Best option for Bake Color-Maps ? (For dDo)

Earanak

Hello !
I'm looking more optimal way baking (Color/Diffuse Maps) for dDo.
UPD — I mean, bake from High-Poly to Low-Poly.

What's the problem :
1.) Bake in "Maya" - Very Long.
2.) Bake in "xNormal" - Pretty Complicated/Not Exact.
3.) Bake in "3Ds Max" - Not an Option, but Good.
4.) Bake in "ZBrush" - I Dont Know, Complicated ?
5.) Better option/method - In Search...

Just for Example :
High-Poly Geo (270K Quad-Poly) - Pretty Simple Layout - (512x512 IMAGE)
Low-Poly Geo (Just Plane with Two-Triangle).

Maya Bake :
1.) Load "dDo.FBX" Swatches with dDo Materials.
2.) Use dDo Material Manager (Just for convenience).
3.) Use "Transfer Maps" (2048x2048/High 8x8 Sampling).
4.) Pretty Simple, but Long bake time...
37Min for 2K-Map / 165Min for 4K-Map. Result — (512x512 IMAGE).

In another situation, when i bake three 4K Maps with more complex geo...
It took ~380 Min, during this time I watched "The Matrix" trilogy :poly121:
Maya Transfer Maps use only one Thread of my CPU "AMD FX-8350", sadly.

xNormal Bake :
1.) Load in Photoshop dDo Swatches, take RGB-Colors, for need materials.
2.) In Maya, use "Polygons > Color > Apply Color" on certain Polygons.
3.) Export High-Poly Geo in SMB-Format, with "Vertex Colors".
4.) Than, bake Vertex Colors Map in xNormal.

As a result... 4096x4096 / x4-AA — 2Min.
But, colors slightly skewed. Why ? - I do not know.
For example - (72/76/87) > (74/74/89) | (16/16/16) > (15/17/16), and so on...

So...
Please tell me more optimal option for this task.
My English pretty bad, but i try communicate more clearly :poly124:

Thank for your attention !

Bek

Well it is pretty easy if you're assigning colour values to the lowpoly and not trying to bake vertex colours from the high to low. For things that aren't polygon based (Say the screws that are just normal mapped onto a flat surface) you can add the colour manually in photoshop if there isn't too many. A bonus here is if you're using nDo to make these small details you can just duplicate the layer before converting to normal to create the colour/selection map.

There are some methods for the former in this thread:

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=78446

Earanak

Bek, yep, i use that method, from time to time... Include nDo2/Photoshop.

But in this case (almost always) i need bake 'colours from the high to low'.

EarthQuake

Make sure to delete history before doing any bakes in maya, save a backup of your scene as this will drop your sub-d history etc. This should speed up bakes significantly.

Earanak

EarthQuake, "Delete History" i've already bind to HotKey, well as "Delete UV".
I always try clear (Scene/High-Poly Geo) before 'bake/export/render'.

"Sub-D History", if you mean "Construction History"... I've clear this all time.

Renaud Galand

Interesting thread!

About baking in maya, I really don't know why you would go as high as 8x8 for your baking quality. I always bake my 4k maps at 2x2 and it's perfectly fine for my needs. It takes about 20 to 30 seconds to bake a color map.

Earanak

Renaud Galand
I try "4x4/2x2" Sampling, and... It looks good !
And of course, baking speed dramatically different !

1KK Quad-Geo / 4K Map :
1x1 : ~5Min [Artifacts on Curved Places]
2x2 : ~15Min [Everything looks good, like xNormal bake]
4x4 : ~60Min+ [Almost the same result, like 2x2 !]
8x8 : ???Min COLOR=DarkOrange]Makes no sense ?[/COLOR

I'm a perfectionist, and it's bad
Maybe really no sense to use 8x8, or even 4x4 Sampling at 4096x4096 ?! Well, at least for dDo Color-Maps...

Just for the experiment :
I take little Circle [88x88 px] from 4K-Texture and try Compare 1x1/2x2/4x4 Sampling.
As a result (on closer inspection) 4x4 has almost the same result like 2x2 (on 4K Maps).
Explanation of attached image — Outside circle 500% Zoomed, Inside White-Circle not-Zoomed.

passerby

I just do it the way you explained in Maya, with the addition of this script for quickly applying ddo mats.
http://cmcproductions.co.uk/scripts/#pbdDo

Earanak

passerby, wow !

I have not tried yet but those scripts seems to be very useful !
Without a doubt this will help me... Many thanks !

passerby

ya i intend to write tools to automate the bake process later, to build into the that tool but havnet gotten to it yet.

But it has all the ddo mats built right into the script, and can apply them to face or objects selections in 1 click, and lets you easily select via materials too.