[Maya] Remapping PSD layers to optimized mesh?

Bot13

Hi!

So here's the deal. What I want to do is to do a batched rebake of all the texture layers that are applied to one mesh (I'm talking about its source PSD layers here), and apply them to another one: a newly created mesh that I unwrapped individually.

My "original" model has a PSD with ~50 layers, and manually applying those layers and Transfer Mapping them does not seem to be the most time efficient way to go about this.

I've found a script (for 3dsmax though) online that does almost what I need, but it needs a single mesh with two UV channels, and it will use that information to transfer the PSD layers (and adjustment layers, everything) to the new UV setup. In my case I want to do an actual "bake" involving an optimized second mesh.

Does anyone has any advice how I could approach this?

Eric Chadwick

Install max as a demo, use the script, voila!

Bot13

Thanks for the fast response!
Like I said, the script I found for 3dsmax sadly doesn't do what I need it to do. Instead of searching for an alternative UV in the same mesh, I need it to map the PSD layers on a completely different mesh.

So instead of UV1 --> UV2 I need this: Mesh1-UV1 --> Mesh2-UV1. Sadly I'm not able to copy the UV set of my optimized model over to the secondary UV channel of my original mesh, as it's a completely different mesh.

Eric Chadwick

Use the new mesh as the "low" and the old mesh as the "high", so you're baking the old onto the new.

Bot13

Do you mean transferring the UV's themselves? If so, it could work in theory.

If I could get a secondary UV layout on the "original" model that matches the UV layout of the "low poly" version, I could then run the 3dsmax script and transfer the PSD layers from UV1 to match UV2. Then I could apply the result on the "lowpoly" mesh.

However, I did some quick tests and transferring UV layouts between different meshes seems to be a messy endeavor.

haiddasalami

Cant you just bake the diffuse from one to the other? I think thats what Eric is talking about. Basically use you're original mesh as the high and the optimized mesh as low and bake. Could just make an action to export out all the layers and bake that if you want.

Eric Chadwick

No, transferring UVs from one topo to another never works. I think you would have to re-bake each layer individually.

50+ layers sounds like a mess. Collapse those down in Photoshop first, into much fewer layers. Then bake each one.

Or better still, just bite the bullet and recreate those layers from a fresh clean bake.

Bot13

Eric Chadwick wrote: »

No, transferring UVs from one topo to another never works. I think you would have to re-bake each layer individually.

I was afraid so. However that would also mean losing all data such as masks, opacity settings, adjustment layers, layer styles, etc...

Trying with Maya 2014 to get the "high poly" UV's to match the "low poly" UV layout. Admittedly there's some overlapping and weird faces, but altogether I expected it to be worse. If I can just get a full PSD rendered this way, I would find it ... acceptable to clean the result up here and there. I'm currently having some issues with the 3dsmax script anyway, so to be continued. Thanks for the help thus far