Various methods of creating normal maps + AO

Artaekos_inactive

Good evening everyone. Over the past few years I have developed an understanding that the "proper" way to model and texture game assets revolves primarily around the process of creating a high resolution model to bake normal and AO maps for use on a corresponding low-resolution game engine ready model.

I would like to hear back from you all on if there are popular alternative methods to achieving similar results. Not necessarily hand-painting low poly assets, that's about as straight forward as it gets, and is somewhat restrictive to a certain style. The reason i'm asking is because I was following Tor Frick's (Snefer) thread on his single texture environment, and he said he used no high-poly models to create the scene, despite the fact that he still had normal maps. I know creating normals from diffuse maps generally gives shit results. Ndo2 was mentioned, but he didn't go into any more detail.

I've never really used Ndo2 in my texturing process, having always relied on the first method I described, which I find to be effective although very time consuming. Am I missing out on the answer to quick asset texturing here?

Perhaps we can all discuss our personal methods to achieving these results...

EarthQuake

It really depends, if you are doing one-off hero assets, there isn't really anyway to get around doing a high resolution mesh, and baking it down (you need the normal map to be baked to get proper shading).

If you're making tiling textures with mechanical details, something like nDo can be a great substitute.

You can always do both as well, doing the main forms in highpoly, and then adding details with nDo.

BARDLER

On top of what EQ said Knald is an awesome way to save time baking AO maps. Granted you still have to create a proper normal map like the ways EQ posted, but Knald can give you a 4096 AO map using 8000 plus rays in less than a a few minutes. It saves a ton of time when working and easy to adjust on the fly as you need. Highly recommend.

Artaekos_inactive

Hey Bardler. Yeah I've got Knald and have used it for a few assignments. It's definitely nice for generating AO maps from normals.

CheeseOnToast

The reason i'm asking is because I was following Tor Frick's (Snefer) thread on his single texture environment, and he said he used no high-poly models to create the scene, despite the fact that he still had normal maps. I know creating normals from diffuse maps generally gives shit results. Ndo2 was mentioned, but he didn't go into any more detail.

He will have been generating normals from handpainted masks/heightmaps, NOT diffuse maps which are usually shit, as you said.

ZacD

You can always just do some simple modeling on top of a plane, and then bake it out. You can get the same results.