Xnormal maps rendering too light

Jaber

Hey guys, ive ran into a small problem when rendering out an AO map and Cavity map for my model in Xnormal. Im using a cage and the normal map comes out just fine but when I try to render out the AO and cavity map they come out so faint and light you can barley see them, any ideas as to why this js occurring?

.Wiki

Which settings do you use for those two map types? A screenshot of the two menus would be nice.
Are you rendering in 16 Bit per Channel?

Bubba91873

When I bake in xnormal for ao and cavity maps, I'll include a flat plane or box underneath the low poly as a separate file and place that in the high poly loadout. To get the nice shadows underneath.

Or use a shallow cylinder in a bowl shape.

Bake with a plane and one without and composite in photoshop as needed.

Jaber

Thanks for the feedback guys. I've attached a picture of my current cavity map settings, but now I seem to have run into another problem. Now when I load up Xnormal to work on the mesh I've been refering too, the scale is all off. I have even tried re importing and exporting the LP and HP and still the LP when I go into the 3D viewer in Xnormal is wayyyy smaller than the HP, I have no idea why. I exported the HP from Zbrush with polypaint, and made the LP from a decimated mesh out of LP and they matched up just fine the other day, but now for some reason the LP is 10 smaller in the 3D view in Xnormal than the HP and I can't seem to fix it no matter how many times I re import and export my LP and HP's, any ideas what the deal is?

Jaber

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Jaber

Just exported my Lp and Hp from maya and zbrush and still have this weird issue where my lp is way smaller than my Hp in the Xnormal 3D viewport when trying to configure my cage. Any ideas I just cant figure this one out?

.Wiki

Have you frozen all transforms and the modeling stack before you exported it from Maya to xNormal?

Jaber

I did freeze all transforms on my low poly in maya before I exported it. Im wondering if the issue is my high poly? Because im exporting the high poly obj straight out zbrush with a poly paint layer. I cant see why it would be a problem though because when I decimate the mesh in zbrush and bring it into maya to make my low poly they both are the same size. So im not sure why the high poly obj wiyh poly paint in Xnormal 3d viewer is 10 times the size of my LP from maya.. any ideas? Mabey it has something to do with my exported high poly from zbrush?

Octo

That screenshot doesn't help at all...the settings are under the green "..." button.
Here's some example settings.. http://www.donaldphan.com/tutorials/xnormal/xnormal_occ.html

St.Sabath

Yeah i had a similar issue with an .obj export from zbrush that was off scale halfway throughout the project,however an earlier version was exporting fine and perfectly on scale.I did a quick GOZ to my3D application to a scene that contained my LP to compare scales.Mine was off and i had to manually adjust the scale +1.7 exactly.weird.However my model was quite simple,on complicated geo,you probably wont get away with manual scaling,since you dont know exactly what the scale difference is.Weird..

Jaber

Thanks st. Sabath, its funny the same thing was with me, it happened "half way through" the project. Thanks for the info, whats GOZ?

Ootrick

^^ export/import ect tool with ZB for external packages. Helps to keep from screwing with the meshes scale location ect, makes it faster than exporting re importing, it should idealy update the changes you make live in the other package once the mesh has been Goz'd

Post the actual normal map so we can see..

Jaber

What do you mean by the "ect" tool? Im still lost on what GOZ'd stands for :*(

BARDLER

You could use Knald, it has sliders to adjust your AO, cavity, and convexity maps after the fact. You throw your normal map in there and you have all the other maps you need in less than 5 min, its really amazing.

Torch

BARDLER wrote: »

You could use Knald, it has sliders to adjust your AO, cavity, and convexity maps after the fact. You throw your normal map in there and you have all the other maps you need in less than 5 min, its really amazing.

Would this be a viable option for bypassing baking AO from a high to low poly? Only because I use Xnormal and love it for baking normal maps, but the AO takes way too long. Usually use Topogun for high to low poly AO as its relatively fast and gives some nice results, but would rather have to use less apps for final results.

Just wondered if the results you'd get from converting a final normal map in Knald to AO would be as good as if you'd used the slower route of baking the AO map piece by piece - I figured using the 'mesh AO' option would help too.

BARDLER

Torch wrote: »

Would this be a viable option for bypassing baking AO from a high to low poly? Only because I use Xnormal and love it for baking normal maps, but the AO takes way too long. Usually use Topogun for high to low poly AO as its relatively fast and gives some nice results, but would rather have to use less apps for final results.

Just wondered if the results you'd get from converting a final normal map in Knald to AO would be as good as if you'd used the slower route of baking the AO map piece by piece - I figured using the 'mesh AO' option would help too.

Yea I haven't baked an AO map in months since I started using Knald with the exception of some super low poly stuff. Its a huge time saver and the results are amazing. You can download a demo and see the results for yourself.

Jaber

Thanks for the feedback and help guys, I figured the issue out. My Mesh scale setting in Zbursh was set from 5 to 1 for some odd reason.