Our paid licenses are all permit two simultaneous activation by the same person. (Eg: For a Laptop and Desktop)
The license key for the beta is just the same key as you use for the existing release of Knald. Also it's possible to have both the Beta and Retail versions of Knald installed on the same machine side-by-side.
Thanks!
Chris Gilbert
- KnaldTech Team
Is the 3D preview PBR based ?
As it applies in the case of our 3D preview, the specular reflection is
a normalized Torrance-Sparrow formulation as typical in PBR runtimes.
Actually, we did add a feature to Color To Normal in this build!
You can now specify the Kernel as:
Default (Original)
Sobel
Alternating
We also have some other improvements to Color To Normal planned.
(Andy will have to fill you in regarding your other questions)
Thanks!
Chris Gilbert
- KnaldTech Team
What is the default tangent space tweaked for? Maya viewport?
Would I get different results should I view my baked model in CE3 or UE4?
Should be Mikktspace if the earlier version of Knald is to go by (also, the guy who came up with the Mikktspace tangent calculation is one of the main guys on the Knald team, soooo).
You could always use Handplane to get the best results, though.
So ... yes? Speak artist.
http://lesterbanks.com/lxb_metal/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/ggx_vs_Phong.jpg
Hes simply referring to the specular model which varies depending on whatever engine you are using. Above is a pic of some common physically based specular models
not really... (below is for the benefit of others because i'm pretty sure you know this already lol)
Torrance-Sparrow formulation is just one of many BRDFs, all of which can be physically based if the math is right. The differences between them are the "shape" of the highlights.
"Physically based" is more of a buzzword but at it's core it means that the total energy in both the diffuse and reflective components can't be greater than the energy it receives. so if the light source is at "3", then the diffuse and reflection combined cannot be greater than "3". This means that the diffuse colour gets darker as the reflection becomes more intense.
So, the most simple answer would be:
YES! - Knalds renderer is physically based (as the term "normalized" means that, in this case).
however - Torrance-Sparrow looks different from both Blinn-Phong, and GGX reflections. So it will have a slightly different "feel" to other renderers.
1. Copy paste to/from clipboard instead of having to export or import the map.
2. File browser does not recognize .psd files unless you choose all file types which is just another click in the long list of clicks to get colour to normal maps out of Knald.
3. Turn diffuse texture off does not stay off between sessions and we never want to see diffuse it does not help.
4. Ability to save the settings for the colour to normal map you just finished and easily recall those settings later after the art director asks for revisions.
5. Ability to Gaussian blur resulting normal map with slider bar and have it still seamlessly tile.
6. Ability to rotate existing normal maps arbitrarily and also be able to do this with colour to normal as you are creating them.
7. Ability to create sharp edge extrusions like nDo.
Thanks for the suggestion. We will look into it
Always a pleasure
Thanks for the suggestion! I will add it to the list
It basically means that you don't have to use the same topology in the imported cage as that found in the low poly mesh. You can have different UVs, triangulation, vert order etc., which is nice
Thanks for the report. I will PM you for more details.
Thank for the suggestion. I will see what I can do.
Hey Helder!
The default TS is MikkTSpace, which is the default in most places now it seems, as it's easy to integrate . In our next update we'll also be supporting tangent space with fbx files though, which many engines will support in cases where MikkTSpace cant be added.
Thanks for the suggestion! I will see what I can do.
We added a few new Kernels to Color To Normals which are Default (Original), Sobel & Alternating. Alternating was specifically added to account for the 1px bevels you requested a while ago.
We also added PSD import in the default file list too.
Regarding triangulation, if the source mesh isn't triangulated before importing I believe we use the shortest diagonal method, but I will have to check to be sure. I'm not sure what Maya uses.
MikkTSpace will match UE4 100% as of version 4.7 iirc and in our next update we'll also be supporting tangent space with fbx files.
I hope that answered your question.
Just noticed that you replied while I was writing this so I will answer below.
1. Copy paste will be added during this beta period.
2. PSD is now supported in the default file list, along with the 1px bevel previously requested.
3. I'm sure we can hook up the current save/cancel/restore for the 3d preview too, which would fix this issue. You can only store 1 save however.
4. You can already do this now in the beta with the save/cancel/restore button found on the top right of each group.
5,6 & 7. I will see what I can do. We will be adding much more functionality to Color To Normals during the beta so hopefully we can work something out.
Cheers!
The save restore thing is great, but how do I save a preset? I have multiple normal maps on the go with multiple settings and then after art review I need to change the base colour maps and would like to create a colour to normal, but with my old settings times multiple input maps/setings.
After some testing it appears what I want is save settings for a group, but multiple settings for a single group that I can name and reload later.
Malcom - I'll get the load/save expanded to the 3d preview checkboxes in our next update. We just recently enhanced our support of the save/cancel/load system to include the 3d preview in this latest beta so we are only one step away.
Regarding copy paste - can you share more specifically the workflow in which you utilize it?
For instance, is it mostly importing diffuse maps for color to normal conversion? Are you doing any copy/paste of "exotic" (eg: other than 8BIT RGB24) buffers? If so, what applications are you doing so to/from?
The tricky part with copy/paste is that there is no universally supported standard available for exchanging buffers of anything beyond RGB24. There is a standard way of exchanging RGBA32 data but not all applications support it correctly.
Would your workflow involve copy+pasting from Knald into other software as well? If so what target applications?
Thanks!
Chris Gilbert
- KnaldTech Team
EDIT: Hah, that's what I get for not reading to the end of the thread. Answered in the post above :P
Press ctrl + c in Photoshop or ctrl + shift + c in Photoshop to copy an image into the clipboard.
In Knald press ctrl + v to paste the image from the clipboard as the colour to normal map input image.
Move some sliders around until you're happy with your normal map, then press ctrl + c to copy the resulting normal map back to the clipboard so you can paste it directly into your Photoshop document.
Ideally this would work with 16bit images in both directions, but I'm not sure if the windows clipboard supports this.
The magic of Knald is it's ability to quickly get normal map detail layers to composite on top of your baked map, but because you have to set up a bunch of files in folders first before you can do the colour to normal and then export the results, then import the results into Photoshop this kills the magic. We want to quickly jump into knald, grab a photo to normal and then have that instantly in our main normal map document as a layer in Photoshop.
One question about future plans for the baker, are you planning on adding support for non-generated curvature maps? It'd be very nice to be able to render curvature maps same as in XNormal but with the speeds of Knald. Besides bug fixing, that's all that is missing for me currently.
Thank you for the information - I suspected the workflow involved was mostly Knald<->Photoshop but didn't want to make any assumptions.
I'm not sure that we will be able to do anything outside of RGB24 (perhaps RGBA32) regarding copy paste at this time, there sadly isn't support in Windows for such an operation currently. There is a small chance we may be able to do 16bit between Knald and Photoshop specifically, but it largely hinges on what kind of data we can get out of the proprietary Adobe clipboard objects. (if any - there are really no docs we can find on Adobe's clipboard format)
Thanks,
Chris Gilbert
- KnaldTech Team
Most of the time what typically happens is you have one .psd document with a bunch of layers in it that I need to quickly get photo to normals from and get those maps generated in Knald back into my main normal map. Right now it's a pain, you have to create a seperate doc, save it, load it in Knald, save the output, import into Photoshop, paste into your active normal map for game. That's only one layer, our team usually uses up to 3-7 photo to normal layers on top of a bake we get out of MightyBake. And for tiling textures sometimes we exclusively use Knald with no baking at all. And then, when the art director asks for changes it's painful to go back into Knald and try to remember what settings you had on the sliders for all 7 maps so we also need the ability to save a named preset for each photo to normal we generate. That way I have one master .psd that is greyscale where each layer feeds Knald photo to normal via copy paste, and we could retrieve those settings later when the AD asks for changes to the diffuse or normal map.
Regarding getting maps out of Knald into Photoshop - have you tried our "Post Export Actions" group?
It's possible to have Knald open your maps in Photoshop automatically after an export. (Or execute any series of command line actions on the exported files)
Take a look at: https://www.knaldtech.com/docs/doku.php?id=post_export_actions for more information.
Like I said previously - better than 8 bit clipboard support may simply be a technical impossibility - we will try our best to find a way to support it but there is no clear technical solution to the problem at this time.
Regarding the Color To Normal presets, would being able to save the entire application configuration to a file (and be able to load it again) provide a workable intermediate solution for your use case? Per-group preset lists are a great idea but due to scope of work not something we expect to have done in the near future.
Thanks,
Chris Gilbert
- KnaldTech Team
3D Viewport is quite limited in how far you can zoom. I have quite complex model that I had to explode and its impossible to inspect certain elements closeup.
3D Viewport zoom is buggy, it doesnt zoom properly. One time it works, then it doesnt. Quite confusing at times.
Also +1 one this issue that was already reported: http://i.imgur.com/kHWk01a.jpg
Knald doesnt reload models if they are updated automaticly, you have to delete them out of Knald and plug them back in. Quite slow process.
Its unclear sometimes what Knald uses for baking. Is it going to use range or cage to bake? If you plug in cage and start messing with range, it will use range to bake, but you cant go back to cage? So in order to go back to cage baking mode, you have to unplug it and plug it back in? There should be a switch perhaps.
Feature request: Xnormal has a feature to use geometry as raycast blockers. So say you have 2 pieces of geometry very close to each other and when rays cast these rays grab info from other geometry, which you dont want, so you can put ray blocking geometry in between like a plane to stop it from happening.
Feature request: Curvature map baking,
Its really nice baking solution so far, I really like how quick it is!
Thank you!